I found the most interesting part of learning this week in the video ‘The New Chimpanzees’ from National Geographic. The fact that human primates and other primates such as chimpanzees and bonobos. It is now clear that there is certain connections between human primates and chimpanzees from the learning this week from many lecture resources. I also really enjoyed the ‘What does it mean to be human?’ from Smithsonian National Museum of Natural history since the short video clips showed the similarities and critical difference between human primates and chimpanzees. These other primates also can be social, smart, tool using, and communicative with vocals among the social group that one is involved in. I believe the video did make a good connections, addressing why we are unique as human beings and what differentiate from other primates. Back to the video ‘The New Chimpanzees’, the cracking nut scene was really really interesting to me. This is not only because it was surprising Chimpanzees use tools to crack nuts, but it also was shocking to me that mother chimpanzee actually educates her child how to crack the nuts. Mother chimpanzee very slowly shows the position and grip of the club to her child, and what more surprising was that the child Chimpanzee does carefully follow her mother’s instruction. This is pretty good form of active teaching of Chimpanzees. I believe it is not limited to cracking nuts but mother would teach her child most of the skills it needs to survive.

Another interesting part was the female chimpanzee caster seems to understand her own tragedy of losing her own child because of mortally ill. When the baby chimpanzee dies, her behavior pattern was so similar to the human primates. She hugs the emaciated form of her baby and kisses on it seems like bid farewell to her own infant which is so close to the human primates’ behavior patterns. I think this is pretty significant, because it may support that they may have emotional interaction among them. Also, when female chimpanzee Cindy influential individual, many males stayed around her to groom for so long time which is not common to other juvenile chimps.

I found so many interesting parts in this week’s learning since the topic of human primate ans other primates was new to me that I had never really take a closer look into it. I had only heard of Jane Goodall for the Chimpanzee specialists in the news back in Korea years ago that I can not even remember. I think we can better understand our own biology, behavior and culture by studying non-human primates. This is because now I believe that Chimpanzees and human primates clearly shows connections in many perspectives. To me, Chimpanzees’ behavior patterns may seem like the past of human primates behavior patterns. I think we can reflect the our own species past to the Chimpanzees’ and from that we can definitely improve our outcomes in future in terms of analyzing the biology, behavior patterns, and culture of the non human primates.