The objective will be to bring in bigwig scientists like psychologist Frans de Waal from the school's Yerkes National Primate Research Center to marshal a body of basic research on social bonding and translate it into drugs or behavioral interventions that can help autistic children and those suffering from the kinds of social deficits that can occur with schizophrenia. These studies will also shed light on how the normal social brain works.
"The overall goal is to foster collaboration between people trying figure to out how to treat autism patients and people who are working with animals who can come up with clever ways of stimulating the social brain and bring these people together to make translation happen," says Larry Young, the center's director, who uses prairie voles (unusual because they are monogamous mammals—see photo) to study social relationships.
Was it the evolution of the hand, or of the brain, that enabled prehistoric toolmakers to make the leap from simple flakes of rock to a sophisticated hand axe?
A new study finds that the ability to plan complex tasks was key. The research, published today in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, is the first to use a cyber data glove to precisely measure the hand movements of stone tool making, and compare the results to brain activation.
“Making a hand axe appears to require higher-order cognition in a part of the brain commonly known as Broca’s area,” said Emory anthropologist Dietrich Stout, co-author of the study. It’s an area associated with hierarchical planning and language processing, he noted, further suggesting links between tool-making and language evolution.
“The leap from stone flakes to intentionally shaped hand axes has been seen as a watershed in human prehistory, providing our first evidence for the imposition of preconceived, human designs on the natural world,” he said. "For the past two million years, stone tool making has been the most common and consistent human technology," Stout says. Photo by Carol Clark.
Stout is an experimental archeologist who recreates prehistoric tool making to study the evolution of the human brain and mind. Subjects actually knap tools from stone as activity in their brains is recorded. (Watch the video, above, to see how Stone Age tools were made.)
“Changes in the hand and grip were probably what made it possible to make the first stone tools,” Stout said. “Increasingly we’re finding that the earliest tools required visual and motor skills, but were conceptually simple.”
For this study, Stout used a data glove to record the exact hand postures of the research subject across a range of prehistoric technologies. He teamed with Aldo Faisal, a neuroscientist at Imperial College London, and archeologists Jan Apel of Gotland University College in Sweden and Bruce Bradley of Exeter University in Devon, England.
The researchers compared the manual dexterity for the tasks involved in making two types of tools: Oldowan flakes and Late Acheulean hand axes. Simple Oldowan stone flakes are the earliest known tools, dating back 2.6 million years. The Late Acheulean hand axe, going back 500,000 years, embodies a higher level of refinement and standardization.
“I assumed that the manual dexterity was going to be greater for making the hand axe,” Stout said. “But we found that the hand gestures were so similar that we couldn’t distinguish them.” The leap from stone flakes to a hand axe was "a watershed in human prehistory," Stout says. Photo by Carol Clark.
A previous study by Stout found differences in the brain activation associated with Oldowan versus Acheulean technologies. It was unclear, however, whether the difference was due to higher-level behavior organization or lower-level differences in manipulative complexity.
The results of the data glove study point to higher cognition. “The advances of Late Acheulean technology were not about increased dexterity. They were about the ability to plan complex action sequences,” Stout said.
A hand axe requires the maker to begin with a precise, symmetrical end in mind. A variety of tools are involved, from a large rock to rough out the basic shape of the axe, to a softer implement, such as an antler billet, to thin and sharpen the edges.
The ongoing research could lead to new understanding of the modern human brain. “For the past two million years, stone tool-making has been the most common and consistent human technology, done by virtually every society,” Stout said. "It’s an important human behavior that probably helped shape our brains.”
Humans have a “strangely shaped childhood,” said Emory anthropologist Melvin Konner during his recent Life of the Mind talk. When you consider our large brain size, we get kicked out of the womb a lot earlier than our last common ancestors shared with the chimpanzees. We also get weaned earlier, and we have a longer time before sexual maturation.
Konner wrote “The Evolution of Childhood,” a landmark book on human development that explores our biological past to understand our psychological present.
