Chimp Found Plotting Against Zoo Guests

rjshirts writes "In further proof that Planet of the Apes is coming to pass, researchers in Stockholm, Sweden have proof that primates can plan ahead. From the article: 'Santino the chimpanzee's anti-social behavior stunned both visitors and keepers at the Furuvik Zoo but fascinated researchers because it was so carefully prepared. According to a report in the journal Current Biology, the 31-year-old alpha male started building his weapons cache in the morning before the zoo opened, collecting rocks and knocking out disks from concrete boulders inside his enclosure. He waited until around midday before he unleashed a "hailstorm" of rocks against visitors, the study said.'"

Comments

Translation

[grub]

Translation: "I'm an intelligent primate who doesn't like being caged up for your amusement."

Re:Translation

[IAR80]

And they call me anti-social next they are going to call me a communist.

Re:Translation

[Capt. Cooley]

Intelligent? Maybe. Good aim? Definitely not. He didn't even seriously injure anyone. This is news why?

Re:Translation

[khellendros1984]

Because it's an aspect of chimpanzee intelligence that hadn't previously been observed, apparently. One of the key differences between humans and animals is that humans have a much more advanced ability to predict what will happen in the future and to make preparations to deal with that prediction.
In this case, the chimp remembered that people were outside of his cage on other days, and realized that that would probably be true again. He prepared for that prediction. Animals just don't tend to plan ahead, and it's exciting that this one did.

Re:Translation

[xwizbt]

Clearly not intelligent enough - to really assert his intelligence he ought to be constructing small enclosures for other animals to keep for his own amusement.

Only intelligent animals keep other animals in cages.

Re:Translation

[CaptainPatent]

Translation: "I'm an intelligent primate who doesn't like being caged up for your amusement."

They must be even more prepared than we originally suspected...

They've hired a translator!

Re:Translation

[CaptainPatent]

And they call me anti-social next they are going to call me a communist.

But doesn't anti-socialism lead to anti-communism?

Re:Translation

[Locke2005]

You're assuming he was actually trying to hit someone. Watching humans scream with panic and run away when you throw things at them is funny! Watching them fall down, bleed, and get carried away in a stretcher -- not so funny. He's throwing rocks for the same reason most chimps throw feces -- not because he is trying to injure a spectator, but because it amuses him to see their reaction!

Re:Translation

[MichaelSmith]

Because it's an aspect of chimpanzee intelligence that hadn't previously been observed, apparently.

Years ago I read about some animal sanctuary where they were trying to keep chimpanzees in captivity. They had to run the place like a real jail for humans. If you forget to lock a door in (say) the elephant enclosure at the zoo you would be okay for a while. Not so with chimps.

I am surprised that anybody is surprised by this. Chimpanzees are nasty scheming vicious murderous animals. Just like us.

Re:Translation

[Experiment 626]

Comparing Bush to a chimp is considered fair game. Comparing Obama to one is considered unacceptable. One president is afforded better treatment and respect because of the color of his skin, and somehow this is touted as preventing rather than exemplifying racism.

Re:Translation

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The tricky bit, when trying to study animal cognition(or lack thereof, depending on the instance) is distinguishing between things that aren't cognition; but look like it, and things that actually are.

In the fox case, for instance, the fox might be thinking ahead, and storing food for the future, or foxes might have a "when not hungry, bury available food" instinct. This doesn't mean that the fox isn't planning ahead; but you can't tell one way or the other.

Thus, researchers are always on the lookout for situations that can distinguish between the two. Novel situations where instincts wouldn't be expected to apply, pathological situations where instincts would fail if applied, etc.

Re:Translation

[v1]

Any kid with a subscription to zoobooks can tell you about arctic foxes burying portions of a kill for later use during winter.

There is a VERY important difference here. Arctic foxes don't survive through a few winters without a food cache and think "hey I bet it's going to do that again next year, maybe I should stash some food this summer so I have more to eat next winter?". Evolution has taught them to do that. Same as any other instinctual behavior in any other animal. Babies don't learn to suck the tit.

These chimps identified a pattern, and prepared in advance to benefit themselves when they expected it to repeat. Gathering rocks in the morning to attack tourists in the afternoon is not evolutionary adaptation. Something like that could become an evolutionary behavioral adaptation, but not from 100 years of zoos.

Re:Translation

[mooingyak]

Wow I would simply not have made the connection without your helpful comment. Much obliged!

Re:Translation

[Shihar]

I wonder what all the animals that prepare to hibernate in the winter would think of your statement?

You are under the assumption that it is planning that causes an animal to prepare to hibernate and not pure instinct leading them by the nose.

