Malou

Malou with Claudine André www.bonoboscongo.net

A small message to announce a very sad news:

Malou, a female bonobo who had been rescued from pet trafic at Roissy Charles de Gaulle, France, a few years ago in a critical condition and who managed to survive and have a great life at Lola, just died last Tuesday. Reasons of death are unknown right now.

We won't forget you little angel...



TG

Tired of buying your kids every new PSP, Wii and XBox stuff, adopt a bonobo instead!

We all know that kids are never satisfy with what they have and always want something new. That's why we propose to you the adoption of our bonobos. They are nice, fun and you can keep them busy for hours with toilet paper! There is no way you can wait before adopting one!!!

IMPORTANT NOTE: just to make sure: that was stupid French humour. Never "adopt in real" any bonobo and report to authorities ANYONE who would propose to you to acquire those guys in particular, any ape in general (and most monkeys if not all). This is one of the most endangered species, found on the appendix I of CITES (www.cites.org, which make reference for all endangered species), which gathers the most endangered of all threatened species. Their place is not as pet of any human (before being inexorably killed: a baby bonobo is really cute, as already stated. An adult male bonobo is 2.3 to 3 feet (70 to 90 centimeters) from head to rump, and up to 60 kg, likely, less cute and much stronger). Their place is in the wild, within their social group, not in a cage in any house in Africa neither in any other place on Earth. HOWEVER: you can support the conservation by adopting a bonobo from a sanctuary like Lola ya bonobo (http://www.friendsofbonobos.org/html/help.htm). You will receive pics, news from your baby bonobo and will be able to provide it a better life than it was used to (just as to say it again, all the new comers at Lola have seen their mum being slaugthered in front of their eyes and were then sold as pet).

By the way, the goal of this video was more to show you one of the basics of the bonobo society: Play. Play is probably one of the most important component of the social life in bonobos. At any age, they will play, even though it is more frequently observed for juveniles and pre-adults. Juveniles in particular spend most of their day playing, when adults let more time to grooming. Adults seem less likely to play but we could say "they stay young at heart" so that whenever there is an occasion, they will play, even the highest ranked individual such as the alpha female (Lana for example can be really willing to play some days, and other days, she will lazily keep an eye on Kesi, while groomed by another adult...) or male (Erin is on the video, let's check if you can recognize them with the photos I have provided). When they are in the mood, they can be terrific players. When Lenore wants to play, for instance, she won't let any other alternative to Mudhe except to play. This video shows how certain unhabitual things in the enclosure can be easily transformed in play tools (somehow, it happens sometimes that these unusual things are other animals such as rabbit or racoon, alive or dead (mostly they turn dead pretty soon by the way...). So, play is a fundamental of the bonobo society. It helps to build and keep strong friendy relationships and you can hear on the video some weird noises coming from Mudhe: she is laughing. Play is probably the best time to hear them laughing and that's what show above all how play is the time when they really enjoy their social bounds.

Lenore, the Greek philosopher - or another use of toilet paper (guess you would never have thought about it since you've grown up, right?)

Once again, all contribution will be fully appreciated.

Best,

TG, in San Diego for two weeks, and then back to European Winter :'-( [I know it's supposed to be Spring now but when it's 40° F with snow, that's not what personally call Spring]...

Theory of mind

I mentioned the Theory of mind in the last post. This blog aims to make vulgarization and to make accessible some concepts used in comparative psychology and cognitive science, in relation with apes. I think it is then necessary for me to explain a bit about this theory of mind and the folk psychology.

Folk psychology (introduced by Fodor) is the way we use mental states to understand others and therefore, that's what shape how we are behaving in our social life and our interactions with others (I won't enter the controversy about it's existence, that's not the place for it). It supposes that we act by making a bunch of hypotheses, the most important of which is that others think and act with beliefs. "I intend that you will do such a thing". "I think that he will turn right on the next cross so that I should go on the left line". "Alice intends that Bob thinks that he upsets her". Und so weiter. We keep using those beliefs to predict and understand how the other behave, and therefore, we adapt our own behavior. Theory of mind is basically relying on those mental states. Having a theory of mind is attributing to others beliefs and accepting the fact that those beliefs will help the others to behave, in the same way that it helps us to do. Theory of mind is therefore a concept that is totally turned to the other. It is different from metacognition, where we can evaluate ourselves directly (another really interesting program of research btw). The ability to attribute beliefs to others is not easy to acquire. It requires to understand that others can have beliefs independently of us. The well known "false-belief task" has been defined as a test of theory of mind and children usually succeed only at 4 of age. Its adaptation to primate, apes in particular, has always failed.