We have a mid-growth spurt between the ages of 6 and 8, “and then this long period of quiescence before puberty really sets in,” he said. “It’s the period when the emotional intensity and turmoil of early childhood is over, and before the turmoil of puberty. And it’s a period of great opportunity to create a cultural being.”
During middle childhood, “children are expansively exploring the world and each other, and building their own brains through the process of play,” Konner said.
Play has been compared to the evolutionary process. “It generates seemingly random and senseless movements and engagement with this world,” he said, adding that these movements are central to brain development. “In Georgia right now, playgrounds are being dismantled at schools and recess is being abolished because play is being seen as not contributing to scores on standardized tests. Obviously, we want our children to grow up to fit into our culture, but when you get to the point of dismantling playgrounds you’re abandoning a few million years of evolution, and it’s not such a good policy.”
The playground of hunter-gather societies is the bush around the village. The children roam and play in mixed-sex and multi-age groups, and they make a game of finding food for themselves, Konner said, with the older ones helping the younger ones learn about the environment and what’s edible.
“Modern humans left Africa maybe 80,000 years ago after a couple 100,000 years of primary culture development, and they spread rapidly,” Konner said. “I have this vivid image in my head of kids going out and roving further and further and maybe pioneering the direction of the spread of humans.”
Research is showing that compassion meditation -- focused, warm thoughts about yourself and others -- may have positive effects on both your mental and physical well-being.
By Carol Clark
Basic empathy is a biological given. “If you talk with a sad person, you are going to adopt a sad posture, and if you talk to a happy person, by the end you will probably be laughing,” said Emory primatologist Frans de Waal. He explained that evolution has programmed us to mirror both the physical and emotional states of others.
De Waal gave the opening remarks at a conference bringing together the Dalai Lama and scientists studying effects of compassion meditation on the brain, physical health and behavior.
“Empathy is biased – it’s stronger for those that are close to you than those that are distant,” De Waal said. “Nature has built in rewards for the things that we need to do, and being pro-social is something that we need when we live in groups.”
In order to get from empathy to compassion and altruism, you need to identify others as distinct from you. While it used to be assumed that altruistic tendencies were only possible in humans, de Waal said that targeted helping of others has recently been observed among apes and elephants.
Photo by Frans de Waal shows a young chimpanzee consoling an adult male that just lost a fight.
Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, recalled when he first began studying the effects of compassion meditation in 1992. He traveled to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and attached electrodes to the head of an expert practitioner. The other monks began laughing.
“I thought it was because he looked so funny with the electrodes,” Davidson said. But it turned out the monks were amused that he was trying to study the effects of compassion by attaching electrodes to the practitioner’s head, rather than to his heart.
Years later, Davidson is finding that the monks’ view may be on target. New research shows that the heart rates of expert practitioners beat more quickly while they are meditating than the hearts of novices. “We believe that compassion meditation is facilitating communication between the heart and the mind,” Davidson said.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill cited her research into the effects of “love and kindness meditation,” or LKM, on the vagus nerve. The nerve, which extends from the brain stem to the heart, helps regulate emotions and bodily systems. The effectiveness of the vagus nerve is measured by its tone, or fitness. The higher the vagal tone, the better the vagus nerve performs as a regulatory pathway.
“With just six weeks of LKM training in novices, we see improvements in resting vagal tone,” Fredrickson said. “Just like physical exercise improves muscle tone, emotion training improves vagal tone.”
High vagal tone is related to both a person’s physical health and their ability to feel loving connections with others, Fredrickson said. “In a way, our bodies are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become.”
Emory researchers Charles Raison and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi described their ongoing research into the effects of compassion meditation and depression. Negi developed a secular form of meditation for the research, based on the Tibetan Buddhist practice called “lojong.” Lojong uses an analytical approach to challenge a person’s thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic behavior.
The pair collaborated on a 2005 study that showed that college students who regularly practice compassion meditation had a significant reduction in stress and physical responses to stress. They recently launched the Compassion and Attention Longitudinal Meditation Study (CALM), to explore the physical effects of different forms of meditation.
“We’re trying to zero in on what is it about meditation that is useful for people’s health,” Raison said.
