Zoo chimp 'planned' stone attacks - BBC NEWS »
Posted By gamahuche 8 months, 3 weeks ago in FamilyA male chimpanzee provides compelling proof that animals may be able to plan for future events and moods.
A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers.
Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles.
Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles.
The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.
There has been scant evidence in previous research that animals can plan for future events.
Crucial to the current study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, prior to the zoo opening in the morning.
The launching of the stones occurred hours later - during dominance displays to zoo visitors - with Santino in an "agitated" state.
This suggests that Santino was anticipating a future mental state - an ability that has been difficult to definitively prove in animals, according to Mathias Osvath, a cognitive scientist from Lund University in Sweden and author of the new research.
"We've done experimental studies, and the chimps in my mind show very clearly that they do plan for future needs, but it has been argued that perhaps this was an experimental artefact," Dr Osvath told BBC News.
"Now we have this spontaneous behaviour, which is always in some sense better evidence."
Read Full Story at news.bbc.co.uk »
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gamahuche
"I would rather be a square peg than fit in a pigeon hole" -
an essay which won me the "Lamb Essay Prize" at the Religious ...
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gamahuche8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Hard to figure the category for this one!
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How come we don't have a Nature section?
I also though about putting it under humour but though its a funny story there is a certain deep seriousness to Santino's activities too.
Planning and method too..
Politics seemed a bit provocative.
I like that his Swedish keepers didn't interfere so much with him - presumably no one got hurt.
I guess in the US a few law-suits would have emerged from something like this and a swift end to the stone-throwing would have been enforced - or even worse some "victim" would have shot him.. -
annthatcherComment removed: Hard Banned
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gamahuche8 months, 3 weeks ago
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Sorry to be the third person up with this same story - and congratulations to those who pre-empted me.
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Even after I'd posted it there was no indication that there was a story anything like it in the system..
Time for a memo to James M and Tom Drapeau:
Can we please get a warning before we even post that we've been pre-empted?!
(Just like there used to be in the Good Old Days!)
Overnight I dreamt about Santino and woke up with some thoughts about who his spiritual and practical mentors may have been.
Clusewitz, the Marquis de Sade and Lord Baden-Powell..
There were a couple more but they faded with growing consciousness of the duties for the day..
Warfare, Cruelty, Be Prepared - the first two integral to the neocon philosophy and adopted by the Bush regime, while the 3rd was sadly considered irrelevant by almost everybody. -
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gamahuche8 months, 3 weeks ago
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In fact mine - based on a search for the word "chimp", mine was the 7th version of the story to appear and one of the early ones had exactly the same title only the location of its provenance reversed.
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i.e. BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Zoo chimp 'planned' stone attacks
I wonder if there's a rationale in process wherby the MORE stories the better is a valued criteria?
Of course that may be good for browsing - just BEING on the site, perhaps assiduously reading the advertisements or meditating for hours at a time on the classmates.com ad, but stories without comments are of little interest to me since a google front-page with custom chosen topics would provide ample fodder for the newshound in me.. -
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cleare8 months, 3 weeks ago
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when i was growing up there was an exotic pet store in town that we used to visit in lieu of a zoo. there was an angry chimp who used to throw gravel at us.
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not only do these stories prove that chimps are aggressive and can plan ahead, it also demonstrates that some of them don't enjoy being "exhibited". -
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