A Fongoli chimp. Photo by Frans Lanting, National Geographic.

I just stumbled upon this on Twitter (Thanks to DarwinMonkey). It’s a National Geographic page about the Senegalese Fongoli chimps, named after the Fongoli stream that runs through the chimpanzee’s range. There are videos showing these chimps using tools fishing for termites, hunting a bushbaby and taking baths. Mary Roach’s field note-like article “Almost Human” offers readers an insight to what the daily life of a chimpanzee is like (the Fongoli chimps are savanna-woodlands chimp), the concept of “ecological intelligence” and innovative tool use by the Fongoli chimps that were suppose to be unique to humans. Read about “Almost Human” on National Geographic.

Originally posted on The Prancing Papio.

En el post anterior describí delicious y mencioné alguna de sus características más relevantes. En éste post describiré la forma es la que utilizaré delicious para hacerme rico y famoso. Como la mayoría de los servicios que describiré en este blog (si es que no todos) delicious es gratuito, lo único que se necesita es una cuenta de correo. Entonces abrir una cuenta delicious para este blog no sería problema… Bueno, sí hay problema, el problema es que este blog no tiene una cuenta de correo, aunque yo sí, sin embargo yo ya tengo cuenta en delicious Aunque puedo crear una cuenta de correo para crear mi cuenta en delicious, prefiero utilizar la que ya tengo y mostrarles otra funcionalidad de delicious. Las ‘pretty urls’.Las pretty url’s son url con sentido, fáciles de recordar. Bueno, tal vez para algunos usuarios deba aclarar qué es una url. En una descripción poco formal, es la dirección de una página web, o que le llamamos link. Aquí hay más definiciones de url y el significado de sus siglas en lo cual no profundizo por no ser el objetivo principal de este post. Las pretty url’s son entonces urls normalmente no muy largas y sin mucha información dentro de ellas, veamos mejor la diferencia entre una pretty url y una que no lo es.

Pretty url: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Url

Not-so-pretty url: http://www.google.com.co/search?rlz=1C1CHMB_esCO336CO336&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=define:url

En la primera es fácil deducir qué puedo encontrar en esa dirección, en la segunda tal vez ni consiga leerla toda.

Ahora veamos cómo delicious utiliza las pretty url’s con algunos ejemplos.

http://delicious.com/.jonathan. Link a los bookmarks del usuario .jonathan.

http://delicious.com/tag/apps Link a los bookmarks que han sido guardados con el tag apps

http://delicious.com/.jonathan./apps Link a los bookmarks que han sido guardados con el tag apps por el usuario .jonathan.

Tal vez todos deberían utilizar las pretty url’s, el problema es que no siempre es fácil y algunas no son pretty porque llevan información valiosa.

Ok, entonces si escribo http://delicious.com/.jonathan./ricoyfamosodesdecero sabrán de qué se trata. Así es, si adivinaron bien, ahí iré colocando los links relevantes a este blog, pero aún mejor, iré agrupando los links de cada post haciendo uso de los filtros de delicious por tag.

http://delicious.com/tag/apps+free Este link filtra los links mostrando sólo aquellos que contienen ambos tags (por eso no importa el orden, apps+free mostrará los mismos resultados que free+apps). Así que los links de cada post podría agruparlos por ricoyfamosodesdecero+post1, pero no es fácil llevar la cuenta del número de posts, ni para mí ni para los lectores. Por ahora voy a dejar los links con un solo tag, de todas formas agruparlos luego es muy fácil.

Porqué utilizar delicious de esta forma me hará ganar dinero y fama? … Seguramente no hay forma válida de demostrarlo, pero hara que al menos un usuario tenga links a mis posts (iré agregando links a mis posts también). Estos links también tendrán tags, tal vez gane una u otra visita cuando alguien visite los links de cierto tag. Es por este tipo de cosas que seleccionar los tags correctos para las páginas web son tan importantes. El objetivo principal de un blog (comercialmente hablando) es conseguir visitas. Hay formas más fáciles y eficacez de empezar, pero este es un modo que no se puede descartar y que no he visto implementada antes, seguramente alguien ya lo habrá hecho.

