Primates

January 20, 2015

Ankle Evidence Shows Earth’s Earliest Primates Were Tree-Dwellers

Shawn Hopkins Evolution, Paleontology, Primates 0

If you went back to visit your earliest known primate ancestors, you’d find them in the trees. New fossil evidence shows Purgatorius, a small, squirrel-like insect and fruit-eating mammal, was a tree-dweller. Paleontologists analyzed 65 million-year-old fossil ankle bones found in Northeastern Montana to clear up questions about the habitat of Purgatorius, which started kicking around shortly after non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. “The textbook that I am currently using in my biological anthropology courses still has an illustration of Purgatorius walking on the ground. Hopefully this study will change what students are learning about earliest primate evolution and will place Purgatorius in the trees where it rightfully belongs,” said Stephen Chester, the paper’s lead author, an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Before the ankle bones were found in Montana, scientists only had the creature’s teeth and jaws to work with. But the structure of the bones makes it clear that Purgatorius headed for the trees. “The ankle bones have diagnostic features for mobility that are

September 19, 2014

No Fair! Primate Studies Probe Why We Hate Inequity

Shawn Hopkins Fairness, Inequity, Primates, Study 0

Think of a time when you were treated unfairly. Really cast your mind back to that time and how you felt. Maybe your teeth clenched. Maybe your cheeks burned. Makes you mad just thinking about it, doesn’t it? Recently published research suggests that the strong objection we have to being treated unequally is very deeply seated in our evolution. Researchers found that an objection to getting less is an evolutionary response that protects members of cooperative species from others of their kind doing better at their expense. Dr. Sarah Brosnan of Georgia State’s departments of Psychology and Philosophy, the Neuroscience Institute and the Language Research Center and colleague Dr. Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Psychology Department at Emory University published their first study of primate reaction to being treated unfairly, “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay” in 2003, in which they found that capuchin monkeys have a freakout if they see other monkeys get a bigger reward for the same task. Over the next 10

August 27, 2014

Scientists Say Sharing Child-Rearing Duties Helped Make Us Altruistic

Shawn Hopkins Altruism, Cooperative Breeding, Primates, Science 0

Say you meet some guy in a business suit. Maybe he’s got slicked back hair and a ponytail, maybe he reads a lot of Ayn Rand. And that guy tells you that it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, that a person is just a miserable animal only in it for itself, and that you have to screw over others before they screw over you? Don’t believe him. Science has repeatedly shown that humans are by nature altruistic and cooperative. And new research has provided some insight into why. According to an article in The New Scientist, a new study by anthropologists Carel van Schaik and Judith Burkart of the University of Zurich in Switzerland supports the theory that humans developed altruistic traits, at least in part, because we were forced by harsh environments to help take care of each other’s kids. This is called cooperative breeding, and it’s seen in several species including humans and marmosets, but the theory is a bit controversial because it’s not found in great apes like