Interesting Psychology of Chimps
Do you Know chimps have friends?
Interesting research on how chimps choose friends?
How
chimps choose friends
Like humans, many animals have close and stable friendships.
However, until now, it has been unclear what makes particular individuals bond.
Cognitive biologists at Austria’s University of Vienna and Switzerland’s
University of Zurich found that chimpanzees choose friends who are of similar
personality. The results of this study appear in the scientific journal
Evolution and Human Behaviour.
Chimpanzee personality in two zoos was measured with
behavioral experiments and years of observations of chimpanzee behavior.
“We found that, especially among unrelated friends, the most
sociable and bold individuals preferred the company of other highly sociable
and bold individuals, whereas shy and less sociable ones spent time with other
similarly aloof and shy chimpanzees,” said Jorg Massen of the University of
Vienna. medienportal.univie.ac.at
Which
came first: dexterous hand or agile foot?
Resolving a long-standing mystery in human evolution, new
research from Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute indicates that early
hominids developed finger dexterity and tool use ability before the development
of bipedal locomotion.
Combining monkey and human behavior, brain imaging and
fossil evidence, a team led by neurobiologist Atsushi Iriki has overturned the
common assumption that manual dexterity evolved after the development of
bipedal locomotion freed hominid hands to use fingers for tool manipulation.
In the study, published in Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society, researchers employed functional magnetic resonance imaging in
humans and electrical recording from monkeys to locate brain areas responsible
for touch awareness in individual fingers and toes, called somatotopic maps.
With these maps, the researchers confirmed previous studies showing that single
digits in the hand and foot have discrete neural locations in both humans and
monkeys.
New evidence shows monkey toes are combined into a single
map, while human toes are also fused into a single map, with the prominent
exception of the big toe, which has its own map not seen in monkeys. These
findings suggest that early hominids evolved dexterous fingers when they were
still quadrupeds. eurekalert.org
Sleeping
longer on weekends not a full recharger
Many people believe they can make up sleep lost during the
workweek by sleeping more on the weekend. But can this “recovery” sleep
adequately reverse the adverse effects of sleep loss?
Researchers led by Alexandros Vgontzas of the Penn State
University College of Medicine, placed 30 volunteers on a sleep schedule that
mimicked a sleep-restricted workweek followed by a weekend with extra recovery
sleep.
Volunteers’ sleepiness increased significantly after sleep
restriction, but returned to baseline after recovery sleep. Levels of a
molecule in blood that’s a marker for the amount of inflammation present in the
body increased significantly during sleep restriction, but returned to normal
after recovery. Levels of a hormone that is a marker of stress didn’t change
during sleep restriction, but were significantly lower after recovery. However,
the volunteers’ measures on a performance test that assessed their ability to
pay attention deteriorated significantly after sleep restriction and did not
improve after recovery.
The study appeared in the American Journal of
Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism. American Physiological Society
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