Monkeys, Too, Can Recollect What They've Seen

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2011) — It's one thing to recognize your childhood home when you see it in a photograph and quite another to accurately describe or draw a picture of it based on your recollection of how it looked. A new report published online on April 28 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, offers some of the first clear evidence that monkeys, like humans, have the capacity for both forms of memory.

The researchers found that rhesus monkeys can flexibly recall extremely simple shapes from memory, as evidenced by their ability to reproduce those shapes on a computer touch screen. The findings suggest that human and monkey memory is more similar than scientists knew, the researchers say.

Unlike recognition, recall shows an ability to remember things that are not present in the moment, the researchers explained. Recall is necessary for planning and imagining and can increase the flexibility of navigation, social behavior, and other cognitive skills.

"The ability of monkeys to recall these shapes flexibly suggests that they might be able to recollect other types of information that would be useful to them in the wild," said Benjamin Basile of Emory University. "It's exciting to speculate that they may be able to recollect the appearance of monkeys they know, what favorite foods look like, or the path they would have to take to get to a water source."

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110428123934.htm

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[geckosfeet]

2. I am continually amazed at the arrogance of humans.

...some of the first clear evidence that monkeys, like humans, have the capacity...

[Scuba]

3. Millions of dog owners know this to be true of their canines, too. n/t

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Of course, knowing something to be true and actually proving it

scientifically are two very different things. Particularly when dealing with cross-species communication.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Indeed. Like the guilt thing. Where you know that the dog knows...

...that it's in trouble before you spot the upturned flowerpots.

Still we are getting there.

Whatever happened to that researcher raising her kid with gorillas?

[RaleighNCDUer]

9. Cats, OTOH, are sociopaths.

The cat will eat the canary and smile, and will throw up in your shoe without a qualm. Or maybe that's just payback for the 16th century witch burnings.

[qazplm]

10. actually my cat at least acts

like she knows she's done something wrong. She will often flop and try to be cute right after doing something wrong because she thinks that will dissuade the "bad kitty" that is coming.

[RC]

5. I'm old enough to remember when only humans used tools.

Only humans could communicate with real meaning with each other. Humans did not have any instincts, only animals had them. That's how animals understood each other - instinct.

At the rate we are going we are going to destroy 'civilization' and be like the animals again. Then maybe a more peaceful species will become dominate.

[TheMadMonk]

7. Actually, absent a near 100% lethal disease to wipe us out completely...

...the odds are very good that we'll rise back to the top again.

There is almost truth in many of the old observations about the fundamental difference between man and the rest.

Our tool use is orders of magnitude more complex than any other creature's. As is the complexity of our language and the DEPTH of meeaning which we are able to convey.

Arrogance and a desire for simple answers (plus of course keeping God placated) lead people to treat very limited abilities as effectively zero, in comparison to specific human abilities.

What really does set us apart is our ability for abstract, holistic, heirachial, recursive, referential thought.

We are generalists who can generalise (almost infinitely it seems). Look at the CERN supercollider. How utterly preposterous is it that we could ever possibly conceive and construct such a device? And yet, we did it by nesting a multitude of simple concepts, until 27 km of tubing wrapped in a gazillion killometres of wires and other tubes, gives us the ability to peer not just into the heart of the atom, but deep into the "blood" within.



One of the "Big Fears" of a descent into neo-barbarism, is that without an abundance of liquid hydrocarbons, (not to mention the depletion of other resources) we won't be able to restart a proper technological age. An argument which is then sometimes extended to the need to get off Earth and properly colonise space and other locations in the solar system NOW and not later once we've dealt with all our other problems.

Personally I think that's a lot of hogwash. With luck, what it might preclude is the age of commerce which is killing us now.

[laconicsax]

8. LOL WUT?

:shrug: