Duane Quiatt

Stone handling by Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata): Implications for tool use of stone

Stone-play, a newly innovated cultural behavior, has been observed among the free-ranging Arashiyama B troop Japanese macaques near Kyoto, Japan since 1979. Conditions in which the non-purposeful handling of stones might possibly give rise to tool behavior are discussed. The progression of this behavior is traced through three phases: transmission, tradition, and transformation. During the first two phases, through social learning, the behavior was established within the group as a regular item of their behavioral repertoire and was most frequently observed after eating provisioned grain. In the third phase, observations suggest a “faddish” shift in the practice of certain behavioral sub-types between 1984 and 1985. During this period young individuals increasingly began to carry stones away from the feeding station, mixing stone manipulation with forage-feeding activities in the forest. Observations suggest under such conditions, stone handling is likely to lead to the occasional use of stone as a tool. This conclusion probably can be applied to species other thanMacaca fuscata. Consideration of the eco-setting and social learning correlates of stone handling suggests how the instrumental use of stone might emerge from a tradition of non-instrumental manipulation.

Household Economics and Hominid Origins [and Comments and Reply]

Between 4 and 6 million years ago forces were gathering which transformed a group of quadrupedal individual foraging protohominids into one or more species of bipedal food-sharing hominids. Recently, several scientific subfields have contributed new insights and new pieces of information which, when fitted together by different scholars, present us with a confusing picture of how the transformation might have taken place. This paper examines some of the different ways the pieces have been reconstructed, notes some underlying assumptions, examines some aspects of the exchange logic they imply, emphasizes the importance of culture in defining the distinctive hominid econiche, and argues for the importance of the family household as a unit basic to understanding the origin of the hominids and the subsequent course of human evolution. Use of the family household as a unit of paleoanthropological analysis raises questions which call for collaboration among primatologists and biological and cultural anthropologists.

Instrumental Leaf Use by Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest (Sonso Community)

Future Research Results of this survey appear to warrant a more intensive investigation into Sonso chimpanzees’ LAD and UAD practices, with closer control over (1) observation schedules, to ensure comparable data records for every daylight hour through all seasons of the year; and (2) recording of behavior, to secure records of LAD and UAD for as many individuals as is practical and in detail adequate for at least a coarse-grained comparison of similarities and differences in individual practice. Primatologists seem in general to approve an assumption that dipping or sponging water from a tree bole, obtaining water in the same way from an open water source, and drinking water with mouth applied directly to the source are equivalent ways of satisfying a single primary physiological requirement. That assumption probably should be examined at least to the extent of (1) measuring or estimating water intake by each of these means; (2) ascertaining if possible whether Acalypha leaves are favored by Budongo chimpanzees (and chimpanzees in other forests?) strictly for properties important to water transport or, in part and perhaps as importantly, because they are abundant and/or distributed in convenient proximity with water sources; and (3) investigating through chemical analysis and taste assessment whether water samples obtained from tree boles at which LAD has been observed may not reveal traces of nutrient value and/or flavor character, either of which conceivably could encourage leaf sponging.

Ape language revisited

Savage‐Rumbaugh, E. Sue. Ape Language: From Conditioned Response to Symbol. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. xxv + 433 pp. including chapter references and index.

Mindscapes and Science Theories [and Comments and Reply]

40.00 cloth. Premack, David. Gavagai! Or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986. 164 pp.

Aunts and Mothers: Adaptive Implications of Allomaternal Behavior of Nonhuman Primates

12.50 cloth. Hoage, R. J. and Larry Goldman, eds. Animal Intelligence: Insights into the Animal Mind. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. 207 pp.

Which are more easily deceived, friends or strangers?

10.95 paper.