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Recommended: Culture means
Writing Assignment One--Do primates posses culture?
I think that if culture is defined as learned behavior, than it is reasonable to say that primates posses a form of culture. Primates have been observed making tools to aid in collecting food and developing communication system, both of which are learned behaviors.
It is common in monkeys, apes and humans that behavior and social organization aren’t necessarily programmed into the genes. There have been several cases where an entire troop has learned from the experiences of just a few. In a group of Japanese macaques, for example, a three-year-old female female developed the habit of washing dirt of of sweet potatoes before she ate them. First her mother, and then peers and then the entire troop started washing their potatoes too. Another macaque troop has a similar experience when a group of dominant males learned to eat wheat. Within an hour, the practice had spread throughout the entire group. Changes in learned behavior seem to spread more quickly from the top down than from the bottom up.
For monkeys as for people, the ability to learn is a tremendous adaptive advantage, permitting them to avoid fatal mistakes. Faced with an environmental change, primates don’t have to wait for a genetic or physiological response, since learned behavior and social patterns can be modified.
The extensive usage of too...
As stated in the article, “each ape’s social success depends on what other group members are up to, natural selection has favored the capacity for social maneuvers and [superior intelligence]” (2). Natural selection also favors apes because they are not ones to dwell or hold grudges on other apes when they get into feuds. Frans de Waal, a primatologist at the Arnheim Zoo in the Netherlands, shows how natural selection has also promoted the ability to strengthen the relationships of others. In his example, he gives an account of Mama, the most influential female in the colony, who would reconcile other apes after they got into
Tanya Lewis Staff Writer. Chimps Learn Tool Use by Watching Others. 30 January 2013. Report. 25 April 2014. .
Thesis Statement: Despite the rampant protests of animal welfare organizations on encaging primates in zoos since primates typically show abnormal behavior, zoos in the National Capital Region claim that human interaction and enrichment programs help alleviate the stress and trauma primates experience.
Quiatt, D., & Reynolds, V. (1993). Primate behaviour: information, social knowledge, and the evolution of culture. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press].
There has been an age long debate to whether or not primates have culture. This is based on the idea that primates may have certain behaviors that our taught rather than already being programmed in their minds biologically. Some would argue that a certain action that a primate does wouldn’t necessarily be something that primate was born knowing; but others would argue that it was something that was something they knew in their subconscious mind. Notable arguments that would be in favor of culture in primates would include their use of tools, how a primate eats, and how they interact; arguments against the theory of culture in primates would proclaim that a primate’s habits are determined biologically and not affected by outside sources.
It has been believed that culture is unique to humans and no other groups of animals have culture, but recent evidence refutes this ideology. Before getting into the meat of the argument, it is important to first address the issues regarding the ambiguity of the term, “culture.” What is culture? Many scientists may argue that culture is the way of life for a group of individuals, this definition includes the values, beliefs and traditions of the group (Sapolsky, 2006). Other scientists may argue that culture is the transmission of habits and information by social means (Sapolsky, 2006). Despite the different specifics of what culture is, almost all scientists would agree that culture is transmitted socially through social learning that promotes the transfer of information between members in a group (Boesch and Tomasello, 1998). Based on these notions of culture, it can be justifiably stated that primates have culture. Primates exhibit food preparation techniques, use of tools, communication skills, and most importantly, behaviors of social learning. An exemplar of primates’ capabilities for culture is Koko, the lowland gorilla. Koko, in captivity, was able to learn American sign language, demonstrate self-awareness and the ability to deceive.
B.M.de Waal, Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution. Havard University Press: Massachusets, 2001.
"Whereas animals are rigidly controlled by their biology, human behavior is largely determined by culture, a largely autonomous system of symbols and values, growing from a biological base, but growing indefinitely away from it. Able to overpower or escape biological constraints in most regards, cultures can vary from one another enough so that important portion...
Environmental factors can range from temperature, water, to the surrounding land forms. These factors as a result directly affect the organisms living in that habitat. Concentrating on the environmental factors such as a food resource and the changing seasons to determine the impact on primate social structures and how the social structure incorporates the factor involved. While analyzing how the environmental factors are associated with one another and the social structures.
Studies have proven that no human being is born with knowledge or skills; however, every individual’s has a learned behavior that is either influenced or genetic inherited. Therefore, every individual born into a social and cultural environment are more likely to be effected by, family members, other social groups, religion, as well as languages. Most research psychologists study the genetic inheritance of an individual’s behavior while others focus on an individual’s development stage. However, during the process of psychological research, psychologists also focus on examining the influence that a community can have on one social behavior.
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
Galef suggested that this behaviour was due to social learning. Given the time period, of 5 years, it is possible that other monkeys had learned this potato washing behaviour by themselves instead of imitating Imo. The observers in this experiment provided the sweet potatoes, and would pay more attention to the monkeys that washed the potatoes. This attention would be a reinforcer of the behaviour causing other monkeys to copy it. Although there is not enough supportive evidence for imitation, some behaviours ca... ...
Therefore, according to the above a general process learning theory is sustainable even in the presence of biological constraints as behaviour can be reinforced and manipulated in most cases to acquire a desired behaviour.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin
As human beings, culture has taken a huge part in our lives, it shapes our perspective, beliefs and behaviors. In our lecture on “Culture in Animals,” for a behavior to be considered a culture, it is important for that behavior to spread in a social group. Usually, such behavior is spread through imitation or social learning. It is apparent that imitation and social learning often go together. According to the lecture in class, imitation is the precise replication of a novel motor action in the absence of the demonstrator while social learning is copying the demonstrator or motor matching due to context. Social learning also provides the flexibility of learning and decreases the chances of the animal to make future errors (Zentall, 2003).