Fifty Years of Animal Technology
Over at Psychology Today, I’m in a celebratory mood. It’s been fifty years since Jane Goodall discovered that animals have been making tools. And it’s been downhill ever since. Check it out.
|
DISCOVER's Newsletter
Sign up to get the latest science news delivered weekly right to your inbox!
Follow us:
More great sites from
Kalmbach Publishing Co.:
Curiously, I did not know how you intended “downhill” until I read the article. It can mean either bad (increasing distance from the apex) or good (less difficult travel, as gravity assists), depending on context.
It’s gone! Wha’ happen’?
I tried navigating from the home page and the blog directory and everything.
It’s gone!
«Historical accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries by Portuguese priests visiting West Africa mention typical chimpanzee behaviours such as nut cracking (palm nut) and the raiding of honeybee nests for honey (Hair 1984; Sept & Brooks 1994)»
Gene flow in wild chimpanzee populations: what genetic data tell us about chimpanzee movement over space and time. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2001.0865
How many great discoveries may have been lost throughout history because the world simply wasn’t ready for them?
It seems to me that the length of time our children are dependent on us enforces our social habits in a clear darwinian sense. Child caring is clearly a selection pressure. Antisocial people are not successful in leaving offspring, and those traits decrease naturally over time.
This then sets up the second scenario to which you allude in your article – the longer children are around their parents, the more lore they learn. Lore which includes the collected tool using skills of their predecessors.
I love thinking about how we came about, running down these crazy connections that formed us.
Keep up the good work turning over those rocks!
Tool use and tool-making (? modification at least) in American Crows:
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1676/0043-5643%282000%29112%5B0283:TMAUBA%5D2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1676/0043-5643%282001%29113%5B0114:GDUOOB%5D2.0.CO%3B2