Emory researchers are also getting positive preliminary results in compassion meditation studies involving schoolchildren ages six to eight and adolescents in the foster care system.
“This seems like the dawning of a new day,” the Dalai Lama said. “We’ve heard about the benefits, and now we need to act to cultivate compassion from kindergarten to universities.”
I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself. This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a society under a waning influence of God. His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all. Detail from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. The painting combines references from religion, nature and science. Source: Wikipedia Commons.
For a primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility, the plentiful birds and fruits and the moving about in groups are thoroughly familiar and hardly require a religious or moral interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel of the triptych in which he punishes — not the frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.
Five centuries later, we remain embroiled in debates about the role of religion in society. As in Bosch’s days, the central theme is morality. Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a moral abyss. Read the whole article in the New York Times.
Yamini Potini did evolutionary biology experiments with monarch butterflies.
Morgan Mingle spent her summer analyzing the musical tastes of chimpanzees. Julie Margolis cut up human bones with a bandsaw. Yamini Potini immersed herself in the world of monarch butterflies.
All three say they had a blast doing hands-on science that led to discoveries. They were part of this year’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program at Emory (SURE), which awards selected students a stipend, free housing, and a chance to work with top scientists.
Mingle, who won a spot in the lab of primatologist Frans de Waal, designed an experiment with chimpanzees to look deep into the evolutionary history of music. “Music is in every human culture, but we can’t figure out what makes it so biologically important to us. It’s a big mystery,” says Mingle, a neuroscience major from Southwestern University.
Mingle (below, center) with de Waal at the SURE poster session.
The chimps showed a preference for African and Indian tunes over Japanese music or silence. The Japanese recording may have put the chimps off because it resembled the rhythmic slapping and stamping sounds made by a male chimp displaying dominance, Mingle says. “Socko does amazing displays,” she adds, referring to a famous resident of Yerkes National Primate Research Center. “He keeps really good time.”
Margolis, a junior entering Emory from Oxford College, analyzed tetracycline in ancient remains for bioarcheologist George Armelagos. “My mom used to bury animal bones in my sand box so I could dig them out,” Margolis says, explaining why she was thrilled to work alone in a basement with human skeletons. “This has been my passion since I was a little kid.”
She used a bandsaw to slice 1,000-year-old rib cages from Nubia into thin pieces. She submerged the bone slices in epoxy, then baked them and ground them down for slides. When she studied the samples under a microscope, she found markers for tetracycline spread throughout.
“Tetracycline is an antibiotic that binds to calcium,” Margolis explains. Although the bones pre-date the official discovery of the drug, “it appears these people were ingesting tetracycline throughout their lifetimes.”
Her work supported Armelagos’ growing body of research into how tetracycline may have been a byproduct of an ancient beer-making process.
Potini, an Emory sophomore, also studied ancient forms of medication – involving monarch butterflies. Her project took her into the field and into a lab, where evolutionary biologist Jaap De Roode raises eastern monarch butterflies in flight cages. De Roode studies complex interactions between parasites that infect the butterflies, and toxic chemicals, known as cardenolides, in milkweed plants.
The study that Potini worked on found that females infected with parasites preferred to lay their eggs on plants with higher levels of cardenolides, raising the question of whether they have some kind of medicinal benefit.
“Self-medication probably occurs more often than we realize in wild life, but we don’t have a lot of data on it,” Potini says. Learning how insects self-medicate could provide clues to fight human parasitic diseases, such as malaria, she adds.
“It is interesting in discussing the history of human violence to know that we have one close relative who is sort of a happy, go-lucky hippie primate, and we have one that is pretty brutal,” says Emory primatologist Frans de Waal, referring to the bonobo and the chimpanzee.
In the above video, de Waal debates whether human nature is essentially violent with psychologist Steven Pinker and anthropologist Richard Wrangham, both of Harvard.
So what can the Pentagon learn from the behaviors of chimpanzees and bonobos? De Waal covers that topic in the video below.
“I was invited one time to a think tank of the Pentagon,” he says. “I was the only animal person, the only primatologist. All the others were anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists. The Pentagon asked us the question, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, what’s going to happen to a super power that’s the only super power in the world? How can we use that status in the world?”
