Master Of Monkeys

A new report by Charles Snowdon, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and musician David Teie of the University of Maryland shows that a monkey called the cotton-top tamarin indeed responds to "music".

The "music" was inspired by sounds the tamarins make to convey two opposite emotions: threats and/or fear, and affiliation, a friendly, safe and happy condition. These South American monkeys are essentially immune to human music, but they respond appropriately to "monkey music," 30-second clips composed by Teie on the basis of actual monkey calls. And suprisingly, Metallica. Awesome.

The study reported that the monkeys could tell the difference: For five minutes after hearing fear music, the monkeys displayed more symptoms of anxiety and increased their movement. In contrast, monkeys that heard "affiliative" music reduced their movements and increased their feeding behavior -- both signs of a calming effect.

Snowdon, a longtime researcher into primate behavior, says the project began with an inquiry from Teie, who plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra: Had Snowdon ever tested the effects of music on monkeys? Well, there are some under-evolved folks who somehow end up at a symphony... When Teie listened to recordings made in Snowdon's monkey colony at the psychology department, he readily discerned the animal's affective state. Snowdon says, "This is a call from an animal that is very upset; this is from an animal that is more relaxed.' He was able to read the emotional state just by the musical analysis." Thanks for quoting what I just said.

Teie composed the music using specific features he noticed in the monkeys' calls, such as rising or falling pitches, and the duration of various sounds, says Snowdon, who notes that monkeys are not the only ones who use musical elements to convey emotional content in speech. Studies show that babies that are too young to understand words can still interpret a long tone and a descending pitch as soothing, and a short tone as inhibiting.

"We use legato (long tones) with babies to calm them and staccato to order them to stop. Approval has a rising tone, and soothing has a decreasing tone. We add musical features to speech so it will influence the affective state of a baby. If you bark out, 'PLAY WITH IT,' a baby will freeze. The voice, the intonation pattern, the musicality can matter more than the words." Snowdon adds, "My talking does not necessarily tell you about my emotional state. When I add extra elements, change the tone of voice, the rhythm, pitch or speed, that is where the emotional content is contained."

Monkeys interpret rising and falling tones differently than humans. Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to Metallica. The similarities in communications between monkeys and people suggest deep evolutionary roots for the musical elements of speech, Snowdon says. "The emotional components of music and animal calls might be very similar, and from an evolutionary perspective, we are finding that the note patterns, dissonance and timing are important for communicating affective states in both animals and people." And that perhaps, monkeys like to mosh.

Chimp Chomp

Another in our series of "don't fuck with mother nature" stories...

The director of the Berlin Zoo made famous by the polar bear cub Knut has had his finger bitten off by a chimpanzee called Pedro. Sure, it's ethnic sounding, but his full name is Pedro Marciano Thor Mohammed Hwang O'Brien Schlutz.

Bernhard Blaszkiewitz (55, and now nine fingered) was feeding Pedro walnuts as he showed a visitor round the zoo Monday when the ape grabbed his hand and bit off his right index finger. Guess who's still getting laid tonight, although I think a sympathy hump was not the plan.

"Pedro is the boss of the group so he has to demonstrate a certain dominance in it to prove himself," a zoo spokesman said. "Under normal circumstances, a chimp would never have the chance to reach a keeper or our director." But under abnormal circumstances, it's all kinds of dangerous there. Given the disregard for rules and safety, we can expect Pedro to have a trophy necklace of fingers and ears in no time!

Doctors sewed Blaszkiewitz's finger back on but said it was not clear if the operation would be successful. Well, at least the reattachment part. Keepers said the incident would have no repercussions for the 28-year-old Pedro, because really, he's a monkey, and you don't punish the animal acting on natural instinct. If you punish anyone, it's Blaszkiewitz - sew the finger on backwards or something.

46 & 2, Or Evolution: It Works, Bitches

In February, American Association for the Advancement of Science held a conference in Chicago, featuring a four-hour long symposium by Brown University biology professor Kenneth Miller, and rather than explain it in real time, here's the gist:

As you know, we have 46 chromosomes. Our nearest great ape relatives have 48. On the surface, it looks like we must have lost two. But that's actually a huge problem. Made up of organized packs of DNA and proteins, chromosomes don't just up and vanish. In fact, it's doubtful any primate could survive a mutation that simply deleted a pair of chromosomes. That's because chromosomes are to the human body what instruction sheets are to inexpensive, Swedish flat-pack furniture. If you're missing one screw, you can still put that bookcase together pretty easily. But if the how-to guide suddenly jumps from page 1 (take plywood panels out of box--uff da) to page 5 (enjoy bookcäse!), you're likely to end up missing something pretty vital. All this left scientists with a thorny dilemma: How could we have a common ancestor with great apes, but fewer chromosomes?

