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

Just a few blogs... but lots to do...

I am often asked why I want to go to Africa to give my contribution and the best I can for this continent and all the treasures it contains.

Some of the answers will be found in:

http://wildlifedirect.org/

This unique initiative gathers many different blogs hold by people who have decided to devote their life (and sometimes, to give their life for) for the sake of all those amazing animals.
I am grateful to all these people that try to make something and when I am depressed about the sake of great apes and other species, I just think about their action...


Take care,


TG

ps: will shortly post some pictures about the park and the zoo. I am really short of time because of work at the moment, and I am really sorry for that.

Work and coding

I am sorry I don't publish as much as I'd like to on this blog but we have a lot of work and coding to do every day.
Basically, my schedule is:
7h45 - 14h30 : Bonobo observation either at the Zoo or the Park.
During this time, I record both sounds and all the behaviors on my notebook.
I have then to transfer my notes to excel sheets, in order to sort everything out, and then to cut all the sounds files that are recorded every day. Basically, this whole analysis stuff takes around 4-5 h. As you can see, the days are right now quite busy but I will keep on trying to publish some stuff about the bonobos and the cognitive experiments realized on great apes in general.


TG

Genius ape!!!!!

On February, 19th, on PBS, aired a very good show to present what is known on apes' cognition and which experiments and observations helped to draw such conclusions.

Here is the link to PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/apegenius/

where you can find the video online!

A big thanks to PBS crew then!


TG

Who I am and what is the purpose of this blog

I am a French graduate student in cognitive sciences, completing my Master degree at the Department of Cognitive Studies, Ecole normale supérieure, in Paris. I hope you will forgive me for the faults you may find in my English...
I am currently working at the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park, in San Diego County, CA, to study two behaviors that have a great place in bonobo society: sex and grooming. Therefore, together with Zanna, who is conducting her Ph.D on bonobos' vocalizations, I spent most of my days watching and recording the two groups that the lucky inhabitants of San Diego can have the pleasure to visit.

(For the rest of the article and the blog, I will use the "I" pronoun because I would not like to associate Zanna on some my reflexions if she does not share them. However, you will see probably that we are very close on many of the topics that will be dealt with in this blog...)

Bonobos are extremly rare and one of the most endangered species of the great apes (As great apes are already highly endangered, you will easily understand the matter...) and very few of them can be found in captivity, in comparison with chimpanzees. I think I will also have the occasion to give my opinion about zoos, life in captivity, life in the wild in this blog. Having a group of 10 at the zoo and a group of 8 at the WAP, San Diego can therefore be really proud of the bonobo population it contains and I hope people will continue to enjoy coming and watching them at both places. If they could, by the same occasion, think about the destiny of their wild cousins in the wild, that could be even more beneficial for them, as well as for us.

The purpose of this blog is to present the bonobos and all the other apes, and even more, if I can, to present striking facts, observations, articles, experiments on animal cognition in general. It will contain both sides of what makes me work in this field: cognition and conservation. Cognition because I received an education in cognitive sciences, and before that, a strong background in molecular and evolutionary biology, and that I am most interested in non-human primate cognition, from an evolutionary point of view to understand the origin of mind and the origin of our mind, but also for the great interest I have always had in the way other animals think. This blog will therefore be the occasion to talk about evolution, about comparative studies and explain the purpose of such research. I will try to present the theory of evolution and try to fight against some remarks heard around the enclosure such as "there are our closest ancestors" and I will particularly insist on the fact that Evolution is not a straightforward line from worms to humans. Most people know accept the theory of evolution as a fact but many of them misunderstand it. I will try to give the best, and I hope, the most accurate and simple view to make understand what are the bases and the consequences of this theory. Going back to evolution is a main point in comparative studies because it allows to draw some conclusions about what our last common ancestor with chimp or bonobos (who themselves share a last common ancestor about 1 million years ago) had already developed in his mind, and the results of such comparative studies help also to understand what we have developed in our specific lineage. However, they also say what the other species have developed in their own lineage as well. Evolution has not stopped for the chimps 6 million years ago when our lineage diverge from their lineage. These last things are examples of what I will try to develop in this blog.

The other main point of this blog is to present the threats and the dangers that threaten great apes now, and the initiatives that are taken to try to avoid the extinction of those species. I think it's part of the job of primatologist to have a strong concern in preservation and to try to support the initiatives taken by local people in sanctuaries or in the wild in Africa or Asia. Therefore I will try to present the sanctuaries or the actions that are developed worldwide, to show that more and more people feel concerned by the fate of our closest relatives and to support them by my tiny little blog. Finally, this blog is the beginning of a journey. I will spend the next two months in San Diego to conduct this pilot study on bonobos. I will analyze the data in Scotland for 2 months before flying to Lola ya bonobo sanctuary in Democratic Republic of Congo for another two months. Therefore, this blog will be my field trip notebook for at least the next six months, but may continue later as I don't expect to stop working with primates before a long time....

TG

Baby Bonobo Blues....

As evoked previously, let's share this particular feeling you get when a baby bonobo looks into your eyes...

Let's make Maali our ambassador for this blog. She is one of the newborns at the San Diego Zoo.
That's were both Zanna and I conduct a project on bonobos' vocalizations as well as sex and grooming. In the next article, I will give a short presentation for myself.


TG

BonobosBlog

Hi!

It's time to begin to talk about our project.
The BonobosBlog project is a small contribution by passionnate students in Primatology to present the field they are the most interested in and especially the ones they love spending their time with, the apes! Why a Bonobo name when we hope to talk about the whole family? Maybe because it sounds great, with many oooo, such as the ooooooooo we used to do when we met the cutest things in the world: a baby bonobo? Maybe because we are currently studying them and that they will be the focus of our concern for the next two months at least. We live bonobos, we sleep bonobos, we dream bonobos, and overall we hope bonobos. We hope there will be a future for those apes in particular, for all the apes in general, because we definitely don't want to see them disappearing in the next decades and that we think a spread knowledge about them will help to rise an interest on what they are and on the dangers they fear. Together with our conservative purpose, we want to present the current situation of knowledge about their cognitive abilities, what they teach us about them, but also what they teach us about us as those great cousins of us are a key to our past and our present and can help to understand how we (both species) evolved since our last common ancestor 6 millions years ago.

Well, that should be enough to present the aims of the blog and we hope you'll be interested on what you'll find on this blog! Don't hesitate to leave comments and questions, we'll try to answer as far as we can!


TG