Great Apes
Today during Psychology lecture, we watched a video clip by David Attenborough called Lives of Mammals (Rong, you'll be interested in this). Attenborough is kinda like a Steve Irwin/national geographic channel type wildlife expert.
The clip was to illustrate how the closest relatives to humans, the great apes, have high order consciousness and the ability for some form of abstract thinking processes.
It was super cute. The first segment was about how Orangutans (in a nature reserve) can learn and imitate human behaviour:
There was an Orang sitting in an abandoned canoe rowing itself with its hands, then it stopped by the side of the river and tied the canoe's rope (using its hands and mouth) onto a post.
There was a female Orang washing her hands and a sock with soap by the river. She'll rub the soap on her hands, then rub it on the sock, scrub the sock and then dip it into the water to rinse. Apparantly it doesnt know what it's for, but it has seen human do it so it imitates.
Then there was this Orang was carrying a baby on one hand n on the other hand holding a hammer, picked up a nail and put it on a piece of wood, and used the hammer to hit it (the nail wasn't the right angle), so it failed. Then it snatched a piece of wood from a smaller Orang and picked up a saw and started sawing it. It didn't seem to have the strength to saw the wood apart and it was holding the saw in awkward ways but still v cute. The difference between humans is, it used its feet (which are more hand-like than humans') to hold the wood.
The second segment was about Chimpanzees. They're much cuter than Orangutans. The chimps in this video were orphans because their parents were hunted for Bushmeat trade (sth like that).
Anyway it showed how Chimps learn certain skills, like cracking nuts open to eat using sticks. There was one 'expert nutcracker' who'd put a nut in a notch on a horizontal branch and hit the nut with a cylindrical shaped piece of wood. Sometimes the nut will fly off so it'll just run over and pick it up and try again. Since most skills have to be learnt before a certain age (you can't teach an old chimp new tricks), one pathetic chimp (who was exposed to nutcracking at a late age and not able to fully grasp the skill) was desperately trying to crack its nuts - wait i mean the nuts it picked - but it'll whack the nut nonsensically without putting it in a notch so they'll all fly away. Very funny but v poor thing.
I tried to find the footage on youtube but i couldn't. But the clip below is similar.
The clip was to illustrate how the closest relatives to humans, the great apes, have high order consciousness and the ability for some form of abstract thinking processes.
It was super cute. The first segment was about how Orangutans (in a nature reserve) can learn and imitate human behaviour:
There was an Orang sitting in an abandoned canoe rowing itself with its hands, then it stopped by the side of the river and tied the canoe's rope (using its hands and mouth) onto a post.
There was a female Orang washing her hands and a sock with soap by the river. She'll rub the soap on her hands, then rub it on the sock, scrub the sock and then dip it into the water to rinse. Apparantly it doesnt know what it's for, but it has seen human do it so it imitates.
Then there was this Orang was carrying a baby on one hand n on the other hand holding a hammer, picked up a nail and put it on a piece of wood, and used the hammer to hit it (the nail wasn't the right angle), so it failed. Then it snatched a piece of wood from a smaller Orang and picked up a saw and started sawing it. It didn't seem to have the strength to saw the wood apart and it was holding the saw in awkward ways but still v cute. The difference between humans is, it used its feet (which are more hand-like than humans') to hold the wood.
The second segment was about Chimpanzees. They're much cuter than Orangutans. The chimps in this video were orphans because their parents were hunted for Bushmeat trade (sth like that).
Anyway it showed how Chimps learn certain skills, like cracking nuts open to eat using sticks. There was one 'expert nutcracker' who'd put a nut in a notch on a horizontal branch and hit the nut with a cylindrical shaped piece of wood. Sometimes the nut will fly off so it'll just run over and pick it up and try again. Since most skills have to be learnt before a certain age (you can't teach an old chimp new tricks), one pathetic chimp (who was exposed to nutcracking at a late age and not able to fully grasp the skill) was desperately trying to crack its nuts - wait i mean the nuts it picked - but it'll whack the nut nonsensically without putting it in a notch so they'll all fly away. Very funny but v poor thing.
I tried to find the footage on youtube but i couldn't. But the clip below is similar.
posted by aine at 4:08 AM
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