-Rhys Ursuliak (6)
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Orangutan Communication
This week for my blog I wanted to do some research on the great ape family. It seems like chimps and gorillas get much more attention paid to them in the media and society in general, so I decided to focus most on the great ape I've heard the least about, the orangutan. It turns out they are also the one least related to humans. Chimps are one degree away, gorillas 2, and orangutans 3. It seems like because of this you would see less and less in common with us and orangutans, but this does not appear to be the case. It may be surprising to learn that orangutans are very adapt at communicating amongst themselves, with other great apes, and even with humans. They use charade-like gestures to make requests, tell stories, and express themselves in other ways. Their pantomimes become more exaggerated and excited when they are being ignored or having trouble getting their point across. One orangutan has been recorded striking a coconut with stick in a machete-like gesture then handing the coconut to a human researcher, obviously requesting that she open the coconut. Another orangutan injured its foot and was aided by a researcher using latex from a leaf, and later returned to the researcher and preformed the same action with the same leaf then pointed to her healed foot, which could be inferred as reminiscence or thanks. These similarities raise the question, how much further away from humans does a primate need to be before it loses this level of communication?
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Wow those are really neat examples of human-like communication in animals! I had no idea that Great Ape communication capabilities were that intricate. Are orangutans good at learning as well? I wonder if we could teach them to communicate even more with us than they already can?
ReplyDelete-Posted by Johanna Brophy
Hi Rhys,
ReplyDeleteThis is so interesting. I feel that animals that are not even related to humans have a certain type of communication that gives it an advantage. So it should not really matter how far away primates are to humans on the evolutionary tree. Natural selection will select for traits of communication that will be the most advantageous for the animal. So all animals have some level of communication it is just the intensity that differs.
Posted by Whitney Huynh
Exactly how unrelated or related are orangutans to humans? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not too distantly related. On a similar note, how does scientists judge “relatedness”? But it is definitely interesting that these orangutans are able to communicate with humans in a manner similar to chimps and apes. In a previous blog post someone mentioned how humans tried to teach chimps sign language. Have the same been done with orangutans?
ReplyDeletePosted by James Lin
Orangatangs are incredibly smart animals. People often joke about monkeys, and many other animals, being stupid. However, I'm sure a lot of people don't know about these examples of communication. They are really remarkable animals!
ReplyDeletePosted by Ryan Brooks
Interesting I had never seen relatedness of primates to humans laid out like this. I think that chimps probably are the closest to humans genetically. Did you read anything about how chimps and orangutans differ?
ReplyDeletePosted by Caroline Adams
Response to James Lin,
ReplyDeletehttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Hominidae.PNG
Here's the chart I found to determine the relatedness between the great apes. Homo is humans, Pan are chimps, Gorillas are self explanatory, and Pongo are orangutans. They share a family with humans. I have read of them being taught some basic sign language as well!
-Rhys Ursuliak
This is very interesting... It is amusing to appreciate the fact that we share above a 90% genetic coding sequence for functional DNA with orangutans. Although they may not be our MOST closely related extant ancestors, we only differ only by a few percent in genomic sequence. This is just evidence how dramatically influential that small percentage is when comparing the levels of sophistication in humans vs orangutans. We are by far the most successful species on mother Earth, but who goes to say that centuries from now, chimps and/or orangutans will not evolve further to equate or even surpass our capabilities and become the superior species.
ReplyDeleteComment by Jose MIjangos