Entonces resumiendo, utilizaré delicious (herramienta de bookmarking social) para guardar los links a mis propios posts y a herramientas que describa en ellos. Esto hará que mis posts tengan presencia (mínima al principio) en delicious y que empiecen a ser categorizados bajo ciertos tags. La búsqueda de artículos bajo esos tags como criterio harán que mis posts puedan ser visitados más que si no estuvieran en delicious.

Tal vez haya más formas de utilizar delicious para el beneficio de un blog, pero esta es la que propongo para empezar.

Today, my word 2007 doesn’t work suddenly. I would get a “An unknown error occurred” message with title “Endnote X2″ (shown below) when I tried to open or edit any word files.

Endnote X2 unknown error

This drove me crazy, I uninstalled and reinstalled word 2007 several times, still nothing new happened. Finally, I got the answer.  Here’s solution from Microsoft Help and Support website.

Original website link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541

Delete the Word Data registry key

Most of the frequently used options in Word are stored in the Word Data registry key. A common troubleshooting step is to delete the Word Data registry key. The next time that you start Word, Word rebuilds the Word Data registry key by using the default settings.

To view these options in Word 2002 or Word 2003, click Options on the Tools menu.

To view these options in Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.

Note When you delete the Word Data registry key, Word resets several options to their default settings. One such option is the “most recently used file” list on the File menu. Additionally, Word resets many settings that you customize in the Options dialog box.

To delete the Word Data registry key, follow these steps:

1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry subkey, as appropriate for the version of Word that you are running:
   • Word 2002:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft \Office\10.0\Word\Data
   • Word 2003:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Office\11.0\Word\Data
   • Word 2007:
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Office\12.0\Word\Data
4. Click Data, and then click Export on the File menu.
5. Name the file Wddata.reg, and then save the file to the desktop.
6. Click Delete on the Edit menu, and then click Yes.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
8. Start Word.

If Word starts and works correctly, you have resolved the problem. The problem was a damaged Word Data registry key. You may have to change several settings to restore your favorite options in Word.

If the problem is not resolved, restore the original Word Data registry key. Then, see the “Delete the Word Options registry key” topic.

To restore the original Word Data registry key, follow these steps:

1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Double-click the Wddata.reg icon on the desktop.
3. Click Yes, and then click OK.

Original Journey©2009

A Geoffroy’s Spider Monkey hanging on the branch. Photo from Primate Info Net.

Wild Geoffroy’s Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) or Black-handed Spider Monkeys had been documented using tools to scratch themselves, according to a new publication “Tool use in wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi)“. Important to note that spider monkeys do not have thumbs, only four fingers (picture below) so tool manipulation is rather limited but nonetheless a rather interesting find.

The hand of a Geoffroy’s Spider Monkey. Note that they do not have a thumb and only four fingers. Photo from Wikipedia.

Published in the latest issue of Primates, authors Stacy Lindshield and Michelle Rodrigues collected their data from wild spider monkeys at El Zota Biological Field Station in northeastern Costa Rica. There were three documented instances where these spider monkeys used tools to scratch themselves.

The first to scratch was an adult female. Holding a small, leafy branch in her hand, she scratched her chest and abdominal regions.The second, another adult female, used a detached stick lacking side branches and leaves to scratch her left side. She chewed the tool tip between bouts.

The third individual, a juvenile female, first chewed the distal tip of a stick before scratching the underside of her tail and her genital region.

Seems that this publication coincide with the call for an inter-disciplinary field that seek to examine primate tool use in a long term, evolutionary context. Julio Mercader, archaeologist from University of Calgary, said “We used to think that culture and, above anything else, technology was the exclusive domain of humans, but this is not the case.”

Read the full article on Discovery: Spider Monkeys Invent Medicated Body Scratcher.

Originally posted on The Prancing Papio.

A chimpanzee mother using rocks (hammer and anvil) to break open nuts, an example of tool use in primates. Photo from Duke University.

