This week’s material is all about non-human primates and how they interact with one another in social groups. This can be a very valuable tool to provide insight into our own evolution. In the lectures for this week, there were tons of pieces of information that was completely new to me and provides me with a new outlook on how to study behavior, in both primates and humans.

               The first appealing tidbit of information that caught my eye was the idea that we share 98.5% of our genetic makeup with chimpanzees. This idea seems to come up in most courses that address evolution and works a convincing piece of evidence that evolution is undeniable. Although I think most of us knew this fact headed into this course, it is always amazing to me. To have almost the identical genetic makeup and still be so drastically different from chimpanzees always shocked me and shows how vast the human genome truly is.

               In the lecture, the experiments of Harry Harlow also peaked my interest.  Harlow placed baby monkeys in containments and placed a wire mother alongside a cloth mother. He then startled the baby monkeys and observed which mother the baby monkey fled to. The baby monkey almost always fled to the cloth mother proving the existence of an emotional bond between offspring and parent. This was covered in a psychology course that I had taken in the past, but its results remain interesting to me. Harlow also raised some of the monkeys and compared to the monkeys raised by actual monkey mothers, they were not socially adapted very well. These monkeys were not able to mate, form bonds with other monkeys or even raise their offspring. These experiments show so much about the human biology in my mind. Raising children and forming social bonds the way that these animals do, shows a link between our two species.

               In the link “What is War Good For? Ask a Chimpanzee,” there was tons of information that shocked me. The concept of war in primates never occurred to me but the detail in which this article described their tactics was very surprising. The article describes “raids” from Spider monkeys of neighboring groups that resulted in grabbing, biting and even killing of former members of their groups. The article also mentions it is impossible to correlate these violent behaviors to a common ancestor when it comes to spider monkeys, chimpanzees and humans.

               I think that studying these animals provides such an interesting peek into our past as evolutionary beings and highlights the precursors of our current human behaviors. It is clear to see that the behaviors of these primates aren’t all that different from the way that us as human beings interact with one another on a day to day basis. The concept of war, impressing a mate and using each other to comfort one another are all familiar to us as humans and using these primates to study our behaviors is an important key to self-reflection in my mind.