Francine L. Dolins

Conservation education in Madagascar: three case studies in the biologically diverse island-continent

Few Malagasy children and adults are aware of the rare and unique fauna and flora indigenous to their island‐continent, including flagship lemur species. Even the Malagasy ancestral proverbs never mentioned lemurs, but these same proverbs talked about the now extinct hippopotamus. Madagascars geography, history, and economic constraints contribute to severe biodiversity loss. Deforestation on Madagascar is reported to be over 100,000 ha/year, with only 10–15% of the island retaining natural forest [Green & Sussman, 1990]. Educating children, teacher‐training, and community projects about environmental and conservation efforts to protect the remaining natural habitats of endangered lemur species provide a basis for long‐term changes in attitudes and practices. Case studies of three conservation education projects located in different geographical regions of Madagascar, Centre ValBio, Madagacar Wildlife Conservation Alaotra Comic Book Project, and The Ako Book Project, are presented together with their ongoing stages of development, assessment, and outcomes. We argue that while nongovernmental organizational efforts are and will be very important, the Ministry of Education urgently needs to incorporate biodiversity education in the curriculum at all levels, from primary school to university. Am. J. Primatol. 72:391–406, 2010.

The use of technology to enhance zoological parks

Technology can be used in a zoological setting to improve visitor experience, increase research opportunities, and enhance animal welfare. Evaluating the quality of these technological innovations and their use by nonhuman and human counterparts is a critical part of extending the uses of technology to enhance animal welfare and visitor experience at zoological parks. Survey data from a small sample of institutions housing primates suggest that computers, television, radio, and sprinklers are the most prevalent types of technological enrichment currently used. Survey respondents were positive about the technology implemented, stating a desire to increase its use.

Technical and conceptual considerations for using animated stimuli in studies of animal behavior

Abstract Rapid technical advances in the field of computer animation (CA) and virtual reality (VR) have opened new avenues in animal behavior research. Animated stimuli are powerful tools as they offer standardization, repeatability, and complete control over the stimulus presented, thereby “reducing” and “replacing” the animals used, and “refining” the experimental design in line with the 3Rs. However, appropriate use of these technologies raises conceptual and technical questions. In this review, we offer guidelines for common technical and conceptual considerations related to the use of animated stimuli in animal behavior research. Following the steps required to create an animated stimulus, we discuss (I) the creation, (II) the presentation, and (III) the validation of CAs and VRs. Although our review is geared toward computer-graphically designed stimuli, considerations on presentation and validation also apply to video playbacks. CA and VR allow both new behavioral questions to be addressed and existing questions to be addressed in new ways, thus we expect a rich future for these methods in both ultimate and proximate studies of animal behavior.

Testing Learning Paradigms in the Field

An animals’ foraging efficiency may be enhanced by generating rules or strategies of behavior that increase the probability of encountering suitable prey or food patches (Kamil, 1984; Parker, 1986). The information upon which these strategies are based is acquired during a process of exploration and sampling, and is associated with both random encounters and expectations regarding the productivity and distribution of previously visited feeding sites. As resources become depleted and change in spatial and temporal availability, animals must incorporate new or updated information in order to generate more effective foraging patterns. The ability of a forager to exploit resources efficiently is dependent, therefore, on its ability to remember and integrate information concerning: (1) direction, position, and distance between multiple feeding sites; (2) food availability in a patch prior to and after a foraging bout (rates of renewal); (3) number of visits to a patch and time interval since last visit; and, (4) food type associated with a specific feeding site (Dolins 1993; see also Krebs et al, 1977, 1978; Krebs, 1981; Shettleworth & Krebs, 1982; Vander Wall, 1982, 1990; Balda & Turek, 1984; Sherry, 1984; Stephens & Krebs, 1986; Armstrong et al, 1987; Garber, 1988, 1989; Milton, 1988; Brown & Gass, 1993).

Toddlers' reactions to negative emotion displays: Forming models of relationships

Twenty-four children between 18 and 24 months were exposed to two people interacting in a neutral way and two people having a negative emotional interchange. In the emotion condition, they saw either anger or sadness at equal levels of intensity. Anger was enacted with an argumentative and hostile voice which was raised but short of yelling. For sadness, actresses spoke in loud voices, sobbed, whined, and wailed. The childrens vocalizations, constructive play, looks to mother, gaze to experimenters, and proximity to mother were coded. In response to the negative emotion, children stopped activities and attended to the interchange. They stopped exploring, vocalizing, and playing constructively. No differences in childrens behavior were noted for anger versus sadness. Childrens behavior was affected by the order in which they saw the neutral or emotional interchange. When they saw the negative emotion interchange first, they reacted to the neutral condition as if they were being exposed to a negative interchange. Results are discussed in terms of the development of models of relationships, organized around emotional interchanges.

Primate spatial strategies and cognition: Introduction to this special issue

Wild primates face significant challenges associated with locating resources that involve learning through exploration, encoding, and recalling travel routes, orienting to single landmarks or landmark arrays, monitoring food availability, and applying spatial strategies that reduce effort and increase efficiency. These foraging decisions are likely to involve tradeoffs between traveling to nearby or distant feeding sites based on expectations of resource productivity, predation risk, the availability of other nearby feeding sites, and individual requirements associated with nutrient balancing. Socioecological factors that affect primate foraging decisions include feeding competition, intergroup encounters, mate defense, and opportunities for food sharing. The nine research papers in this Special Issue, “Primate Spatial Strategies and Cognition,” address a series of related questions examining how monkeys, apes, and humans encode, internally represent, and integrate spatial, temporal, and quantity information in efficiently locating and relocating productive feeding sites in both small‐scale and large‐scale space. The authors use a range of methods and approaches to study wild and captive primates, including computer and mathematical modeling, virtual reality, and detailed examinations of animal movement using GPS and GIS analyses to better understand primate cognitive ecology and species differences in decision‐making. We conclude this Introduction by identifying a series of critical questions for future research designed to document species‐specific differences in primate spatial cognition. Am. J. Primatol. 76:393–398, 2014.

Socio-Cultural Differences in Judgments about the Power of Thought

We examined participants’ (N = 145) beliefs in the power of thought by comparing their judgments about whether desires would be fulfilled through prayer or through another petitionary activity, namely wishing. Three groups of adults (theists, agnostics, and atheists) read scenarios in which a protagonist desires to assist another person and either ‘wishes’ or ‘prays to God’ for their desires to be fulfilled. Requests varied by domain (psychological, biological, physical outcomes) and by plausibility (ordinarily plausible versus impossible outcomes). Participants reported whether each request would be fulfilled. Overall, participants judged that requests for plausible phenomena would be fulfilled more often than requests for impossible phenomena. Atheists were similar to theists and agnostics in belief that wishes would be fulfilled, perhaps suggesting that all groups appealed somewhat to metaphysical causality. However, agnostics, and especially atheists, were less likely than theists to report that prayers would be fulfilled. Engagement in prayer activities was a particularly strong predictor of participants’ belief in the power of prayer but was unrelated to their belief in the

Lessons from Primates

Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings. Duane M. Rumbaugh and David A. Washburn. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2003. 344 pp.

Translations of Chapter Summaries

37.50, £29. ISBN 0-300-09983-5. Current Perspectives in Psychology. The authors present a framework they call rational behaviorism to explore what apes and monkeys know and how we know that.

Attitudes to animals : views in animal welfare

Analise cladistica das sequencias dos genes Epsilon-globin a e IRBP fornece informacāe complementar importante para urn esboco das principais linhas da filogenia dos macacos do Novo Mundo. As abordagens morfologicas e de genetica molecular sao razoavelmente consistentes com as evidencias disponiveis atraves do reg istro fossil , significando que as formas modernas fornecem uma boa base para o desenvolvimento de uma classificācao dos platirrineos, e que o entendimento das relacōes entre fosseis podem ser facil itados com a inclusao dos generos viventes nas analises. Os estudos moleculares e morfologicas fortalecem a ideia de tres grandes grupos modernos, possivelmente divergindo num intervalo de tempo relativamente curto . Considerando as discordâncias nos estudos da sistematica de platirrineos nas ultimas decadas - a correta localizacoo filogenetica de Cebus, Saimiri, Aotus e Callicebus - a cornbina#x00E7;oo das evidencias colocam Callicebus definitivamente como parente dos pitecineos. Elas reforcam tambem a ligacoo entre Saimiri e os calitriquineos, o elo entre Cebus e Saimiri, e sua associacoo com calitriquineos como uma linhagem monofiletica do grupo dos «cebideos». Os dados de DNA divergem, porem, com a colocacoo de Aotus como uma linhagem basal desse agrupamento, urn achado inconsistente com as evidencias morfologicas. A analise de DNA tambem aponta a necessidade de uma reconsideracoo da taxonomia do genero Callitrhix, que talvez noo seja monofiletica. Os dados confirmam parcialmente o padroo de ramificacoo do clade dos atelideos, posicionando Alouatta como a linhagem mais velha. Problemas que permanecem dentro dos calitriquineos e atelineos incluem: 1)os afinidades precisas entre os atelineos, Lagothrix, Ateles e Brachyt eles; e 2) a sequencia de ramificacoo dentre os calitriquineos, i.e., Callithrix/Cebuella, Leontopithecus , Saguinus e Callimico.