A new branch of archaeology is being introduced by international scientists. Led by University of Calgary archaeologist Julio Mercader and 17 other co-authors of the paper “Primate archaeology“, advocate a new “Paleoanthropology meets Primatology” inter-disciplinary field that seek to examine primate tool use in a long term, evolutionary context.

Read more about the article from redOrbit: International Scientists Establish New Branch Of Archaeology.

Originally posted on The Prancing Papio.

In the early ’60s, Jane Goodall rocked the scientific world when she reported that chimpanzees use tools. Chimps were taking advantage of the fact that termites bite and hold on to anything invading their mound—even if it means being dragged out of the mound. So the chimps figured out that by poking long twigs and bits of grass into the entrances of termite mounds, they could score a tasty termite kebab.

This termite fishing qualifies as “tool use” because the chimps use an object to alter the condition of something else. Sounds simple, but it’s kind of tricky. Ya see, lots of animals use objects they find in their environment to get food, but it doesn’t always count as “tool use.”

Huh?

Exactly. Here’s the deal: if an animal throws a rock at its food—as Egyptian vultures do to crack open ostrich eggs—then it counts as tool use. BUT, if an animal throws its food at a rock—as bearded vultures and golden hawks do with tortoises—it does not.

That distinction might seem a little nitpicky, but it’s backed by hard science. Researchers found that the part of the brain* responsible for the ability to use tools is actually bigger in animals that use tools than it is in those that are just borderline users (e.g. those that bash their food against something hard).

Case in point: one of the best tool users around has one of the biggest brains relative to its weight—the crow. Most members of the crow family (family Corvidae) are what some would call “downright clever” (and what we call “freaking smart”). When a crow was given food that wasn’t up to snuff, it took matters into its own…umm…hands. A researcher had forgotten to wet the corn meal before feeding it to one of the crows in the lab. Instead of choking down the dry corn meal, the crow used a random cup in its cage to fetch water from its water spigot in order to prep its own meal. (According to the researchers, the cup was only in the cage as a random object and had never held water before.)

A more recent example involves a study of rooks (a close relative of crows and magpies). The birds not only knew which tools were right for a job, but figured out how to use multiple tools in sequence. In the experiment, the birds were presented with a tube leading to a trapdoor that held a tasty worm. By dropping a stone down the tube, the birds opened the trap door and out dropped the worm. When presented with a wide-mouthed tube, the birds chose the largest stone available—they were offered three different sized stones. But, when the tube was narrower, the birds went right for the smallest stone, which was the only one that would fit down the neck of the tube. (Check out the video here.)

Now comes the freaking smart part. The rooks were presented with two tubes, a narrow one holding a worm and a wide one holding a small stone. The birds dropped a large stone down the wide tube, releasing the small stone. Then, they picked up the small stone and dropped it down the narrow tube, releasing the worm. In a separate set of trials, the rooks were given a wire instead of a set of stones. On their very first try, they figured out that they needed to bend the wire into a hook to get the worm at the bottom of the tube. For the record, the birds had never been taught to bend the wire. (Check out that video here.)

Screw the early bird. Clearly, it’s the tool user that gets the worm.

* In mammals, the neocortex is the hotspot for tool use (and sensory perception, spatial reasoning and parts of short-term memory). Birds have a different brain structure, and the important regions are called the mesopallium and a midopallium, in case you were wondering.

Since the last post was so depressing, I thought it would be a good idea to move on to something a bit more fun, eating.  Because who doesn’t love food?  And since some of this involves tool use, I will also be covering the chimpanzees use of tools.

Chimpanzees primarily eat fruit, nuts, and insects.  In addition, they may occasionaly hunt for meat and will eat small animals such as monkeys.  They actually spend much of their day wandering about in search of food.  However, this is not quite as random as it may sound.  They actually will remember the good food sources and seek them out.  They may even time it right to arrive when the fruit is ripe.  Chimpanzees have also been observed to chew on certain leaves that have medicinal benefits, such as easing stomach discomfort.

