A team of University of Rochester scientists led by Assistant Professor Dr.
Jessica Cantlon are engaging the Zoo's troop of Olive
baboons in games of puzzle solving and decision making as part of a research
initiative to evaluate learning abilities and thought process across the animal
kingdom.
Humans display the unique ability to use language and
symbols. However, non-human primates (prosimians, monkeys and apes) possess
many complex conceptual skills despite the fact that they lack natural language
abilities.
Allison Barnard, research
associate, explains: "Our research team
is interested in identifying the cognitive abilities that distinguish humans
from other primates as well as those that all primates share, whether human or
non-human. Our lab is especially interested in the origins of conceptual abilities such as math, music and logic. We are currently
testing baboons’ abilities to choose the larger number from
two packages of fruit, to use a spatial map to find a hidden fruit, to learn
logical rules and to discriminate pitch from different melodies. We are interested in understanding whether
baboons share some basic aspects of our human conceptual profile despite the
fact that they lack language abilities. We are also interested in what baboon cognition can tell us about child
development. For example, we will examine
the extent to which the conceptual abilities of young children who have not yet
mastered language show similarity to the primitive abilities of baboons. Human children might be born with the same
cognitive capacities as other primates but change radically as they learn human
language and culture.
Our lab is also investigating how genetic and environmental
factors have shaped particular cognitive abilities over evolutionary time. We
will compare the baboons' performance on a variety of tasks to the performance
of many other animal species including great apes, lemurs, capuchin monkeys,
sparrows, squirrels, mice and many more.These species are all quite different
from one another yet many of them have a few things in common, such as what
they eat, the sizes of their groups or where they live. We are interested in whether certain
cognitive abilities are more likely to be shared by two different species when
they have something in common. By
comparing cognitive abilities across all of these different species, we can
determine whether a particular cognitive ability is likely to emerge in a species
that has the same group size, social structure, diet, terrain or predators.These
studies will help us understand the precise causes of complex conceptual skills
in animals."
For more information on how other scientists are studying
primate thought processes and decision making, check out the Smithsonian
Institution's "Think Tank" at the
National Zoo in Washington D.C. by
clicking here.