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

[Capt. Cooley]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

>> 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.

Primate Dilemma

[Sponge Bath]

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

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.

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: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: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.

[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?