One of the coolest things about this is the fact that they use tools in order to obtain the food.  Tool use in chimps was first observed by Jane Goodall in the forests of Africa.  She noticed chimps would take long sticks and “fish” for termites by sticking them in terminte mounds.  In addition, chimpanzees have been observed to use a similar technique with pieces of grass and with other insects such as ants.  Similarly, chimps will sometimes use rocks to crack open a nut, kind of like a big hammer.  These behaviors will also vary based on the location where the chimps live; they learn these behaviors by observation so different groups will have slightly different behaviors.

I’m afraid I’m not going to have any easy answers on this one.  We have an intuitive sense of what separates the human from the non-human, but pinning it down exactly turns out to be a much more difficult task than it at first appears.  Let’s try some obvious and classical answers.

Humans are rational.

No.  Lots of animals have more rational capacity than newborns, the demented, and some of the mentally challenged.  Besides, if you’re talking computational ability, do you really want to propose a PC as human?

Humans use language.

No.  Creatures as simple as bees use gestures and pheromones that are arguably a kind of language.  Chimps have been taught to use at least rudimentary sign language, and have even been observed teaching it to their offspring.  Admittedly, it’s hotly contested what constitutes linguistic usage and the depths to which chimps genuinely grasp syntax, grammar, and all the rest, but clearly animals communicate with each other and with us.

Humans use tools.

No.  At the very least, chimps in the wild have been observed using sticks to collect ants–then scoot the ants up with their hands and gulp them down in one motion.  Yum!  I seem to recall primates, possibly even birds, using stones to crack nuts and mollusk shells.

Humans are the genetic descendents of the first Homo sapiens.

What?   You say you mean WHOLE organisms?  How whole?  Do amputees not count?  They do?  Then just HOW whole?  What if science were advanced enough to preserve the life of a person whose body had died, but whose brain lived on in a vat?  Would she still be a person?

But aren’t you being a little ethnocentric confining the human family to Homo sapiens?  How about those other branches on the human family tree closest to us, especially the Neanderthals?  I suspect most people would identify them as human, too.  Good thing, as many people believe many modern humans are partially descended from them, although this isn’t yet documented.

And when you start talking about genetics, you’re really opening a can of worms, of course.  We talk about THE human genome as if it were one thing, where there are countless known variations; let me discuss two of the better-known ones:

Down’s Syndrome is when a person has all or part of an extra copy of chromosome 21.  It usually causes mental retardation (although my Philosophy of Biology professor claimed that when she taught at Stanford she had a student with Down’s with an IQ of 140!) and a host of other mental and physical problems, but also a propensity towards less depression than typical.

XYY Syndrome is when a male has an extra Y chromosome.  According to Wikipedia, “most often, the extra Y chromosome causes no unusual physical features or medical problems.”

Since people with Down’s Syndrome or XYY Syndrome are genetically different from your typical person, are they really human?  I think most people would say yes.

And back to Dr. Who (and all the other fictional alien characters literature has given us, who hold a mirror up to our humanity, yet whose ancestors usually did not even spawn in our same oceans), who perhaps we will one day be privileged to meet in person.  Although genetically and internally he is certainly very different from us, yon Time Lord outwardly looks like us, reasons like us, has bad hair days like us, is subject to moral failings like us, uses tools far in advance of us, in short, seems to be meaningfully like us in every way that should count.

So, without a working definition, I want to say yes, I think if the Time Lord will accept us as company, we should accept him as human.

PLoS ONE just published an article on Dolphins Carrying Sponges by Mann et al. It is a postulated case of tool use, however the authors have buried the lead. I had to skim around the article for awhile to find out what the postulated purpose of the sponges is:

“individual [dolphin]s swam slowly along sand-bottom habitats with a sponge on, slightly and intermittently disturbing the seafloor. When prey were apparently detected, the dolphins dropped the sponge, accelerated about 5–10 m and then probed the seafloor with their beaks….During four hours of human sponging, the same fish species, spothead grubfish, Parapercis clathrata, was repeatedly ferreted from the seafloor in an area where two dolphins were sponging hours before. The fish were invisible to divers until disturbed by the sponge, at which point they quickly moved several meters away and began to burrow again in the sand. The fish were thus briefly visible and could be readily located even after burrowing…Perhaps sponging has allowed females to more effectively access prey in channel habitats compared to non-tool users, thus exploiting an otherwise unused niche.”