However, some new experiments, notably by Brian Hare, have shown that in a competitive situation, chimps know what the others see. It's a first clue of up to which point their cognition is developed. They also know what they don't see and then can turn it to their own advantage.
It is important to see that the purpose of such study is not to seek a black and white answer as "yes they have a ToM" or "no, they don't". They have a different cognition and it is interesting to know how it works. Firstly, because it would be great to know how this cognition works without a language. Secondly, from a comparative point of view, it can tell us what our last ancestor had already develop and what is specific to human as well as to chimps. I have mentioned language above. That may be one of the key for the development of ToM. As in my examples, I wrote "A thinks that B thinks that C....", a property of language that is called recursion. That's a really important property of language and some researchers even believe that it is one of the most unique property to language, therefore, something really specific to humans. The question now is: is this recursion necessary to develop a ToM? Other related questions are then: is language necessary to develop a ToM? (probably not, in regard with the last experiments); if a species does not have a language, how can it develop and up to which point a ToM? Probably, we have achieved the most complete ToM of the animal kingdom. However, it is very unlikely that it developed only after the split of our lineage. Therefore, we have to find what already existed in our last common ancestor, and see what is really specific to the human lineage. Surely, language will have a strong part to play in it, taken that this adaptation has been so successful that we can not even think without it. However, the important question is to know if it developed over an existing substrat or if it IS the main substrat on which such advanced skills as ToM have developed.

I hope I haven't been through too complicated explanations and that this will also represent a concreat example of what comparative psychology tries to understand.


TG

Lenore and Jumanji, the love story and the scientific inspiration

Lenore, with Jumanji's favorite carbon...

As I said before, Lenore and Jumanji have a strange relationship. Lenore can't stand Jumanji. She keeps trying to charge him anytime he is too close to her. She also chases him during feeding time and is exasperated by his displays. Males bonobos like indeed to display with what they can find. They take a box for example and pull it around the enclosure, producing sound and vocals at the same time. In such times, Lenore usually comes to him, tries to catch him and get the box that he had to abandon. Somehow it's really funny to see that sometimes, he can not even reach the box because Lenore goes to take it before he can reach it. He will then tries to take it back, if Lenore is kept busy by something else, for example an agression by Erin.

All these observations and ad hoc comments must not be taken as scientific claims. It is important to understand that I used "his favorite box" or "to annoy her" on purpose and the use of such intentional vocabulary has to be understood in the right way. I don't intend that they conduct a machiavelian reasoning to annoy the other on purpose. It is obviously what we would say about humans that would act this way. It's more complicated when we talk about apes. We don't know if they really do that on purpose. However, I did not invent those observations and we have to be able to explain them. That's where experimental stuff occurs. It allows us to ask the question with a minimum of alternative explanations for the answer that is observed.

The observation is the fact and the experiments will allow to ask the questions raised by this observation. That's how both works (observation, more ethological, and experiments, more psychological) interact and are complementary. It is important to understand how this kind of observations help to build experimental paradigms. For example, the fact that Lenore seems to take on purpose Jumanji's box and not Akili's box, added to the fact that she seems to really hate him and not Akili, raises questions about the machiavelian behaviour that she seems to show. Taking Jumanji's favorite tool asks also questions about the understanding of ownership: does she understand that she takes "his" thing? Suppose that she understands really that she is taking "his" thing and that she is doing that on purpose: "I am doing this thing in order him to be upset". You reach another level. "I am doing this thing for him to see me and be upset". Another level. That's how we get to the "final stage" of mind reading: theory of mind. These different cognitive abilities appear in the human infant during his development. It is very interesting to study if such abilities do exist in apes, because if it is the case, that means with a good probability that they already existed in our last common ancestor, 6 million years ago. Taken that a simple observation is full of flaws and could be explained by many different explanations, it is important to go to the lab and build strong paradigms that address the question clearly: they will question if yes or no the apes have this ability, because the design of the experiment will aim to ask a specific question relevant to this ability and which, ultimately, could not be realized without it.

Obviously it's not that simple and it's very hard to design such experiment that can give a yes or a no to the question. However, it helps to reduce the amount of possible explanations and to have a better idea of what is going on in their mind.

The next step is to design more complicated experiments to know up to which point, in comparison with our own mastering of this ability, they do master such ability. This will then help to answer to the question of what was specifically developed in our human lineage.

TG

Zoo, Sanctuaries and the Wild

A brief message to explain what can be done as studies with primates.

Zoos are an easy way to study apes because you don't need to go far inside the jungle to find them. They are all just nearby. For some zoos in particular, the facilities are great to conduct experiments, such as the Wolfgang Köhler Center in Leipzig, Germany, Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, USA or Edimburgh Zoo in Scotland, the latter which will shortly open new facilities for primates. Those places allow researchers to conduct cognitive experiments with great apes which allow us to learn about their cognitive abilities. We already know that their mind is different from ours (likely, they don't talk so it's unlikely that they have an inner speech). The goal of such experiment is to know how their mind, which is a great challenge when you consider that we can not do otherwise than thinking with our inner speech. The great question is: is it possible to think without a language, up to which point, and how? The first answer is yes. Others are still investigated.

Sanctuaries is another way to study apes. Basically, these are also kind of zoos, where apes have facilities to sleep in. However, they spend most of their time outside, in broad protected areas of rain forest that could make them thinking of how it use to be when they were young. In fact, most of those apes are orphans who were confiscated from people in cities who possessed them as pets. The observations that are done with them will always have to take into account this fact, that can really change an apes' mind (Remember Makasi who did not have the support from his mother during infancy? Imagine what it is when you see your mother being slaughtered in front of your eyes...). Just in case, the work accomplished by people in sanctuaries is absolutely amazing and if you can just support them a little, that will be a great step. Any financial help is welcome and no matter how much you can give, it will be always really appreciated (I will advise again to visit wildlifedirect website where many blogs allow to make donation...).

