Monkeys can recognize faces in photos

Capuchin monkeys can recognize familiar individuals in photographs, a study by the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory has found. The discovery is in the current online edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The study not only reveals that capuchin monkeys are able to individually recognize familiar faces, but it also convincingly demonstrates they understand the two-dimensional representational nature of photographs," says lead researcher Jennifer Pokorny. "The fact these monkeys correctly determined which faces belonged to in-group versus out-group members, corresponding to their personal experiences, validates the conclusion that capuchin monkeys view images of faces as humans do -- as individuals they do or do not know.

For the study, the capuchins viewed photographs of four different faces. One of the four pictures was of a capuchin from their own group, which they needed to tell apart from three strangers. They also needed to do the reverse, differentiating one stranger from three familiar individuals.

“This required monkeys to look at similar-looking faces and use their personal knowledge of group mates to solve the task,” says Pokorny. "They readily performed the task and continued to do well when shown new pictures in color and in gray-scale, as well as when presented with individuals they had never before seen in pictures, though with whom they were personally familiar."

Researchers often use two-dimensional images in experiments, yet there is little conclusive evidence to suggest nonhuman primates, particularly monkeys, truly understand the image represents individuals or items in real life.

Pokorny trained under Emory primatologist Frans de Waal, who says the study is the first to show face recognition in monkeys is fundamentally similar to that in humans, indicating that face recognition is an evolutionarily ancient ability. De Waal is director of the Yerkes Living Links Center.

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Scholar reads the classics -- and bones

By Carol Clark

Katy Marklein entered Emory with aspirations to go to medical school, but that changed when she took a freshman anthropology seminar, “Reading the bones of the ancient dead.”

"I was hooked," Marklein recalls of the first day of class, when she walked in and saw two skeletons laid out on a table. "I immediately wanted to understand and appreciate their lives. It's fascinating to learn about the person behind a skeleton."

The seminar is taught by anthropologist George Armelagos, one of the founders of the field of bioarcheology – the study of skeletal remains of past human populations. “I see her as one of the legacies of my teaching,” says Armelagos. “Katy will be able to pick up and carry on skeletal biology in a way that it should be carried on.”

Marklein, a senior majoring in classics and anthropology, recently received a Marshall Scholarship for advanced studies in Britain. She will use the all-inclusive scholarship to pursue two masters degrees over two years: the first in skeletal and dental bioarcheology at the University College London, and the second in osteology and funerary archeology at the University of Sheffield.

Started by a 1953 Act of Parliament, the Marshall Scholarships commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan, and are designed to give future U.S. leaders an understanding of British life.

While many bioarcheologists focus on prehistoric populations, Marklein is applying bone biology to unlock secrets of the classical era. She spent the summer working in the Weiner Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

“There was a big box of skulls, and my first task was to clean them with toothbrushes,” says Marklein, who was dubbed “the Skull Washer” by a graduate student in the lab. “It probably sounds like a bad horror movie to a lot of people,” she says, adding that for her, it was a dream come true.

Marklein is continuing to work on an analysis of those remains from the classical and Hellenistic periods. “I’ve found some interesting cases of pathologies, and I’m getting some good portraits of a few individuals,” she says, explaining that bones can provide clues of people’s diets, whether they suffered from a disease or trauma, and even what they did for a living.

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Obama taps Emory president for bioethics panel

President Barack Obama appointed Emory President James Wagner as vice-chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was named as chair of the commission, which will advise the president on bioethical issues.

“As our nation invests in science and innovation and pursues advances in biomedical research and health care, it’s imperative that we do so in a responsible manner," Obama said. "This new commission will develop its recommendations through practical and policy-related analyses."

Read the White House announcement.

'Monkey see, monkey do' spreads social customs

Capuchin monkeys have a capacity for social learning that allows them to create group-wide social traditions, according to researchers at Emory's Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Their finding, published by the Public Library of Science One (PLoS One), is the first study to experimentally demonstrate the spreading of two different traditions in different groups of monkeys and suggests certain behaviors are learned and spread socially, similar to the way humans and chimpanzees learn social customs.

For the study, the alpha male of each of two groups of capuchins was trained to open an artificial foraging device in a different way, using either a slide or lift action, then reunited with his group. In each group, a majority of monkeys subsequently mastered the task. Although a majority of the monkeys also discovered the alternative method, each monkey that successfully opened the device continuously imitated and adopted the technique seeded by the alpha male of the group as the primary method.

"Being able to understand and learn about another's actions and then adopt that behavior is how a tradition if formed," says lead Yerkes researcher Marietta Dindo.

"We previously assumed cultural transmission of behaviors is unique to humans and their closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees. Our findings suggest the underlying mechanism that supports culture may be based on a very simple principle of acting like and identifying with those around you."

Dindo trained under Emory primatologist Frans de Waal, who credits the study as a promising first step to take cultural studies from apes to monkeys.

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Creationist drives readers bananas

Need a bookmark to go with your Ray Comfort edition of "On the Origin of Species?" The National Center for Science Education has thoughtfully provided one on its web site dontdissdarwin.com. Comfort, a Christian evangelist, distributed 200,000 copies of "Origin" free at 100 colleges around the country this week, including Emory. The catch? Comfort wrote an outlandish introduction in the edition, denouncing evolution.

"They made this version of the book to pass out to unknowing people who are thinking that they're getting a copy of 'Origin of Species,' when they're really just advancing the creationist agenda," biologist Jacobus de Roode told the Emory Wheel. "It's very bad, and it makes me very angry."

"I think Darwin's rolling over in his grave right now," added freshman June Lee.

Read the full article in the Wheel.

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