Chimpanzee at Auckland Zoo
Zoos have been on my mind lately. I wonder what it is like for animals to be in cages, and to have humans come and stare at them. It must not be fun. Maybe not all zoo animals collect stones to throw at their audience, but you know they must have some feeling about being watched.
The article below says the Chimp exhibits "loutish" behavior. Could there be another way to describe this? How about "indignant?"
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Chimp who threw stones at zoo visitors showed human trait, says scientist
Assembling ammunition in advance reveals ape's unsuspected ability to plan for future
* Ian Sample, science correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 March 2009 17.33 GMT
The loutish behaviour of a stone-throwing chimpanzee at a zoo near the Arctic circle has challenged scientists' beliefs about human beings.
Santino, a 31-year-old male at Furuvik zoo in Sweden, may be the first animal to exhibit an unambiguous ability to plan for the future, a behaviour many scientists argue is unique to humans. Forward planning takes considerable cognitive skills, because it requires an animal to envisage future events it will have to deal with.
Santino would get agitated when the first groups of visitors arrived at his enclosure in the morning, and would start hurling stones at the spectators. When the zookeepers investigated, they found that, while the zoo was closed, Santino had been busy making piles of ammunition, and returned to them to resupply...more
2 comments:
You can see how chimpanzees are just a few hops in evolutionary history from Homo Habilis.. It's amazing to think that chimps are wired for the same sort of weapons stockpiling that's kept humans busy fending off invaders. To me, there's not much difference in how humans have played out the nuclear arms race of the last sixty years—just bigger, and more deadly rocks.
Poor things. they need to be in the jungle. so sad :(
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