Well-Tooled Primates

The evolutionary roots of our technological prowess may run deep. In a lab in Japan, a macaque monkey eyes a small, plastic rake and performs an act that his wild brethren would never dream of doing. Here, Bower features Atsushi Iriki and his colleagues at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, where it...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Science news (Washington) Vol. 171; no. 6; pp. 88 - 89
Main Author:	Bower, Bruce
Format:	Magazine Article
Language:	English
Published:	Washington Science Service 10-02-2007 Society for Science & the Public
Subjects:	Adults Animals Attention Brain Brain research Evolution Evolutionary biology Evolutionary linguistics Food Geological time Hominids Humans Iriki, Atsushi Laboratories Landmarks Language Skills Modeling (Psychology) Monkeys Monkeys & apes Networks Neurosciences Object Manipulation Observational research Planning Primates Psycholinguistics Researchers Self Concept Stone Stone tools Japan
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	The evolutionary roots of our technological prowess may run deep. In a lab in Japan, a macaque monkey eyes a small, plastic rake and performs an act that his wild brethren would never dream of doing. Here, Bower features Atsushi Iriki and his colleagues at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, where it took them only about 2 weeks to train adult Japanese macaques to snag food with a rake. Researchers suspect that macaques possess an innate neural capacity for manipulating objects that encourages tool use, even if such behavior occurs rarely in the wild.
Bibliography:	content type line 24 ObjectType-Feature-1 SourceType-Magazines-1
ISSN:	0036-8423 1943-0930