6.12: Studying Primates
- Page ID
- 62295
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Ethology is the study of animal behavior. Don't confuse it with "ethnology" the study of "ethnos", ethnicities, the comparative study of human cultures.
When a researcher studies a wild population, she must habituate the animals and make them used to her presence so that they act naturally. Captivity is not an ideal place to study behavior, because the behavior has evolved in a certain environment, to solve problems in that environment, and you can't expect to see natural behavior outside of a natural setting. But, some psychological experiments are useful to blur the line between human and non-human primate.
Primatologists can observe primates in many different ways. The two most common are the focal sampling method and the scan sampling method. These either focus on an individual primate or on a specific behavior to observe. A researcher writes down an ethogram of observed behaviors.
Primates are observed for a variety of reasons, but most important is that they help humans understand more about human health, society, intelligence and evolution, since they are our evolutionary relatives (meaning we share common ancestry). Some behaviors are agnostic. Agonistic means aggressive, but it is usually more bluff and intimidation than actually fighting. This could mean baring large canines, flipping eyelids, standing bipedally, or throwing items. Natural selection is going to generally select for conflict resolution that avoids members of the same species injuring each other. Many primates are aggressive, but they don't kill each other very often. They learn hierarchies. Other behaviors are affiliative. Affiliative means social; while agonistic behavior helps to establish dominance hierarchies, it is usually followed by reconciliation, a kind of affiliative behavior. The most common primate affiliative behavior is grooming. Affiliative behaviors helps to maintain social cohesion and strengthen the social bond between group members.