Download Outline Chapter 7 File

Primate Sociality, Social Behavior,
and Culture CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Focus of the chapter:
The different types of primates and the variations in their social behaviors
Primate vocalizations
Primates are very social creatures. They express themselves in social situations through a variety of
behaviors, including grooming (a bonding behavior).
Primate social groups reflect the complexity of their social relationships. Group structures can range from
one male with several females to groups of many males and females to solitary individuals. Primates show
both competitive and cooperative behaviors, all of which can be studied within an evolutionary context.
Primate researchers have long been collecting evidence that nonhuman primates have culture, particularly
material culture or the ability to make simple objects to alter their environments (e.g., stick tools to fish for
termites).
CHAPTER OUTLINE
1. Primate Societies: Diverse, Complex, Long-Lasting
a. Diversity of Primate Societies
b. Social Behavior: Enhancing Survival and Reproduction
i. Social signals establish and maintain social relationships.
ii. Primate societies are organized.
iii. Primates form long-term social relationships.
iv. Social behaviors in primates enhance survival and reproduction and are thought to be
maintained by natural selection.
c. Primate Residence Patterns
i. Primates have a wide variety of residence patterns, divided according to the number of
adult males and females present in the group.
d. Primate Reproductive Strategies: Males Differ From Females
i. Males compete for access to females; this affects male body and canine size.
ii. Females compete with each other for resources to support young; this affects social
behaviors.
e. The Other Side of Competition: Cooperation in Primates
i. Cooperative levels in primates are also high.
ii. Altruistic behaviors include alarm calls, grooming, food sharing, and care giving.
1. Part of kin selection, or behaviors related to living with relatives who share
genetic material
2. Seen most in cercopithecoids and chimpanzees
2. Getting Food: Everybody Needs It, but the Burden is on Mom
a. Food resources and the search for them occupy over 50% of a primate’s waking hours.
b. Especially high are the nutritional needs of females with offspring.
c. Quality, distribution, and availability all affect a female’s success at foraging.
3. Acquiring Resources and Transmitting Knowledge: Got Culture?
a. Notion of nonhuman primate culture can be controversial.
b. Jane Goodall was the first to assert that chimpanzees possessed material culture.
c. Now, other researchers have also seen behaviors related to the use and alteration of objects as a
form of material culture.
4. Vocal Communication is Fundamental Behavior in Primates
a. All primates produce vocalizations serving different functions.
b. Researchers study primate vocalizations to understand how different sounds function.
i. Playback experiments are utilized to determine how primates respond to the
vocalizations of group members.
c. Vocalizations can range from very soft to very loud.
i. Information transmission over short (soft) and long (loud) distances
d. Vocalizations may indicate a primate’s emotional state as well as giving the listeners
information about the world around the caller.
e. Primatologists have learned that vocalizations have clear patterns, similar to human language.
i. Primate vocalizations are largely preprogrammed.
ii. Some innovations in sounds can occur.
f. Vocalizations also serve to name resources and monitor political landscapes within a group.
g. Language studies have demonstrated that great apes lack the capability to produce human
speech, but possess rudimentary cognitive abilities necessary to understand human speech.