Looking at the studies by Harlow have always been captivating. I have learned a lot about these more in depth in other courses I have taken. I think the idea that the baby monkeys chose the cloth mother for their own comfort over nutrition and only went to the other mother for food is incredibly interesting. In the lecture where it mentioned how monkeys without mothers never learned to be monkeys it made me think of a case where a girl grew up completely isolated from all human interaction and communication. In her situation she used body language and sounds to communicate because she did not learn or experience any formal language during her critical period. This resembled the monkeys who grew up without their own mother who were unable to form bonds, mate and perform normal biological functions due to their lack of socialization growing up. Comparing both these situations we are able to see how important the socialization and development period is during that early critical stage.

Looking at the relationship between us and the chimpanzees was particularly surprising. I did not realize that we share about 98.5% of the same DNA which is insane to think that we are genetically that similar. Having this much DNA shared allows for so many opportunities to look at the differences to help understand the differences seen. I also was surprised to learn that they also eat meat and are one of the only other primates besides humans who also eat meat. I also was shocked that bonobos chimps also have sex recreationally like humans do because most animals only participate in that in order to reproduce offspring so I am curious as to what similarities we share with these particular chimps that we both do this without always the intention of reproducing. I think with these non-human primates especially there is so much that we can better understand about our own biology, behaviour and culture since we share such an extensive amount of DNA with them. It would be interesting to see what differences in the DNA are found between them and us and to determine how much those differences play a role in the different behavioural and biological differences we see versus maybe more of an environmental role. This relates to the concept of sociobiology that was mentioned in the lectures which focuses on the study of behaviour and its role in natural selection. Our current abilities and behaviours are a result of benefits from natural selection and it would be really cool to be able to look at the comparison in our own evolutionary trend compared to other primates.

I think we can learn a lot more about our evolution of communication and social behaviours by studying them as well because they are highly intelligent and social as well. Its intriguing to think that through evolution we were able to become the complex and intelligent species that we are and what possibilities are in store in the future for our closest related ancestors.