The relatively larger human brain makes us the most intelligent of the primates. But if we’re so smart, how come we’ve eaten our way into an obesity epidemic?
One reason is the relatively smaller human stomach and shorter large intestines, says Emory anthropologist George Armelagos.
“Our evolutionary history has given us a brain that is focused much of the time on eating, and a gut that isn’t designed for today’s variety and volume of high-density food,” explains Armelagos, a bioarcheologist and an expert in prehistoric diets.
Journalist Michael Pollan popularized the concept of “the omnivore’s dilemma,” the desire for dietary variety paired with the perilous search for new foods, in his best-selling book by the same name. Pollan primarily covered how today’s abundance of food is fueling a national eating disorder.
Armelagos focuses on the prehistoric perspective. “Our current pattern of eating reflects the way in which Homo sapiens evolved and resolved the omnivore’s dilemma,” he says. “Our cravings for certain foods don’t go back just a few years, or even 10,000 years, but more than a million years."
For thousands of millennia, our ancestors subsisted as foragers, hunting and gathering in marginal environments. The expansion of the brain’s neocortex in early humans facilitated social cognition and memory, supporting the task of finding edible plants and prey amid the vagaries of an unpredictable climate.
Larger brains, however, increased caloric demands: The human brain, which represents only 2 percent of our body mass, consumes 20 percent of our energy. Around two million years ago, Armelagos says, our early ancestors began evolving a smaller total gut size, relative to other primates.
“The expensive-tissue hypothesis argues that our big brains are fueled by the energy saved by our having a smaller stomach and shorter large intestines,” he says. “Whatever the reasons for the changes in the alimentary canal, there is no question that they necessitated diets of high-quality, high-density foods.”
Fast-forward through millennia to the development of agriculture, cooking, the industrialization of food, and finally the advent of McDonalds. Today we’re faced with a perfect storm that’s capsizing the nutritional benefits of our adapted biology, Armelagos says.
“If you study our primitive pasts, the biological underpinnings of today’s obesity epidemic become clear,” Armelagos says. “But a solution to this complex bio-cultural problem is not so clear.”
Check out this Dutch news report, above, on the recent performances of "Hominid" at Holland's Burger Zoo. Theater Emory commissioned the play, which is based on chimpanzee behaviors observed by Emory psychologist Frans de Waal when he was a young researcher at the zoo. The video report is in Dutch, but the images give an idea of the elaborateness of the large, outdoor staging of the drama for its ongoing European tour.
The dead sperm whale found this week in the Gulf of Mexico puts the spotlight on how the BP oil spill will affect this endangered mammal, along with other cetaceans, such as dolphins, that must break the oil-slicked surface to breathe.
“These communities of whales and dolphins are already known to be stressed, because they’re dealing with other pollutants, like heavy metals, in the water,” says Emory neuroscientist Lori Marino, an expert in whale and dolphin intelligence and behaviors. “They are already compromised animals, and when they have something like this to deal with, it can be a tipping point for them.”
NASA satellite image, below, shows oil reaching Alabama beaches and the Florida panhandle. (Click on image to enlarge.) It is unknown whether the deaths of the young sperm whale and the half-dozen dolphins that have been found washed up on Gulf beaches are oil related. Unlike the stark visual evidence of birds with oil-coated feathers, the toxic impact on whales and dolphins is primarily internal.
“They have to open their blowholes to breathe,” Marino says. “Imagine sticking your nose in a bowl and snorting oil. You’d be choking.”
A greater, and more lasting, impact may be the domino effect of toxins in the food chain, as oil droplets get into the fish and squid that cetaceans eat, she says.
Recent reports of large numbers of dolphins moving into shallow waters off Florida to flee the oil are troubling, Marino adds. “If they stay in the shallows and the oil comes in after them, they’ll be trapped.”
Charles Q. Choi writes in Scientific American: Chimpanzees may comfort others in distress in ways very similar to how people do, according to what may be the largest study of consolation in animals by far. The new findings in our closest living relatives could help shed light on the roots of empathy in humans. ...
