Archive for September 7th, 2007
Testing Primates for their “Human-Like” Behaviors
If evolutionary psychology is your shtick, then Science published several papers related to primate behavior and cognition that have pretty significant implications on human behavior and culture. I’ve summarized them over at Primatology.net, check them out:
- Human & Non-Human Ape Social Cognition Compared: Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills
- Nonhuman Primates Expect Rational Behavior
A related musing, I’m always curious as to how confident psychologists and others who do this kinda research are when they setup some simple tests and then suggest that the behavior evolved some 40 million years ago. I wonder how they get to that conclusion… just cause you see a modern primate behave in some manner doesn’t mean for sure that the behavior existed way back in primate evolution. It could happened due to some convergent evolutionary mechanism. Likewise, what if the behavior originated in a related lineage of animals way before primates even existed?
An unrelated announcement, by chance if primate conservation is something you are passionate please help out Inti Wara Yassi Wildlife Refuge.