You don't eat because you realize that if don't various mechanisms in your body are going to fail. You eat because you are hungry. The same is true for hibernation, mating, and a pile of other "planned" behaviors. Two deer don't bang in the fall because they realize that this is their chance to make babies and if they miss the window they will have none. They got at it because they are horny.

Re:Translation

[interkin3tic]

Years ago I read about some animal sanctuary where they were trying to keep chimpanzees in captivity. They had to run the place like a real jail for humans. If you forget to lock a door in (say) the elephant enclosure at the zoo you would be okay for a while. Not so with chimps.

I am surprised that anybody is surprised by this.

I think the key here is that the chimp anticipated future events and planned rather than just showing an understanding of the current situation, which are dramatically different capabilities. A chimp realizing the door is unlocked is one thing, that is interesting enough given what we usually think of non-human intelligence (I'd say ignorance rather than arrogance, I'm not around a lot of chimps). It's another to demonstrate that the chimp can forecast events that haven't occoured yet, this is something that humans seem barely capable of.

Maybe something in TFA backs me up on this... Holy crap, suprise of suprises, IT DOES!

"These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said the author of the report, Lund University Ph.D. student Mathias Osvath. "It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events."...

The observations confirmed the result of a staged laboratory experiment reported in 2006 by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. In that case orangutans and bonobos were able to figure out which tool would work in an effort to retrieve grapes, and were able to remember to bring that tool along hours later.

To be honest, I'm suprised that you're suprised that people who study chimps are suprised by this. These seem to be people who know chimps pretty well, if this were an old result, you'd think they wouldn't be wasting their time. Whenever I've thought an expert in a field I don't know as well is wasting their time, I usually come to realize that I was actually not understanding the situation.

Re:Translation

[pluther]

One president is afforded better treatment and respect because of the color of his skin

You really believe that that's the only difference between the two men?

Re:Translation

[TheRealMindChild]

Hate to be the one to bring this up, but a Chimpanzee is an Ape, not a Monkey.

Re:Translation

[bhagwad]

In other news, birds build nests before hatching eggs. Elephants travel days to go to salt-licks. Spiders build webs before catching prey.

I'm not saying that these aren't different from what this ape has done, but let us better characterize what that difference is first. How is building a pile of stones to throw different than a bird building a nest before laying eggs? Let us be careful and differentiate between planning, intentional planning, and be wary of attributing planning to behavior that **looks** human.

I would guess that the difference lies in the fact that the Chimps behavior was not a product of instinct, but that of cogent thought.

One might argue that birds building a nest before laying eggs is not forethought, but merely programming, as is the building of a web by a spider.

Re:Translation

[c6gunner]

How is building a pile of stones to throw different than a bird building a nest before laying eggs?

Because building a nest is genetically wired into the bird. Make the bird sterile, and it'll keep building nests anyway. Moreover, it's a behavior which has existed for millions of years. It's a completely different phenomenon than a chimp learning to use objects as weapons.

The big thing is that it demonstrates that chimpanzees have some rudimentary understanding of time. He's obviously able to observe his current situation, remember it as a past event, detect a recurring pattern, deduce that it's likely to repeat in the future, decide on an action to be carried out at a future time, and prepare materials required to carry it out. That's no small feat.

Re:Translation

[Knowbuddy]

Any zookeeper who has ever worked primates would tell you that this is pretty typical.

My wife worked as a keeper at a prominent chimp and orangutan sanctuary for several years. She would come home with tales that would make your skin crawl of how smart the apes (both chimps and orangutans) are. It turns out that the OUs (you don't say "orangs", as it offends some of the more hard-core keepers) are the more cunning of the two -- she likened them to engineers.

Some examples:

• An orangutan who kept a bit of metal in between his bottom lip and teeth, using it to try to pick the locks at night when the keepers weren't around. After they finally caught him doing it, they went back and reviewed the tapes and saw that he'd been at it for weeks.
• An orangutan who threw her baby onto the hotwire (electrified fence) to use as an insulating glove to get herself over it.
• An orangutan who used a sweater in the same hotwire-insulating capacity. (OUs love sweaters, shirts, and dresses.)
• Chimpanzees that would hear people approaching, then position themselves just close enough to the walkway to be able to urinate and/or masturbate onto the guests (generally not the keepers).
• An orangutan who used a hard plastic toy to chip away at the concrete substrate (foundation) of his enclosure for days, until he finally managed to get to the bare rebar beneath.