To better understand how empathy might have evolved in our lineage, animal behaviorist Teresa Romero of Emory University and her colleagues studied roughly 30 chimpanzees housed outdoors at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Over a span of eight years they documented cases where uninvolved bystanders offered comfort to recent victims of aggression. Whereas most studies on animal consolation typically involve looking into a few hundred cases of conflicts and their aftermaths, "ours is based on an analysis of about 3,000 cases," Romero says.
An Emory psychologist offers insights on the mysteries of female sexuality in the provocative new documentary “Orgasm Inc.” Following is an excerpt from a report on the film by Newsweek:
“Orgasm Inc,” which has its New York premiere May 27 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is a desperately needed antidote to all the hype generated by pharmaceutical companies pursuing their holy grail: a female Viagra. ... Filmmaker Liz Canner hopes the film will help women be more skeptical about drug-company claims. ...
What does make a woman more receptive to sex? That’s still something of a mystery. Emory University psychologist Kim Wallen, who is interviewed in the film, has been studying the interaction of hormones and social influences on sexual behavior for many years. Much of his work consists of observing monkeys at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. He has what could be the film’s best line. As Wallen and Canner watch monkeys engaged in an elaborate sexual dance, she asks him what he has learned about sex by studying primates. Wallen thinks for a moment and then says, “Pay more attention to females.” That’s better than a pill any day.
A crowd is packed into the back room of Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, an old-school watering hole known for its clientele of politicians and law enforcement. They are sharing pitchers of beer, noshing on nachos and wings, and waiting to see Emory neuroscientist Todd Preuss talk about brains.
Preuss, an associate research professor at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, is momentarily taken aback by how many people have shown up on a Saturday night to watch him give a PowerPoint on the evolutionary connections between human brains and those of other members of our extended primate family. “My mother would never believe it,” he says with a smile.
The Atlanta Science Tavern began in summer 2008. “We gather in a casual environment, like a cafe, restaurant, bar, or home, to share a bite to eat and pint to drink, and to discuss interesting news and views about scientific advancements and discoveries and how they affect our daily lives,” says co-founder Josh Gough, a technology professional in Atlanta. “The idea came from PBS and NOVA’s Science Cafe movement.”
Marc Merlin, an Emory alum who works for an Atlanta nonprofit and writes the blog Thoughts Arise, joined the group about a year ago and enjoys discussing issues like climate change, vaccination safety, and the teaching of evolution. “The Science Tavern,” says Merlin, “has reaffirmed for me the existence of a community of people who hold well-reasoned, dispassionate argument in high regard.”
The A. Sediba cranium belonged to a juvenile that lived nearly 2 million years ago. Photo by Brett Eloff, courtesy of Wits University.
Emory anthropologist Dietrich Stout has been tapped to help analyze the skull of a newly discovered hominid species, dating back to the pivotal period when the human family emerged.
“This is a remarkably intact skull of a potential human ancestor from right around two million years ago, when we think the origin of our own genus was happening,” Stout says. “It’s exciting to learn that such a thing exists, let alone to be asked to work on it.”
Stout was chosen to join the team of researchers on the project due to his expertise on early brain function, particularly the relationship between the use of stone tools and brain evolution.
"Whatever story this skull has to tell, it will be interesting," Stout says.
The fossilized skull was found last year in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa. Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, from the University of the Witwatersrand, and fellow researchers have since recovered skeletal remains of several other individuals belonging to the new species, named Australopithecus sediba.
Scientists estimate that the individuals lived 1.78 to 1.95 million years ago, when early species of the human genus Homo existed along with species from the more ape-like genus Australopithecus.
Attempts to narrow down the emergence of the human line have “always been a bit messy,” Dietrich says, noting that multiple candidate species have been identified – often from incomplete remains and sometimes based on a single individual. The numerous pieces emerging from the A. sediba site, however, already represent at least two individuals and are fitting together like a puzzle, giving researchers a clearer view back in time.