Turns out, the chromosomes aren't missing at all. Genetic investigators caught the first whiff of the prodigal chromosomes' scent in 1982. That year, a paper published in the journal Science described a very funny phenomenon. Researchers knew all chromosomes had distinctive signatures; patterns of DNA sequences that can be reliably found in specific spots, including in the center and on the ends. These end-cap sequences are called telomeres. Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn says telomeres are like the little plastic tips that keep your shoelaces from unravelling. They protect the ends of chromosomes and hold things together. Given that important function, you wouldn't expect to find telomeres hanging out on other parts of the chromosome. But that's exactly what the 1982 study reported. Looking at human chromosome 2, the scientists found telomeres snuggled up against the centromere--the central sequence. What's more, these out-of-place human telomeres were strikingly similar to telomeres that can be found, in their proper location, on two great ape chromosomes.

This evidence laid the groundwork for a brilliant discovery. Rather than falling apart, the two missing chromosomes had fused together. Their format changed, but they didn't lose any information, so the mutation wasn't deadly. Instead, scientists now think, the fusion made it difficult for our ancestors to mate with the ancestors of chimpanzees, leading our two species to strike out alone. In the two decades since the original study, more evidence has surfaced backing this up, which leads us to 2005, when the chimpanzee genome was sequenced around the same time that the National Human Genome Research Institute published a detailed survey of human chromosome 2. According to Kenneth Miller, we can now see extra centromeres in chromosome 2 and trace how its genes neatly line up with those on chimpanzee chromosomes 12 and 13. It's a great example of evidence supporting the common descent of man and ape.

More Proof We Are Decended From Apes

Wild chimps who regularly gave away food were twice as successful with females as their rivals, scientists found. Remember that the next time you bitch about having to take a lady on a dinner date.

Researchers say that their study adds to proof that the animals can plan over the long-term. Previous studies have shown that males chimps often share their meat with females who do not go out to hunt. Although researchers had long speculated that this generosity was used to increase their chances of mating, there was little evidence that this was the case.

But new research, carried out in the Ivory Coast, shows that the males who shared meat were twice as likely to mate as those who did not. Researchers also found that males shared food even when female chimps where not "in heat".

"Our results strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis," said one observer of the chimps. "Males who shared meat with females doubled their mating success, whereas females, who had difficulty obtaining meat on their own, increased their caloric intake, without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting. These findings are bound to have an impact on our current knowledge about relationships between men and women."

Cheeky Monkey

It's downright bizarre by the end.

Bad Monkey

Jeremy Zimmer, a partner, board member, and co-owner of United Talent Agency, is an avid art collecter and apparently thought it would be a great idea to install this picture in a public space in UTA’s offices. I bet you can can figure out what happened next...

A group of UTA employees comprised primarily of (surprise) African Americans complained to the human resources department that the image was “derogatory” to blacks. ”Collectively the employees of color now feel uncomfortable and unwelcome...This is not the first time racial discrimination has been exhibited at United Talent Agency, but it is the first time that it has been put on public view.”

Of course, Zimmer explained that it was okay because it was art, and the artist is famous.

[The artist is] Pieter Hugo, the award-winning South African whose "haunting and often provocative portraits try to portray the reality of the African continent’s human condition", and this Dayaba Usman With The Monkey Clear, Nigeria 2005 was part of a very powerful series of portraits about men and their relationships with the animals they have tamed.

Not gonna lie, but that actually sounds kind of awesome. Longstory short, Zimmer moved the photo to his office and everything was cool. Gee, maybe the folks in Hollywood are just regular assholes people too?

Take That You Filthy Apes!

Dean Kamen ain't a-scared of the cyber-ape apocalypse. In fact, he's going to fight fire with fire.

Kamen has developed an impressive, mind-controlled prosthetic robot arm. Dubbed "Luke" (after Skywalker, most likely), is an incredibly sophisticated bit of engineering that's light years ahead of the clamping "claws" that many amputees are forced to use today. The arm is fully articulated, giving the user the same degrees of movement as a natural arm, and is sensitive enough to pick up a piece of paper, a wineglass or even a grape without mishap.

Roborilla

Using only its brainpower, a monkey could direct a robotic arm to pluck a marshmallow from a skewer and stuff it into its mouth. Great, the dawn of cyber-apes is upon us.

The technology behind this feat may lead to brain-powered prosthetic limbs for people with spinal cord injuries or disabling diseases that make such simple tasks impossible. Or make our simian brothers nigh unstoppable. Until now, such brain-machine interfaces have been used to control cursor movements on a computer screen.

To operate the motorized appendage, monkey guides the robot arm the same way it does its natural limbs, through brain signals. The signals are transferred through an array of microelectrodes half the size of a thumbtack that has been implanted in the monkey's brain, then amplified and relayed to a computer that operates the robotic arm. Certain motor neurons fire rapidly when the monkey wants to move a certain way.

The researchers said it takes about three days for a monkey to learn to operate the arm, and they continuously improve. So far, they have trained two monkeys to feed themselves with the robotic arm. The monkeys sit in a chair with their arms gently restrained in sleeves that keep them from simply grabbing the food on their own. The monkeys appear to enjoy the task, but just wait until they rise against the humans.

