Group items tagged

the skills to make a lethal weapon.

Ape Genius - which gives a fascinating insight into the depth of intelligence of animals who share 99 per cent of human genes

.at15t_email {display:none !important;} ul li.email span.at300bs {display:none !important;} X Share & bookmark Delicious Facebook Google Messenger Reddit Twitter Digg Fark LinkedIn Google Buzz StumbleUpon http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&winname=addthis&pub=telegraphmedia&source=tbx-250&lng=en-US&s=buzz&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fearth%2Fearthnews%2F3341339%2FApe-Genius-reveals-depth-of-animal-intelligence.html&title=Ape%2

Share:

And most important of all although they can imitate, they can't teach or build on the achievements others have made - unlike more successful humans.

But if apes have the power to reaso

n, learn skills, feel emotion and co-operate in a frenzied tree-top hunt for Colobus monkeys as chimpanzees do, why don't we have a planet of the apes?

Neanderthals, like modern humans, are thought to have arisen on the continent.

Though no fossil evidence has been found for Neanderthals and modern humans coexisting in Africa,

interbreeding occurred just after our species had left Africa

Neanderthals, the study team says, probably mixed with early Homo sapiens just after they'd left Africa but before Homo sapiens split into different ethnic groups and scattered around the globe.

60,000 years ago

comparative psychology,

animal intelligence

mostly concerns mammals, especially primates, cetaceans, and elephants, as well as dogs, cats, and rodents.

and fish,

began in the late 1950s

John Lilly

other animals do have minds and that humans should approach the study of their cognition accordingly.

bottlenosed dolphins

particularly monkeys

Spatial cognition

The ability to properly navigate and search through the environment is a critical task for many animals.

Research in 2007 shows that chimpanzees in the Fongoli savannah sharpen sticks to use as spears when hunting, considered the first evidence of systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans.

Language

The modeling of human language in animals is known as animal language research.

Consciousness

The sense in which animals can be said to have consciousness or a self-concept has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over animal minds.

It has been suggested that metacognition in some animals provides some evidence for cognitive self-awareness.[11] The great apes, dolphins, and rhesus monkeys have demonstrated the ability to monitor their own mental states and use an "I don't know" response to avoid answering difficult questions. These species might also be aware of the strength of their memories.

This page was last modified on 26 November 2011 at 11:42.

They also proposed the unimaginable, that Homo floresiensis lived contemporaneously on Flores with Homo sapiens.

Assume that there were salamanders living in some grasslands. Suppose, Lamarck argued, that these salamanders had a hard time walking because their short legs couldn't trample the tall grasses or reach the ground. Suppose that these salamanders began to slither on their bellies to move from place to place. Because they didn't use their legs, the leg muscles wasted away from disuse and the legs thus became small.

passed this acquired trait

legless salamanders evolved

no legs.

by inheriting the acquired characteristic of

Darwin's Background

o have extraordinary talents.

genius, did not at first appear

Darwin disliked school

d observing birds and collecting insects to study.

sent to medical school in Scotland

"intolerably dull

interested in attending natural history lectures.

university at Cambridge, England, in 1827.

Darwin be chosen for the position of naturalist on the ship the HMS Beagle.

to collect specimens, make observations, and keep careful records of anything he observed that he thought significant.

Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell,

In the Andes he observed fossil shells of marine organisms in rock beds at about 4,300 m.

One reason that Darwin was so eager to study life on land was that he suffered from terrible seasickness and couldn't wait to get off the Beagle.

thousands

trekked hundreds of miles through unmapped region.

catalog his specimens and write his notes.

praised by the scientific community.

experts for study.

bird specialist

Darwin's bird collections from the Galapagos Islands, located about 1,000 km west of South America.

13 similar

Other experts

believe that species change over time.

evidence f

In 1837 Darwin began his first notebook on evolution. For several years Darwin filled his notebooks with facts that could be used to support the theory of evolution.

fossils of similar relative ages are more closely related than those of widely different relative ages.