The evolutionary dynamics of the behavior are interesting and the authors seem to be documenting it well. It appears that only a fraction of the population use the sponges and that the knowledge is passed on from mother to child. Very interesting stuff.

To the authors credit, they are being cautious in not stating the postulated purpose straight out, but it certainly would have made it easier if the guess was given in the abstract. But perhaps I would not have read on if they did that.

References:

Mann J, Sargeant BL, Watson-Capps JJ, Gibson QA, Heithaus MR, Connor RC, Patterson E. 2008. Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges? PLoS ONE 3(12):e3868.

I just posted about JJ’s novel tool use, and I thought you may wanna see him actually fishing for ants. The authors of the paper provided videos of JJ using his tools. I’ve uploaded it to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Even though I’ve been posting a lot on tool use lately, I’m sure you will appreciate this new study. The new study, “Invention and modification of a new tool use behavior: ant-fishing in trees by a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou, Guinea,” has been published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Primatology. The writeup is very simple and informative, which is great because I consider this a very important paper in figuring out the origins of tool use and the intricacies of primate behavior.

The scope of this paper is a report on tool use seen in a male chimpanzee from Guinea. Tool use has been documented in several other wild chimpanzee societies, most notably was Goodall’s observations of Gombe chimps using tools. Since then other researchers have seen other wild chimps use tools, particularly using rocks to crack nuts open, and using twigs and sticks to fish or dip for ants. Ever so recently, we read and saw a Fongoli chimp hunt with a makeshift spear.

The clincher behind chimpanzee tool use in the wild use has been that it seems to be localized within the group that the behavior is observed in. This has gotten many researchers to hypothesize that this is some group specific behavior, a cultural trait per say. Researchers had no idea how tool use behaviors emerged in these respective groups, nor how long they have been practicing tool use.

In this new study, JJ, the male chimpanzee was the only chimpanzee in his group seen selecting for sticks used to fish for ants in a two year time period. This group of chimpanzees from Bossou has been studying for 27 years and this behavior has never been observed before. So his tool use tendencies seem to be novel amongst this group. Throughout the two years of observation, JJ progressively modified the optimal fishing stick, selecting for shorter and shorter ones. This indicates that JJ learned the characteristics of the best tool, one that would yield more ants.

Unfortunately, no observation has been made of JJ transmitting this behavior to other Bossou chimps. But it does indicate several thing… tool use can independently arise in chimpanzees, regardless of the fact that the group as a whole practices tool use or not. Also, it provides an insights into the cognitive capacity of wild chimps, like JJ, to problem solve and modify their behavior.

Yamamoto, S., Yamakoshi, G., Humle, T., Matsuzawa, T. (2008). Invention and modification of a new tool use behavior: ant-fishing in trees by a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou, Guinea. American Journal of Primatology DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20544

Tool use among orangutans was first documented by Carel van Schaik. In 1994, Carel observed orangutans developing tools to help themselves eat, while conducting field work in Gunung Leuser National Park, in the northwest Sumatra.

Specifically the orangutans were using sticks to pry open pulpy fruits that have “Plexiglas needles” capable of delivering a painful jab covering them. Using the tools, the orangutans were getting past handling the prickly husk and into the nutritious fruit. From an anthropological viewpoint, tool use represents an aspect of culture, since the entire group participates in a behavior that has developed over time. One unique thing to clarify is that only Sumatran orangutans have been observed to use tools, not orangutans from Borneo.

Recently, Gerd Schuster co-author of Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report, took this photograph of,

“a male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish…

The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja…

This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River.

Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.”

