Today is national monkey day!!!

[AVG-JOE]

Happy monkey Day 2014!

Once again, monkey Day arrives. And once again, it's time to count down the most interesting, the craziest, the most profound monkey (and primate) news stories of 2014!

Monkey Day - Celebrate Monkey Day December 14th

Just 'cause the Monkeys with a capital 'M' for Sentience rule the world does not diminish the role of our closest surviving relatives in the biosphere.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Study: Unlike People, Monkeys Aren't Fooled By Expensive Brands

In at least one respect, Capuchin monkeys are smarter than humans — they don’t assume a higher price tag means better quality, according to a new Yale study appearing in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Full story here.

 

[Statistikhengst]

Long live the Monkeys!!!!

 

[AVG-JOE]

And long live the monkeys!

To diverse biosphere!!

 

[Statistikhengst]

Look, this monkey is stretching her back, and that male monkey is helping her to do it!!!

 

[waltky]

Yea, so does Uncle Ferd...

Monkeys get more selective as they get older
June 23, 2016 - "With increasing age, the monkeys became more selective in their social interactions," researcher Laura Almeling said.

For young people, friends are often determined by proximity. Whoever is around is your friend. Whereever you are, that's the playground. As humans get older, they become more selective in choosing whom they spend time with, as well as how they spend their time. According to a new study, the same goes for monkeys.

The findings, detailed in the journal Cell Biology, suggest human selectivity may be deeply ingrained in our evolutionary history. "An important psychological theory suggests that humans become more socially selective when they know that their remaining life time is limited, such as in old age," Laura Almeling, a biologist at the Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, explained in a news release. "We assume that monkeys are not aware of their own limited future time." "Therefore, if they show similar motivational changes in old age, their selectivity cannot be attributed to their knowledge about a limited future time," Almeling continued. "Instead, we should entertain the possibility that similar physiological changes in aging monkeys and humans contribute to increased selectivity."

Hey, anybody see a she-monkey runnin' `round loose?​

Researchers presented a group of Barbary macaques with a variety of novel animal toys, only one of which featured a food treat. Adolescent monkeys quickly grew out of their interest in the toys, preferring only the food-baited object once they matured. Researchers also measured how monkeys' social interactions change as they age, using field observations and by measuring the responses of monkeys to pictures and sounds of friends and infants.

Although older monkeys remained engaged and interested in group dynamics and social interactions, they invest less time and energy in social relationships. "With increasing age, the monkeys became more selective in their social interactions," Almeling said. "They had fewer 'friends' and invested less in social interactions. Interestingly, however, they were still interested in what was going on in their social world." "Older females continued to respond particularly strongly to hearing a scream for help from their best friend," Almeling explained. "Older males still looked preferentially at pictures of the newborns", she says, noting that Barbary macaque males use infants as status symbols." Almeling and her colleagues plan to conduct further tests to rule out the possibility that older monkeys avoid social interactions as they age due to the stress they cause.

Monkeys get more selective as they get older

Older Monkeys Get More Selective About Companions
June 23, 2016 - The grumpy old man who yells “Get off my lawn!” at anyone who comes near is a funny stereotype. But it's based in reality - many people do get more prickly as they age. Psychologists attribute that social selectivity to a recognition that time is growing too short to waste it on people we don’t like. But our desire to hang out less and narrow our social interests may have deeper roots.

Scientists studying Barbary macaques at the La Forêt des Singes Park in Rocamadour, France noted that older monkeys tended to be pickier about who they interacted with but were still interested in the social information around them. Since it’s likely that monkeys are not aware of their limited life spans, scientists believe that decreases in social interactions may be an innate trait of all primates.

Social networks

In this study, published in Cell, Laura Fischer, head of the Cognitive Ethology Laboratory at the German Primate Center, and her team observed over 100 Barbary macaques during social interactions. They supplemented their observations with experiments that tested the monkey’s interest in new toys and in social information about their friends. First, the expected finding. The monkey’s interest in exploring new things decreased quickly with age, less so if food was involved. This is attributed to a loss of fine motor skills as the monkeys got older.

A Japanese Macaque (or Snow Monkey) soaks in a hot spring at a snow-covered valley in Yamanouchi town, central Japan​

Now for the unexpected. Grooming is a prolific method of social interaction in monkey groups. It reduces stress and helps the monkeys form alliances with one another. As the Barbary macaques aged, they became much more selective in who they groomed, but they were still groomed by younger monkeys. “Some people look at relationships of monkeys just in terms of tit for tat,” Fischer told VOA. “If I groom you, you have to provide me some support in a future fight. This grooming of these old ladies and old monkey gents means that [younger monkeys] are still attached to them [older monkeys] although they provide no benefits.”

An older Barbary macaque being groomed by younger macaques at the La Forêt des Singes Park in Rocamadour, France.​

Even more remarkable was how the older monkeys handled social information - simian gossip, as it were. Who is having babies? Who is fighting with who? To simulate these tidbits, researchers played recordings of screams from older monkeys’ friends, as well as strangers. They also showed the older monkeys pictures of baby macaques, which hold a special status in their society. What surprised researchers was that both male and female monkeys continued to show interest in both the pictures of babies and the screams of their friends. “If somebody in their group is having a fight they’re still commenting … as if they were taking part in it emotionally,” explains Fischer. So while their social interactions became more focused, the older monkeys were still aware of the social goings on of their group.

Macaques and humans

 

[blastoff]

Well that explains all the bunting adorning the porches in the hoods today.