Did you know that the apes you see in TV ads (such as CareerBuilder) and films (such as Dunston Checks In) are never more than 3 or 4 years old, but have a lifespan only a little shorter than humans? They're only "cute" when they are very young, and quickly become uncontrollable, no matter how well-trained they are -- precisely because they have that kind of intelligence. (Roughly that of a 4- to 6-year-old child.)

After that, they are retired and put in cages (rarely zoos) for the rest of their lives. The entertainers wash their hands of them, then your tax dollars are spent to maintain them for the next 40+ years. Depending on the facility, this can be as much as $20,000USD per ape per year.

So every time you see a "funny monkey video", think about how much of your paycheck is going to support that ape in a few years.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't his point. His point was that one could call Bush a monkey without reprisal but one could not call Obama a monkey without being called a racist.

That is a double standard.

Re:Translation

[frieko]

Whenever I've thought an expert in a field I don't know as well is wasting their time, I usually come to realize that I was actually not understanding the situation.

You, or the guy that hands out the grant money..

Re:Translation

[bhagwad]

One word: Learning.

A bird doesn't learn how to build a nest. Neither does a spider acquire the experience to spin a web after experimentation. That knowledge is built into them and is instinct, and not cogent though in spite of your high blown words like "multi dimensional gradient" and "quantization".

Without a doubt, the chimp in question learned a pattern. I leave it as an exercise to you to guess what that pattern was.

The distinction between instinct and cogent thought is very real unlike what you imply. If spiders had to learn how to spin a web, they would starve, and so in their case, cogent thought is neither needed nor important.

Re:Translation

[Pollardito]

Apparently you are unaware that blacks were depicted with regularity as monkeys in racist literature of the past. Next you're going to complain that white people who wear white robes with pointed hoods are unfairly stereotyped. If you act like racists acted, people will suspect that you're a racist.

Re:Translation

[einhverfr]

you don't say "orangs", as it offends some of the more hard-core keepers

That is really funny because "orang" is a Malay (and Indonesian) word for "person."

"Orang utan" literally means "forest person" (the languages put the adjective after the noun).

Re:Translation

[Hooya]

Another way to look at it is that birds that didn't think they had to build nests to lay eggs in didn't pass on their genetic wisdom since they had no one to pass it on to. So that trait was naturally selected out. At least it can be argued that birds didn't learn to build nests by having experimented with laying eggs without one and then realizing that they actually needed one!

However, stockpiling stones to fling at visitors aren't (in an obvious way, at least) something that is naturally a survival instinct. Flinging whatever is within reach is - fight or flight. However, foreseeing and preparing for a fight is not. Especially in the environment of a zoo, to which the chimps have only been subjected to for only for about a few hundred years. It had to have been learned. In their lifetime.

So, wordsmitthing aside, there is a difference and as the parent pointed out - it has to do with learning and applying that knowledge to an anticipated future event.

Re:Translation

[Hooya]

>> And you cannot represent every statement of concepts in a purely mathematical expression.
> Yes we can, it is the whole point of mathematics.

Had you said that in mathematics, I would have believed you.

Re:Translation

[Al Al Cool J]

Thus, researchers are always on the lookout for situations that can distinguish between the two. Novel situations where instincts wouldn't be expected to apply, pathological situations where instincts would fail if applied, etc.

I wonder, do researchers do this instinctively or is it a cognitive process? If they are always on the lookout for these situations, then that suggests to me that it is instinctive, and that these instincts have helped lead them to succeed as researchers.

Re:Translation

[I cant believe its n]

I'm on your side Hurricane. Humans are special (but not that special)

I have actually seen our dog understand how to catch rodents. The insight was an obvious watershed, because he went from zero successes over 5 or 6 years, to multiple successes per month for the rest of his "active" years after the realization:

Over here we have a type of rodent(in swedish they are called Skogssork, similar to or the same as Bank Voles) which creates a nest for its family by digging tunnel systems in the dirt. These tunnels can be several meters long so the Voles can exit the nest at many places.
Our dog had for many (annoying) years stood barking with his nose stuck down any of the tunnel openings, trying to dig his way to the Voles. He did this for hours at end and it was his best passtime.

One day when he had barked into an opening, I happened to be nearby and I saw a Vole exiting the nest by an opening far away from where our dog was, it having reacted to the dogs threat. I called out to our dog to chase it. Our dog saw the Vole and tried to get it, but could not catch it in time before it went underground again.

Now comes the cool thing:
He then (after years of stupid barking down tunnel openings), went to the opening where the Vole had gone in, barked really loud, and then silently snuck back to the opposite side of the nest where he waited silently. After many years of pointless barking, he finally caught his first Vole. After that day our dog regularly brought home Voles, because he had understood how to outthink his rodent enemy.

