Orangutan Cultures Press Release: January 02, 2003 Campaign to Stop Ladia Galaska and Save LeuserOnline Petition to Save Leuser Article about Leuser, December 2002 Write letters to help save Leuser
Press Release from Dr. Carel van Schaik, June 1999 Report on Illegal Logging in Indonesia by EIA Suggested reading regarding orangutans at Suaq Balimbing |
Carel P.van Schaik, Marc Ancrenaz, Gwendolyn
Borgen, Birute Galdikas, Cheryl D.Knott, Ian Singleton, Akira Suzuki,
Sri Suci Utami, and Michelle Merrill, 2003.
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AScribeBaltimore Sun 1BBC 2CNN 3Eureka Alert |
L.S.B. Leakey FoundationMSNBC 4National Public Radio 5New Scientist 6, 2, 7New York Times 8, 9Washington Post 2, 10 |
In addition, I've posted a press release explaining how the Orangutan Cultures discovery relates to efforts at habitat conservation, particularly the current campaign to halt road-building in the Leuser Ecosystem. I've also posted an article about the original conference that led to the Orangutan Cultures paper.
All publicity is good publicity. Of course, reporters are pushed to meet deadlines, and some of what is reported may need a little (ahem) clarification. I've always been a little compulsive about clear communication. Here are a few minor revisions for those interested in getting everything right:
1. "two populations of orangutans in Sumatra and four in Borneo -- isolated from each other by rivers, mountains and woods --" Well, "woods" wouldn't be much of a barrier to orangutans. Agricultural fields, plantations, human settlements and clear-cuts are, certainly.
2. "Some of the groups even play sport." or "The orangutans in central Borneo like to ride falling trees to the ground for fun..." I suppose it could be interpreted that way, but it's probably mostly about displaying fitness to potential rivals or mates. Well, I don't know, maybe it's just for fun. We'd have to ask them, and we don't really have a good way to do that yet, so this kind of interpretation is a little iffy. The Washington Post article does have a bit more discussion of this behavior at the end.
3."Human culture is cumulative; great ape culture is not. Knowledge and behavior are not passed on from one generation to the next." Actually, knowledge and behavioral information are passed from mothers to offspring, and perhaps from older to younger unrelated orangutans and chimpanzees. What is different is that those behaviors aren't elaborated in successive generations. What gets passed on is not much refined over the initial invention (contrast this with the leaps from, say, ox carts to high-speed trains).
4. "Scientists document ‘tricks of the trade’ among humanity’s second-closest kin " Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) would have to come in fourth. Tied for first are chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), with gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) a very close third. Including humans (Homo sapiens), the five great apes are all more closely related to one another than any is to our next nearest relative (the 'lesser apes,' including many species of gibbons and the siamang). The great apes all shared a common ancestor roughly 14 million years ago.
5. "The discovery could mean that primate cultural behavior is 14 million years old. That's when orangutans split off from the primate line that led to chimps and humans. Researchers presume orangutans behave now the same way they did then." I don't think researchers make exactly that presumption. There weren't orangutans 14 million years ago, just an ancestral ape whose descendants became orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans. What I (and I presume most of my colleagues) presume is that the capacities shared by orangutans, chimpanzees and humans were present in our last common ancestor, so we conclude that these simple skill-and-signal cultures have been around for that long.
6. " ...found 24 orangutan behaviours that are passed on by imitation, a hallmark of culture." Actually, what we found are 24 behaviors that are very likely to show culture (meaning passed on by social learning). We were not looking for imitation, which some animal behavior researchers reserve for a very specific learning process. Aside from occasionally witnessing orangutans who appear to observe one another, we are mostly inferring social learning based on the pattern of variation.
7. "Some research suggests that whales and dolphins, large-brained and social animals that also live in ecological niches, may show cultural behaviours." Umm, don't all animals live in ecological niches of some sort? (Geez, somebody at New Scientist musta switched to decaf. And I really like New Scientist.)
8. "Orangutans, those red-haired knuckle-dragging apes, are loping today into the upper echelons of the primate hierarchy." We here at the Orangutan Anti-Defamation League would just like to point out that many orangutans are more orange-y than red, and that, since they very rarely come to the ground, they don't really drag their knuckles all that much. Nor do they lope. Nor is there a primate hierarchy of which we are aware. (Okay, maybe I'm going a little overboard, but this by me is not a fortuitous start to an article reporting a scientific discovery.)
9. "...at one site all orangutans gave a Bronx cheer before going to sleep, while at other sites the ritual was absent." Two sites actually show this behavior. At Kinabatangan on Borneo they do it when they start building their night nests. At Suaq Balimbing on Sumatra, they did it usually as they were finishing their nests.
10. "In
the Suaq Balimbing area of northern Indonesia, orangutans use objects
to smash open the fruit..." 
At
Suaq Balimbing, orangutans modify twigs, then insert them into the
Neesia sp. fruit to clear away some of the fine, irritating
hairs that line the fruit's interior, then they use the twig tool
to pry out the protein- and fat-rich seed (they're really yummy).
Check out the video and this picture
for further clarification.
This doesn't cover all the minor errors (e.g. failing to italicize species names -- hey, I'm know I've let typos stand on my web pages for weeks sometimes... there are probably even a few in here) and I let slide a few slippery statements that, while not fully in error, will probably be misinterpreted. But I had to do something.
A petition to the World Bank Group is now online. Click here to sign the petition, then tell your friends!
Please click here to see a briefing on the road-building projects (in PDF format). Sections 5 and 6 are especially important for understanding the current crisis. Click here for sample letters to send to legislators, newspapers, etc. Click here for e-mails, fax #s, phone #s and addresses of US Senators and Representatives.
Note to media: Orangutan audio is available here. I have Hi8 video and a Betacam "B"-roll of orangutans and illegal logging in Leuser Ecosystem that can be made available, photos of the orangutans and the forest, and I'm available to give a personal account of the region based on my work there in 1999. Please contact me via e-mail (mym1@DELETETHISduke.edu) or phone 831-234-0898.