Finally the wild... The wild is terrific. Terrific because it's great to go in the wild to try to find out if what has been found in zoo and sanctuaries is really what happens in the wild, terrific also because you spend a lot of time and money for a minimal amount of data collected. Therefore, my feeling about it is that, even if it's a necessary step, it has to be done at the end of the study, when you know already what you are looking for. What I mean by that strange sentence is that you must have a really clear idea of what you have to look at, in order to exploit to the maximum any opportunities that will arrive. And they don't arrive that frequently...



TG

Bonobos at the Park

Here are some new pics!

Firstly, Ikela from the Zoo. She is a really nice female who has a friendly relationship with every other bonobos. I personally think she is really cute.

Now, the bonobos at the Park. You will notice that they are different, but at the same time, some may look similar to the ones of the Zoo. That's normal taken that some of them have the same mother: for example Lana and Loretta.

Kalli is the daughter of Loretta, the alpha female. She likes to play with the adults, especially to interact with the males who enjoy playing with her. She turned 3 yesterday. Happy birthday!

Mudhi Blue is Lori's daughter. She is 6 but she still spends a lot of time with her mother, cuddling and grooming. She also enjoys playing with Kalli but sometimes get chased by Loretta for being too rough on her daughter.



Lenore is a female from the group. She is the biggest bonobo I have ever seen. I personally think her mother was sired by a gorilla -_-. She is very mean to Jumanji. Basically, she makes everything she can to make his life as hell. However, I will tell you later how much it is interesting from a cognitive point of view.




Lori is another female of the group. She is higher ranked than Lenore. She is a great mum and spends most of her time grooming her children: Jumanji and Mudhi.



Jumanji is Lori and Akili's son. He is the lowest ranked male and anyone can bully him easily. He is quite coward... However, he is also very nice with Kalli, his daughter (though he doesn't know that, taken that males are not aware of who they sire in the bonobo society). He can also be really intrepid when trying to upset Lenore.




Akili is Jumanji's father. He prefers solitude to the compagny of other bonobos, even though he likes to groom with Loretta and Erin. Most of time, he will be on his own, outside of the community. I really like him as he is quiet most of time.



Erin is Loretta's son. He is the dominant male and is really confident about his own strength. He doesn't fear humans and provoke them by throwing anything he can find to them. He occasionally likes to bully Jumanji. However, he is still a beautiful male, shaped like a bodybuilder, and liked by females who groom him a lot.



Loretta is the alpha female. She likes to interact with humans and she is a very good mum. I particularly like this photo because her expression makes me think about former president Mitterand (I bet anyone who has ever seen the Muppet show in France will share my feeling...)

That's all for the photos!



TG

Bonobos at the Zoo

OK, here is a first load of pictures from the bonobos of the zoo!
There are 10 bonobos at the Zoo right now. 2 infants, 2 juveniles, 1 sub-adult and 5 adults. Here are already 8 of them, by order of age.

Tutepanda, the son of Lolita. She rejected him so that he is raised by humans right now. He is still very young and spends all his time sleeping. However, he has already made a lot of improvement since 1 month I am here.

Mali, the daughter of Ikela. She also rejected her. She is the absolute contrary of Tute. She keeps moving all the time, cannot stay in place but she is so lovely, isn't she?

Makasi is the son of Loretta, the dominant female at the Park. She rejected him, mainly because she was ill when she gave birth, but also because she fell pregnant immediately again after his birth. He was raised by humans and is now a nice four-year-old boy. He is kind of shy with the other bonobos, even though all of them are nice with him (except Lana when he is getting too rough on her daughter). He likes humans and likes making the show in front of them.

Kesi is the daughter of Lana, the dominant female at the Zoo. She is a little princess and she knows that. Whenever something would happen, she also knows that mum is not far behind and that she will have all the support needed (Poor Makasi!). Whatever, even if I can't stand her way to be always trying to get ALL the attention, she is one of the most beautiful bonobos to my mind.



MCumba is the daughter of Lolita. She is a real adulescent. She is nice with everyone and plays the mum with Makasi. She loves discovering all the kind of feelings a body can provide ;-)



Junior is Lana's son. Even though his mum is the N°1, he is low ranked and won't make against any of the females. He is shy at first, but as soon as he knows you better, he becomes very nice.

Lolita is the N°2 and makes everything clear to anyone who would not understand that. She is a very good mum with MCumba. Strangely, that's the only child she raised properly and she was the best mother you can expect... The 3 others did not have this chance and only Tute could be rescued.

Lana is the dominant female. She is very clever, very sensitive, quite lunatic sometimes. She loves interacting with the humans she knows. I personally think she is a good boss. Nobody would ever contest her leadership. I have never seen such a sight in any other bonobos than the one I can see daily when she looks at me...

Lana & Kesi

Hope you'll enjoy the pictures!


TG