Now that the system appears to function, the scientists seek to refine the system by developing an operating wrist and jointed fingers to add dexterity to the device.

Cheeky Monkey

Male macaque monkeys pay for sex by grooming females, according to a recent study that suggests the primates may treat sex as a commodity. Another blow against the forces of Creationism (and another species of females pwning the males)!

In primate societies, grooming is the underlying fabric of it all -- a sign of friendship and family, and it's also something that can be exchanged for sexual services.

The findings, reported in New Scientist last week, resulted from a 20-month observation of about 50 long-tailed macaques in a reserve in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, which found that after a male grooms a female, the likelihood that she will engage in sexual activity with the male was about three times more than if the grooming had not occurred. And as with other commodities, the value of sex is affected by supply and demand factors. A male would spend more time grooming a female if there were fewer females in the vicinity, and when the female supply is higher, the male spends less time on grooming.

Other experts not involved in the study welcomed the research, saying it was a major effort in systematically studying the interaction of organisms in ways in which an exchange of commodities or services can be observed, a theory known as biological markets, which was developed in 1994.

There are less organic markets in which the sexual commodities are traded beyond the animal kingdom, and they have names like Fred Segal, Tiffany's, Barney's...

Monkey Hunt!

I take it back - I do not have the worst job in the world.

A state in northern India said it plans to use unemployed youths to sterilize monkeys who have been raiding farms.

The idea drew immediate condemnation from conservationists, who said the plan was unscientific and would likely worsen the problem. What, untrained lads doing amateur animal spay and neutering can't possibly make the problem worse?

Indian authorities have struggled in recent years to deal with the tens of thousands of monkeys that live in and around cities. They are drawn to public places such as temples and office buildings, where devout Hindus feed them, believing them to be manifestations of the god Hanuman. Monkeys, right? Not impoverished beggars? Because there was that final episode of M.A.S.H. where they had to kill that lady's chicken on the bus, but it wasn't really a chicken...oh, never mind.

Some of you may recall a few months back when I lost bladder control at the hilarity of the death of the deputy mayor of New Delhi, who was killed when he fell from his balcony during an attack by wild monkeys, and 25 others were injured during a monkey rampage in the city.

The mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh is infested with rhesus macaque monkeys, who have been driven to farms and cities after losing their natural forest habitat. According to a government statement, "affected districts would be identified and local youth involved in the process, who would be provided training in capturing and sterilization by the experts." The statement quoted state's chief minister as saying they would use "laser sterilization." Damn! That. Is. So. AWESOME! We gotta get some of that back here, or start chartering trips out to India so we can laze some monkey groins.

my balls? come and get them!

"The government chooses not to act on recommendations from experts and instead comes out with these absurd proposals....it is a ridiculous idea and what is worse, it will do nothing to contain the problem and probably make it worse," conservationists said. "Can you imagine what having badly sterilized monkeys running around will do to the levels of aggression?"

Yes, I can. And I like it!

Monkeyshines

Wild monkeys attacked a senior Indian government official, who then fell from a balcony at his home and died.

Yeah, I laughed long and hard too.

Many government buildings, temples and residential neighborhoods in New Delhi are overrun by Rhesus macaques, which scare passers-by and occasionally bite or snatch food from unsuspecting visitors.

Last year, the Delhi High Court reprimanded city authorities for failing to stop the animals from terrifying residents and asked them to find a permanent solution to the monkey menace. Over the years, city authorities have employed monkey catchers who use langurs — a larger and fiercer kind of monkey — to scare or catch the macaques, but the Rhesus issue persists.

Part of the problem is that devout Hindus believe monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god Hanuman and feed them bananas and peanuts — encouraging them to frequent public places. The other part of the problem is that India is a hellish third world nation that has no barrier or boundary between civilization and and episode of Animal Planet.

Hence the Term "Apeshit"

Just last week there was a conversation between Rybot and myself about the ferocity and ass-kicking power of nature's beasts. He's got a soft spot for baboons and I am a big fan of the ursa genus...bears, especially polar bears. While it was unresolved as to what animal was the baddest of them all, there was agreement over the insane power and danger that apes pose.

In Amsterdam today, a 400 lb silverback gorilla escaped it's enclosure and put a hurt on folks at the zoo. The 11-year-old gorilla, named Bokito, injured four, including a woman he bit and dragged around as he made his way down the visitor's path. In order to do so, he had to scale the high stone wall enclosure, but not before crossing a moat, which is amazing due to gorillas inability to swim.

Eventually, he was captured in a nearby restaurant and subdued with a tranquilizer dart, but the scene leading up to it was sheer chaos. "Everyone was in panic, running away, screaming, wailing, screaming kids running around, I don't know what all, kids without parents — it was a total drama," said a witness.

And as it turns out, a friend of Rybot added her tale of a neighbor who got mauled by chimps two years ago, which I remember when it happened. Brutal. The lesson here: that's why they're called animals.

UPDATE: See, don't mess with monkeys.

UPDATE II: See, don't mess with bears.