Pretty awesome image, no? If you wanna read more about orangutan tool use, here are three papers on the topic:

Schaik, C.P., Fox, E.A., Sitompul, A.F. (1996). Manufacture and use of tools in wild Sumatran orangutans. Naturwissenschaften, 83(4), 186-188. DOI: 10.1007/BF01143062

Call, J., Tomasello, M. (1994). The social learning of tool use by orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Human Evolution, 9(4), 297-313. DOI: 10.1007/BF02435516

van Schaik, C.P. (2003). Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture. Science, 299(5603), 102-105. DOI: 10.1126/science.1078004

If you don’t follow my other blog but are interested in tool use, I just blogged about gorillas who have been seen using clumps of grass and branches as weapons as well as the new research which links macaque tool use and mirror neurons at Primatology.net.

John Hawks also covered the macaque & mirror neuron linkage too, so check out his write up too!

I’m scouring the American Journal of Primatology for a paper on gorillas using tools as weapons in the wild. National Geographic News says the paper is out, but I can’t find it anywhere in the early edition nor in the current issues. I’ll continue looking, but in the mean time here’s what we got to run on (and it ain’t much)

“Researchers [doing a three year study of Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli)] in Cameroon have documented three cases in which the [gorillas] threw clumps of grass or tree branches at humans.”

The people who documented the behavior suggest that the gorillas possibly learned their unusual behavior from interactions with humans. Captive gorillas have been documented picking up stone throwing from their chimpanzee neighbors, so it’s not too improbably that wild gorillas could pick up grass and branch hurling from human neighbors. How did these gorillas learn the behavior? Could it be possibly due to mirror neurons? Conveniently this is a perfect transition into an upcoming PNAS paper on tool use and mirror neurons in macaques, that was announced in this ScienceNOW news article,

“To investigate how the brain performs this sleight of hand, [the team] recorded brain activity in two macaque monkeys. Each was trained for 6 to 8 months to grasp items of food with pliers. The team documented the activity of 113 neurons in F5 and in a brain area called F1, which has also been implicated in the manipulation of objects. The researchers first established the brain’s firing sequence when the monkeys grasped only with their hands. The experiment was then repeated while the monkeys used normal pliers that required first opening the hand and then closing it to grasp the food. The same neurons fired in the same order. Remarkably, the same neurons also fired, in the same order, when the monkeys used “reverse pliers” that required them to close their fingers first and then open them to take the food.”

The research is coming from the University of Parma which seems to be specializing in this sorta research because about a year and half ago they documented mirror neurons role in mimicry. In the new paper, the researchers,

“conclude that when learning to use a tool, the pattern of neuronal activity is somehow transferred from the hand to the tool, “as if the tool were the hand of the monkey and its tips were the monkey’s fingers.” As for how the same neurons could affect both the opening and the closing of the hand, the team speculates that they may be connected with other sets of neurons that more directly control these movements. The authors also point out that area F5 is rich in so-called mirror neurons, a type of nerve cell discovered earlier… that fires both when a primate performs an action and when it observes another individual doing the same thing. Mirror neurons in F5, the authors suggest, may be involved in this transfer process as a monkey learns how to use a tool by watching others.”

The first observations of gorillas using tools in the wild was made a couple years ago, and last year we saw (albeit not too convincingly) a chimp fashioning a spear to hunt, so I’m not too surprised about this news… I just wanna see it!

Vannessa Woods just broke some awesome news of bonobos using tools. From her blog, Bonobo Handshake,

“The bonobos at Lola use tools. It’s really amazing because no one’s seen tool use in bonobos in the wild before (I don’t think).And everyone’s always going on about chimps using tools and how it’s so amazing because everyone used to think that’s what makes us human, and now bonobos use tools too.

Tool using is important because we think that’s how early humans got their start. We couldn’t run fast like a cheetah, and we weren’t strong like mammoths, so we started using tools like spears to hunt meat and rocks to open nuts. These days we use tools like crazy. In fact, we can’t do anything without tools. But looking at chimps, and now the Lola bonobos, we can catch a glimpse of how it all started.”

Jump on over to the post to see the video of one of the bonobos using a rock to hammer open some nuts.