Sediba means “source” in Sotho, and A. sediba shows an interesting mix of characteristics. “They have primitive, ape-like long arms, but much more human-like bi-pedal legs and posture,” Stout says. “The skull looks to have the capacity for the size of brain you’d expect to find in a modern chimpanzee – or perhaps an early human ancestor. It appears to be on the cusp, giving us the potential to tease apart some of the really interesting questions about what got human brain evolution started, such as whether the size or structural changes were first.”
Stout will join other members of the team in Johannesburg and examine the fossils first hand. High-tech scans of the skull fossil are being used to create a virtual, 3-D “cast” of the cranium. “It’s not like working with an actual flesh brain, but it will give us information about the size and volume of what was inside the cranium, and some of the features of the surface morphology,” Stout says.
When Brad Pitt begins sporting a fedora, chances are that many other young men will start wearing one, too. Anthropologists define this disproportionate influence as prestige, a trait that has been thought of as uniquely human – until now.
Emory researchers have discovered that chimpanzees prefer to follow the example of older, high-status individuals when it comes to solving a problem or adopting a new behavior. In a study recently published by PLoS One, chimpanzees from two separate groups watched two group mates, distinguished by status and experience, solve a foraging task, each using a different technique. When the observing chimpanzees were given the opportunity to solve the task, they overwhelmingly preferred the technique used by older, higher-status individuals with a proven track record of success.
“Because both techniques were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by both models, and resulted in equal rewards, we concluded the most copied chimpanzee enjoyed more prestige than the other,” said Victoria Horner, from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory. “If similar biases operate in the wild, the spread of cultural behaviors may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of the original performer.”
The researchers hope that further studies will shed light on the relative influence of age, dominance rank and experience, all of which may contribute to chimpanzee prestige.
This monumental book—more than 900 pages long, 30 years in the making, at once grand and intricate, breathtakingly inclusive and painstakingly particular—exhaustively explores the biological evolution of human behavior and specifically the behavior of children. Konner weaves a compelling web of theories and studies across a remarkable array of disciplines, from experimental genetics to ethnology. ...
Konner is especially interested in play, which is not unique to humans and, indeed, seems to have been present, like the mother-offspring bond, from the dawn of mammals. The smartest mammals are the most playful, so these traits have apparently evolved together. Play, Konner says, “combining as it does great energy expenditure and risk with apparent pointlessness, is a central paradox of evolutionary biology.” It seems to have multiple functions—exercise, learning, sharpening skills—and the positive emotions it invokes may be an adaptation that encourages us to try new things and learn with more flexibility. In fact, it may be the primary means nature has found to develop our brains.
A recent American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) study, which found that visits to zoos and aquariums have a positive impact on the conservation attitudes and understanding of adult visitors, is flawed and misleading, says Emory neuroscientist Lori Marino.
The journal of Society and Animals recently published a critical evaluation by Marino and colleagues of the 2006 AZA study “Why Zoos and Aquariums Matter.” (Download a PDF of the evaluation here.)
“There is no compelling evidence to date that zoos and aquariums promote attitude changes, education or interest in conservation in their visitors, despite some claims to the contrary,” Marino says.
“The impact of zoos remains an important, open question, deserving of a methodologically sophisticated study,” she adds.
Marino, an expert in dolphin and whale intelligence, believes that the high intelligence of these animals makes it immoral and cruel to use them as captive entertainers. She is set to give scientific testimony on April 27 before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, regarding the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
The law, which establishes basic requirements for the display of captive marine mammals, dates back to 1972. The death of an animal trainer last February, after a killer whale pulled her into a tank, brought oversight of the law into the national spotlight.
“Some zoos do good conservation work, and I think their efforts should be applauded and supported,” Marino said. “But the public needs to know what is real education and conservation and what’s just entertainment.”
Marino takes particular issue with the AZA study because she says it was methodologically flawed, was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, and is cited by some zoos and aquariums as evidence of their educational impact.
The AZA study was based on surveys of more than 5,500 visitors to 12 zoos and aquariums over three years.
Marino evaluated the AZA findings along with Emory psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, an expert in self-report research methodology, and co-authors from three other Atlanta universities who specialize in the sociology and culture of zoos.