Primate Dilemma

[Sponge Bath]

Rocks or feces...hmmmm.
Maybe I'll just stick with chairs.

Re:Primate Dilemma

[snowraver1]

From TFA: "For a while, zoo keepers tried locking Santino up in the morning so he couldn't collect ammunition for his assaults, but he remained aggressive. They ultimately decided to castrate him in the autumn last year[...]"

I would throw feces. Look what throwing rocks gets you...

Re:Primate Dilemma

[maxume]

You get 1 point for getting the joke.

You forfeit all points for a period of 1 year for thinking that it is funny to say so.

Point and laugh.

[Ostracus]

"For a while, zoo keepers tried locking Santino up in the morning so he couldn't collect ammunition for his assaults, but he remained aggressive. They ultimately decided to castrate him in the autumn last year, but will have to wait until the summer to see if that helps."

Guns don't kill people...uh oh!

"It is normal behavior for alpha males to want to influence their surroundings ... It is extremely frustrating for him that there are people out of his reach who are pointing at him and laughing," Osvath said. "It cannot be good to be so furious all the time."

Now we know why review sites get sued.

Chimps are mean little effers

[Shivetya]

A good friend who past away a few years ago introduced me to some long time friends of his who own many chimps. One thing I was told flat out was, don't get near the cages. They are very good at trying to tempt people closer and never for any good. They will fondle themselves in front of you, throw stuff at you, and even be very violent should it be their wish. The problem is they are very very good at hiding the signs when it serves them. All of their chimps had their incisors (fang teeth) removed. For while they are very cute when young they would shame any unruly teenager when they are of age.

While I got a handshake and even a hug from one of the better behaved I was told that in no uncertain terms he was putting on a show to please them. Alone it would be a whole different story.

Re:Chimps are mean little effers

[Hatta]

They will fondle themselves in front of you, throw stuff at you, and even be very violent should it be their wish

I'll just leave this here.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[NeutronCowboy]

No. Elephants don't bring sticks and rocks to scare away lions they regularly meet at yearly watering holes.

This involved:
- detection of arbitrary cycles
- planning for how to deal with them
- relatively elaborate creation of tools to support plan

Pretty exciting stuff indeed.

Re:A Clear Causation

[oodaloop]

Just tax the rocks. Problem solved.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[sakdoctor]

Pretty impress CV; I'd hire him.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[publiclurker]

You get to hire your own management? I'm impressed.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[flyingsquid]

Arguably, he demonstrated more foresight and planning than the primates running the investment banks on Wall Street.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[dtml-try MyNick]

Arguably, he demonstrated more foresight and planning than the primates running the investment banks on Wall Street.

This is that far from the truth as you might think ;)
A while ago a Dutch TV show did a experiment on this very subject.

They had let a group of apes handpick a bunch of stocks and let a group of notable bankers do the same.

After 1 month the apes had yielded a higher net profit then the bankers did.....

Of course this was for shits and giggles but very funny nontheless.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[fishbowl]

>This involved:
>- detection of arbitrary cycles
>- planning for how to deal with them
>- relatively elaborate creation of tools to support plan

I would even speculate that there is an element of "avoiding being caught executing the plan."
Does that imply a guilty conscience to some degree, or only fear of his handlers?

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[StarkRG]

Woah, woah, woah. You're saying that lending enormous amounts of money with extremely high interest rates to people who can't possibly afford to pay it back is a bad idea? Since when? Next you're going to tell me that trickle-down economics doesn't work and that two plus two doesn't equal five (even for very large values of two)! You obviously aren't an economics major.

Re:Translation:Cycles.

[tftp]

What exactly makes you think they don't learn from their parents? Squirrels don't exactly grow up in a vacuum.

I have plenty of ground squirrels around, and they are fairly independent animals; they run alone, maintain their personal space, and when they meet it's usually to fight. They do maintain a collective behavior (when a hawk shows up, for example.) However nobody can learn from experience that one hasn't experienced before; and squirrels are not very good in "instruction", whatever you mean by that :-) - it would require fairly elaborate communication between generations, and already in April or May young squirrels live on their own, dig their burrows and such.

Again, the issue here is that an animal has one and only one chance to make a correct "life vs. death" decision when winter comes, and that decision (gathering food and fattening up) has to be made well ahead of cold time. To make matters worse, this decision is counter-intuitive, since the young squirrel never saw a winter and never participated in preparations. A lone human could figure out the need by reading books; a child could be told to do that by adults; but a small rodent does not have access to such complex communication mechanisms, and by nature is not a herd animal to blindly follow a leader. Other animals, like deer or sheep, are far better in introducing their young to the world.