He ran his own breeding experiments and also did experiments on seed dispersal.

we are omnivorous.

same arrangement of internal organs and bones

many of the same diseases

share several important blood types

Unlike apes, our arms are relatively short and weak compared to our legs

modern human brain is 3 times larger in volume

toes became shorter and the big toe moved up into line with the others.

The pelvis

Nature very likely selected for longer legs

downside of the evolutio

we are quite similar to the African apes anatomically and genetically, especially to the chimpanzees and bonobos

minor anatomical differences between humans and apes

46 chromosomes

longer legs require less up-and-down movement while running and, therefore, reduce the amount of energy needed to move rapidly

allow humans to travel farther with the same calorie expenditure

A partial evolutionary solution to this birth difficulty for humans was fetuses being born at a less mature stage, when their bodies are smaller.  The trade off is that human newborn babies are more vulnerable.

Evolving a larger brain comes at a steep energy cost.  The human brain uses about 25% of the energy derived from the nutrients that we consume and 20% of the oxygen.

mental levels equivalent to a 3-4 year old human child

Female chimpanzees, gorillas, and other non-human primates usually remain capable of conception and giving birth even when they are very old

How did a group of ground-dwelling flightless dinosaurs evolve to a feathered animal capable of flying?

used its feathered limbs, along with a long, feather-fringed tail, to glide from tree to tree.

new species, Microraptor gui

dated at between 128 to 124 million

four feathered limbs,

birds are most closely related to dromaeosaurids

dromaeosaurs were small, feathered animals with forelimbs similar to those of Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird at around 150 million years old, and feet with features comparable to modern tree-living birds.

Archeology: The study and interpretation of ancient humans, their history and culture, through examination of the artifacts and remains they left behind

Cultural Anthropology:(also: sociocultural anthropology, social anthropology, or ethnology) studies the different cultures of humans and how those cultures are shaped or shape the world around them

Biological Anthropology

using genetics, evolution, human ancestry, primates, and the ability to adapt.

Linguistic Anthropology: examines human languages

pplied anthropology is simply the practice of applying anthropological theory and or methods from any of the fields of Anthropology to solve human problems

Culture is:

Learned

Patterned

•Shared

•Adaptive

Symbolic

At its most basic level, the difference between Culture and culture is in the way they are defined. C

lture with a capital C refers to the ability of the human species to absorb and imitate patterned and symbolic ideas that ultimately further their survival

Familial culture

Every family is different, and every family has its own culture

icro or Subculture

distinct groups within a larger group that share some sort of common trait, activity or language that ties them together and or differentiates them from the larger group

clique

Mexican-Americans

micro-culture would be the Japanese hip hop

Cultural universals

Claude Levi-Strauss

gender roles, the incest taboo, religious and healing ritual, mythology, marriage, language, art, dance, music, cooking, games, jokes, sports, birth and death

tual ceremonies

f cultural relativism deny the existence or reduce the importance of cultural universals

Language and cognition

Society

Myth, Ritual, and aesthetics

Technology

This problem of right and wrong in terms of crossing cultural lines is a big one.

intrinsic cultural distinctions that are meaningful to the members of a given society, often considered to be an 'insider’s' perspective.

reate bias o

Enculturation

This process is the way in which we obtain and transmit culture.

In the !Kung Bushman tribe they look down upon people who think highly of themselves and who are arrogant. To avoid these characteristics, each child was raised to put down and mock others when they do things such as hunting and other activities.

Cultural Transmission

Symbols and Culture

Symbols are the basis of culture. A symbol is an object, word, or action that stands for something else with no natural relationship that is culturally defined

Ethnocentrism

Cultural Relativism

Ethnography

Deconstructing Race and Racism

Race was created long ago as a tool to separate humans

Deconstructing the social concept of race has been a major interest of Cultural Anthropology at least since Franz Boas's work on race and immigration in the early 1900's.

Race is not biological but it's supposed to be a way to classify biological differences by grouping people according to different characteristics that they have

There is no biological part of race. It is strictly a concept created by humans to try to better understand differences between us

Technology