The researchers cited six major weaknesses that they found in the AZA study. For example, their analysis noted that survey respondents were simply asked to report their opinions of whether their zoo visits had been educational, rather than actually being tested for new knowledge.
“That’s like a teacher asking students at the end of the class if they learned anything, and if they say, ‘yes,’ giving them an A,” Marino says.
A scene from the Emory staging of "Hominid." Photos, above and below, by Daniel Weiss.
Most actors dream of Broadway, but Adam Fristoe is thrilled about his debut at a zoo on May 27. The star of “Hominid” will be playing a human, who is really a chimpanzee, at Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, Holland.
"The audience will be able to walk nearby and see several of the actual chimpanzees from the story that inspired the play," says Fristoe, an instructor of theater studies at Emory.
Burgers Zoo is the site of the true-to-life chimpanzee murder-suicide drama observed several decades ago by a young Dutch psychologist, Frans de Waal. De Waal went on to write his seminal book “Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes.” He is now director of the Living Links Center at Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Adam Fristoe, center, in a scene from the Emory production.
Theater Emory commissioned the play “Hominid,” written by Out of Hand Theater and Ken Weitzman, and based on de Waal's books. Last year, “Hominid” was performed on campus in a co-production of Out of Hand and Theater Emory.
“We hope to affect people’s imaginations by linking science and art,” says Fristoe, who is co-artistic director of Out of Hand Theater.
Listen to a podcast on "Hominid" by Public Radio International:
A European tour this summer takes "Hominid" to Germany and several places in the Netherlands, in addition to Burgers Zoo. The European shows, in collaboration with a Dutch company called “The Lunatics,” will be large outdoor spectacles.
"We're going to build a chimp colony compound at each of the locations, complete with a moat and a three-story steel tree that shoots sparks when it gets electrified," Fristoe says.
All of the European dates are expected to draw large crowds, but Fristoe says he is most excited about bringing "Hominid" to Burgers Zoo. “It’s an odd journey for a story to take.”
Lying inside the missile-like MRI tube this morning while foghorn-like blasts of sound fill the room is a 26-year-old female chimpanzee named Melinda. The 74-kilogram, hairy hulk rests on a gurney, with a heating pad over her chest and an intubation tube delivering a sedative gas. The only thing visible is the top of her skull, which has been outfitted with a helmet called a "head coil" that transmits and receives the radio frequencies. ..
This bizarre scene might look like something out of a sci-fi horror flick, but as Yerkes neuroanatomist Todd Preuss emphasizes, appearances can be deceptive. The MRI emits no radiation and is something of a gentle giant, affording researchers a unique view into the hidden architecture of the body's soft tissues without causing harm. "This is completely noninvasive," says Preuss. "It's the kind of procedure we'd do with a human."
Melinda is the 29th chimpanzee that Preuss and anthropologist James Rilling of Emory have scanned as part of a study that will examine the aging of their brains in relationship to humans, including people with Alzheimer's, a disease that does not appear to afflict chimps. "No one has ever compared human brain aging with brain aging in our closet living relative to identify what's really distinctive about humans," says Rilling.
"The power dimension is totally underestimated and neglected by the social sciences. We all know that it exists, but there is remarkably little serious research on it. I challenge you to find much on power, dominance, or social hierarchy in any social psychology textbook. If it is mentioned at all, it's usually in negative terms, such as 'power abuse.' Even political candidates prefer to tout their interest in education, health care, fiscal responsibility, but have you ever heard one of them say 'I love power' as the reason why they are entering the mudslinging arena? It is a total taboo.
"The vertical dimension of social life is blindingly obvious in every primate society, however. Chimpanzee form coalitions specifically for this purpose: to overthrow the leader."
The objective will be to bring in bigwig scientists like psychologist Frans de Waal from the school's Yerkes National Primate Research Center to marshal a body of basic research on social bonding and translate it into drugs or behavioral interventions that can help autistic children and those suffering from the kinds of social deficits that can occur with schizophrenia. These studies will also shed light on how the normal social brain works.
