Primatology
[3][4] As a science, primatology has many different sub-disciplines which vary in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches to the subject used in researching extant primates and their extinct ancestors.
Although, fundamentally, both Western and Japanese primatology share many of the same principles, the areas of their focus in primate research and their methods of obtaining data differ widely.
In semi-free ranging studies, scientists are able to watch how primates might act in the wild but have easier access to them, and the ability to control their environments.
In 1960, Jane Goodall traveled to the forest at Gombe Stream in Tanzania where her determination and skill allowed for her to observe behaviors of the chimpanzees that no researcher had seen prior.
Additionally, Dian Fossey's work conducted at the Karisoke Research station in Rwanda proved the possibility of habituation among the mountain gorillas.
The Japanese theory believes that studying primates will give us insight into the duality of human nature: individual self vs. social self.
A team of researchers may observe a group of primates for several years in order to gather very detailed demographic and social histories.
Where sociobiology attempts to understand the actions of all animal species within the context of advantageous and disadvantageous behaviors, primatology takes an exclusive look at the order Primates, which includes Homo sapiens.
Before Darwin and molecular biology, the father of modern taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, organized natural objects into kinds, that we now know reflect their evolutionary relatedness.
Animals such as gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans resemble humans closely, so Linnaeus placed Homo sapiens together with other similar-looking organisms into the taxonomic order Primates.
The size of the neocortex in a primate's brain correlates directly to the number of individuals it can keep track of socially, be it a troop of chimps or a tribe of humans.
Set into an evolutionary context, the Dunbar number shows a drive for the development of a method of bonding that is less labor-intensive than grooming: language.
Fodor's modular mind hypothesis expands on this concept, suggesting the existence of preprogrammed modules for dealing with many, or all aspects of cognition.
There was an experiment to teach language to orangutans at the Smithsonian National Zoo using a computer system developed by primatologist Francine Neago in conjunction with IBM.
[14][15] The massive modularity theory thesis posits that there is a huge number of tremendously interlinked but specialized modules running programs called Darwinian algorithms, or DA.
When faced with abstract numbers and letters with no "real world" significance, respondents of the Wason card test generally do very poorly.
A very recent study indicated that human babies and grown monkeys approach and process numbers in a similar fashion, suggesting an evolved set of DA for mathematics (Jordan).
The conceptualization of both human infants and primate adults is cross-sensory, meaning that they can add 15 red dots to 20 beeps and approximate the answer to be 35 grey squares.
He states that no evidence of massive modularity or the brain as a digital computer has been gained through actual neuroscience, as opposed to psychological studies.
However, when researchers studied this formally in the past few years they found something surprising: Only the baboons who were lost would ever give call barks.
This type of logic appears to be lost on the baboon, suggesting a serious gap in theory of mind of this otherwise seemingly very intelligent primate species.
The borderline and multidisciplinary nature of primatology and sociobiology make them ripe fields of study because they are amalgams of objective and subjective sciences.
Claims are made that researchers bring pre-existing opinions on issues concerning human sociality to their studies, and then seek evidence that agrees with their worldview or otherwise furthers a sociopolitical agenda.
Their lead author, primatologist Marc Hauser, was dismissed from Harvard University after an internal investigation found evidence of scientific misconduct in his laboratory.
Data supporting the authors' conclusion that cottontop tamarin monkeys displayed pattern-learning behavior similar to human infants reportedly could not be located after a three-year investigation.
[18] In 1970 Jeanne Altmann drew attention to representative sampling methods in which all individuals, not just the dominant and the powerful, were observed for equal periods of time.
While some influential women challenged fundamental paradigms, Schiebinger suggests that science is constituted by numerous factors, varying from gender roles and domestic issues that surround race and class to economic relations between researchers from developed world countries and the developing world countries in which most nonhuman primates reside.
Schiebinger proposed that the failure to acknowledge female-female competitions could "skew notions of sexual selection" to "ignore interactions between males and females that go beyond the strict interpretation of sex as for reproduction only".
[21] This emerging "female point of view" resulted in a reanalysis of how aggression, reproductive access, and dominance affect primate societies.
Observations have repeatedly demonstrated that female apes and monkeys also form stable dominance hierarchies and alliances with their male counterparts.
