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  • From: Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>
  • To: monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Study: Chimps Recognize Aping
  • Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 13:40:42 -0400


September 08, 2004 EDT
Study: Chimps Recognize Aping
By Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20040906/chimp.html
Sept. 8, 2004 - Next time you start imitating chimpanzees at the zoo, be aware that they know what you're doing.

Australian researcher Mark Nielsen and colleagues at the University of Queensland report they have the first evidence that animals other than humans can recognize when they're being imitated.

The research is published online ahead of print publication in the journal Animal Cognition.

The researchers set up a series of videotaped experiments where one researcher, Emma Collier-Baker, imitated a friendly 31-year old male chimp called Cassie.

The researchers looked for behavior normally seen in human children when they know someone is imitating them.

This includes repeating the imitator's movements and running sequences of actions, as if testing whether the imitator is indeed following.

The team found that Cassie repeated movements and performed "testing" sequences of actions. These included poking his finger out of the cage, nodding his head, raising his arm, hitting the ground and wiping his nose.

But the researchers had to make sure that Cassie wasn't doing the actions for some other reason. So they set up a number of control experiments.

In the first experiment, Collier-Baker moved at the same time as Cassie but didn't do the same actions as him; in the second, Collier-Baker moved randomly, regardless of when Cassie moved; and in the last one, she did not move at all.

It was only when Collier-Baker actually imitated Cassie, performing the same actions at the same time, that the chimp performed the repetitions and testing sequences.

"It just adds more evidence showing that there are more commonalities between us and our closest living relatives than there are differences," Nielsen said. "We share a lot of behaviors with them."

Ian Johnston, who researches animal learning at the University of Sydney, was impressed.

"I think it's a really cool study. It's really well controlled."

Johnston said previous studies had shown that chimps can acquire language skills, check themselves out in mirrors, learn from each other, and from humans.

"But this is the first time I'm aware of that they've actually recognized that a human is imitating them," he said.





  • [monkeywire] Study: Chimps Recognize Aping, Carrie McLaren, 09/08/2004

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