Primate Social Behaviour (also known as “Primate Social Skills”) is an English, optional course at the Faculty of Science. This document covers the course as taught in 2022/23.
The course consists of three parts, covering respectively (1) facial perception, facial communication and emotion (...
Overview of literature and materials
This course exists of three parts, which concern (1) face perception, facial communication and emotion
in animals, (2) cooperation and empathy, and (3) culture and gender, respectively. For each one of the
three topics, there’s a lecture, which are summarised in this document. In 2022/2023, these were given
by Frans de Waal. Moreover, for each lecture there are 4 or 5 articles required to read, which are
summarised in the document as well. In 2022/2023, these were:
Lecture 1:
- Douglas, C., et al. (2012). Environmental enrichment induces optimistic cognitive biases in pigs.
Applied Animal Behaviour Science 139: 65–73.
- Palagi E, Caruana F, de Waal FBM. (2022). The naturalistic approach to laughter in humans and
other animals: Towards a unified theory. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B377: 20210175
- Parr, L. A., & de Waal, F. B. M. (1999). Visual kin recognition in chimpanzees. Nature 399: 647-
648.
- Preuschoft, S., & van Hooff, J.A.R.A.M. (1995). Homologizing primate facial displays: A critical
review of methods. Folia primatologica 65: 121-137.
Lecture 2:
- Bartal, I. B.-A., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011). Empathy and pro-social behavior in rats. Science
334: 1427–30.
- Burkett, J. P., et al. (2016). Oxytocin-dependent consolation behavior in rodents. Science 351:
375-378.
- Hare, B. & Kwetuenda, S. (2010). Bonobos voluntarily share their own food with others.
Current Biology 20: R1-R2
- Plotnik, J. M., et al. (2011). Elephants know when they need a helping trunk in a cooperative
task. Proc. Acad. of Sciences, USA 108: 5116–5121.
- Waal, F. B. de, & Preston, S. D. (2017). Mammalian empathy: Behavioural manifestations and
neural basis. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18(8): 498.
Lecture 3:
- Gumert, M. D., Kluck, M., & Malaivijitnond, S. (2009). The physical characteristics and usage
patterns of stone axe and pounding hammers used by long-tailed macaques in the Andaman
sea region of Thailand. American Journal of Primatology 71: 594–608.
- Whiten, A. (2005). The second inheritance system of chimpanzees and humans. Nature 437:
52-55.
- Whiten, A., Horner, V., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2005). Conformity to cultural norms of tool use in
chimpanzees. Nature 437: 737-740.
- Hassett, J. M., Siebert, E. R., & Wallen, K. (2008). Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy
preferences parallel those of children. Hormones & Behavior 54: 359–364.
- Boesch, C., et al. (2010). Altruism in forest chimpanzees: The case of adoption. PLoS ONE 5:
e8901.
Recommended literature (not summarised here):
- de Waal, Frans (2019). Mama’s Last Hug. Norton, New York (Dutch: Mama’s laatste omhelzing,
Contact, Amsterdam): Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 6.
- de Waal, Frans (2022). Different. Norton, New York (Dutch: Anders, Contact, Amsterdam):
Chapters 1 (play behaviour) and 5 (bonobos).
- Primate Taxonomy (link)
, 2
Lecture 1
Face perception, facial communication and emotion in animals
The study of emotions in animals started with Darwin. After Darwin, this became somewhat of a taboo,
as behaviouralism became the leading paradigm in psychology and related studies. The idea was that
you can’t talk about the inner feeling of animals or even assume they have those, as you can’t
objectively measure them. All you can do is measure their behaviour. Anthropomorphism was thus
considered a “sin”.
Moreover, after Darwin it was hypothesised that the inner world (feelings) don’t cause the action, but
that the action causes the feeling (e.g., if you’re running from a bear, it’s the action of running away
that makes you afraid, mot the stimulus of seeing a bear). These views changed later, but only in recent
years.
Figure 1. Pathways of emotions and behaviour.
Frans de Waal (FdW) agrees with behaviouralists in the sense that you indeed can’t know a being’s
feelings. However, he argues that you can in fact measure its emotions. Historically, feelings and
emotions were considered the same (see Figure 1), but FdW argues that we don’t need to know
feelings to know emotion. This distinction may cause confusion in the literature. Different fields focus
on different aspects: psychologists, for instance, mostly focus on feelings, and biologists mostly focus
on emotions.
FdW doesn’t think anthropomorphism is a “sin”, especially when it comes to primates, as there’s great
similarity. Is it really a sin to attribute “human-like” traits to other primates, when they are in fact very
much similar to ourselves?
Similarities may be develop through convergent evolution. E.g., dolphins and fish look similar, but they
evolved into the same traits independently from each other. There’s also homology: two or more
species with similar trait, a common ancestor and shared ancestry. This is usually related to
morphology, not function. E.g., a mole, a bat and a seal share their ‘arms’ from a common ancestor,
but use them differently. Regarding behaviour, an analogy is something that looks the same, but isn’t.
E.g., “kissing” gouramies, which is actually fighting behaviour. Note: kissing in apes is similar as to
humans (stress relief, sexual).
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