Social and non-social knowledge in vervet monkeys

Abstract

The social knowledge of East African vervet monkeys is striking. W ithin a local population the monkeys recognize individuals, and associate each individual with its particular group. W ithin groups, the monkeys recognize dominance relations, rank orders, and matrilineal kinship, and they remember who has behaved affinitively towards them in the past. Outside the social domain, however, vervets appear to know surprisingly little about other aspects of their environment. Although they do distinguish the different alarm calls given by birds, vervets do not seem to recognize the fresh tracks of a python, or indirect evidence that a leopard is nearby. Similarly, although cooperation and reciprocity seem common in social interactions, comparable behaviour has apparently not evolved to deal with ecological problems. Results support the view that primate intelligence has evolved mainly to solve social problems. As a result, vervet monkeys make excellent primatologists but poor naturalists.

Interstimulus interval and viewing time effects in monkey list memory

“…Several conclusions could follow from such results: (1) Monkeys may be incapable of rehearsing; (2) they may have to be instructed or prompted as to when or how to rehearse (frequently true for humans and a potentially important factor); or (3) they may not rehearse information in this context, but might do so in more natural contexts, such as social, sexual, or aggressive encounters. It is possible that the representational processes of the monkeys are specifically attuned to the processing of specific aspects of their environment, such as the social behavior of other monkeys (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1985). Thus, sexual or aggressive encounters might promote rehearsal in a way in which our nonsocial pictorial stimuli did not.…”

The Evolution of Primate General and Cultural Intelligence*

“…Social intelligence hypotheses have attracted recent support but the debate is not settled, and several authors have pointed out that the domains are difficult to separate [6,[17][18][19][20][21]. This issue, together with controversies over whether social cognition and social learning are adaptive specializations [22,23] and overmodularity in primate cognition [24,25], would be clarified by knowledge about the extent to which measures of social and ecological performance covary [20]. While factors ranging from social group size to diet [12,16,20,26] correlate positively with primate brain volumes, the patterns of association between these factors [20], their relationship to a concept of primate intelligence and the consanguinity of non-human primate and human intelligence remain contentious and poorly understood.…”

Acoustic Features of Rhesus Vocalizations and Their Representation in the Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex

“…For example, auditory communication signals (i.e., speciesspecific vocalizations) are especially important in the socioecology of several species of nonhuman primates (Cheney and Seyfarth 1985;Eimas 1994;Eimas et al 1971;Hauser 1997;Jusczyk 1997;Jusczyk et al 1983; Miller and Eimas 1995), such as rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Vocalizations convey information about the identity and the age of the caller and often provide information about sex and emotional or motivational state (Cheney and Seyfarth 1990; Hauser 1997).…”

“…Although the benefits and importance of language in human evolution are obvious (Carruthers 2002;Hauser 1997;Lieberman 2002), other nonhuman communication systems are also important. These communication systems are important because for most, if not all, species they are critical to the species' survival (Andersson 1996;Bennett et al 1997;Greenfield 2002;Hauser 1997;Lau et al 2000;Mech and Boitani 2003).For example, auditory communication signals (i.e., speciesspecific vocalizations) are especially important in the socioecology of several species of nonhuman primates (Cheney and Seyfarth 1985;Eimas 1994;Eimas et al 1971;Hauser 1997;Jusczyk 1997;Jusczyk et al 1983; Miller and Eimas 1995), such as rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Vocalizations convey information about the identity and the age of the caller and often provide information about sex and emotional or motivational state (Cheney and Seyfarth 1990; Hauser 1997).…”