sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) (05/23/91)
Howdy netland, Some friends of mine and I were wondering about the particulars of planning in animals. The only examples of animal planning which we are aware of involve actions taken in response to a current desire. And we were wondering if there are examples of animals planning for a future desire that is clearly NOT instinctive. For example, I have heard of an experiment where a banana was hung high above the floor and a monkey (chimp?) had to arrange boxes so as to reach the banana. This is a good example of planning for a current desire (the monkey wanted the banana). Several good natural examples of planning for a current desire also exist. There is a primate (an ape or gorilla I think) which will go under tree branches and arrange them to form a canopy when it begins raining. (Had the primate built this canopy before any indications of rainfall existed, this would be a good example of planning for future desires). Additionally, the simple act of heading towards a stream when an animal is thirsty could be considered planning for a current desire. Some examples in nature which appear to be planning for future desires but are instinctive would be: nest building in birds, collecting nuts in squirrels, dam building in beavers, tigers cacheing leftovers, etc. etc. A natural example which might convince me that the animal was planning for future desires would be habitat building in species which do not always build habitats. For example, I do not know if ALL wolves dig dens (thus implying it is instinctive), but if wolves in certain climates did not build them because they were not needed, then the wolves which do dig dens (in Alaska wolves dig dens) could be said to be planning for the future desire of being dry and warm. The clearest proof of planning for future desires would be a controlled experiment. Consider a captive chimp held in a room in which artificial hail falls every 48-72 hours. This chimp has been provided with the materials she needs to build a complex shelter (3 or 4 minutes for the chimp to build the shelter). For this experiment, it is not important if she figured out how to build the shelter herself, so lets say we taught her. So, when it starts hailing, our intrepid chimp builds the shelter in the storm and hangs out until the hail stops (a half-hour later, say). After 2-24 hours, we go in and dismantle the shelter. After a sufficient number of hailstorms, will the chimp realize she should build the shelter soon after we dismantle it, or will she always build it AFTER the hail begins falling? Are there good examples of animals planning for future desires? Inquiring minds want to know. Steve Kommrusch sjk@hpfcsjk@hplabs.hp.com Disclaimer: After putting up with the inquisitive biologists, the chimp in the hailstorm experiment was flown to a Carribean island where she lived happily ever after on bananas and cream pies for the rest of her natural life.
shafto@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Eric Shafto) (05/24/91)
sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) writes: > > Howdy netland, > > Some friends of mine and I were wondering about the particulars of > planning in animals. The only examples of animal planning which we > are aware of involve actions taken in response to a current desire. > And we were wondering if there are examples of animals planning for > a future desire that is clearly NOT instinctive. > > For example, I have heard of an experiment where a banana was hung > high above the floor and a monkey (chimp?) had to arrange boxes > so as to reach the banana. This is a good example of planning for > a current desire (the monkey wanted the banana). > Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read this, but I've been meaning to ask someone if it was true for quite a while, anyway. Supposedly, some researchers following a chimp troop heard some strange chimp noises coming from another troop. They followed the noise, and found the troop gathered outside the den of some large cat (Leopard?). The three biggest males were standing just outside the entrance, yelling and waving their arms, apparantly to intimidate the leopard. Eventually, they started darting in and out of the den, and finally one of them emerged with a newly born cub, which they then played with until it was dead, and they all left. I cannot conceive of any rationale for that behavior except planning. Of course, it is an evolutionary advantage to do this, so it *could* be instinctual, but I don't know how likely that seems. Anyone have better information? -- *Eric Shafto * Sometimes, I think we are alone. Sometimes I * *Institute for the * think we are not. In either case, the thought * * Learning Sciences * is quite staggering. * *Northwestern University * -- R. Buckminster Fuller *
kuento@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (05/25/91)
In article <17580001@hpfcdj.HP.COM>, sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) writes: > > Howdy netland, > > Some friends of mine and I were wondering about the particulars of > planning in animals. The only examples of animal planning which we > are aware of involve actions taken in response to a current desire. > And we were wondering if there are examples of animals planning for > a future desire that is clearly NOT instinctive. [examples deleted] > Some examples in nature which appear to be planning for future desires > but are instinctive would be: nest building in birds, collecting nuts > in squirrels, dam building in beavers, tigers cacheing leftovers, etc. etc. > > A natural example which might convince me that the animal was planning > for future desires would be habitat building in species which do not > always build habitats. For example, I do not know if ALL wolves dig > dens (thus implying it is instinctive), but if wolves in certain climates > did not build them because they were not needed, then the wolves which do > dig dens (in Alaska wolves dig dens) could be said to be planning for the > future desire of being dry and warm. All right, then...let me toss out a few examples from my own field of expertise, bees. Honeybees store honey and pollen in order to have something to feed their young, but also so they'll have something to feed on during the winter. This behavior is variable, however - the African Honeybee (the "Killer Bee"), for example, does not store enough excess honey to survive the winter - which is why people north of Florida, Louisiana, and Southern California (here in the US) have little to fear about the bees establishing themselves. Another case is a species of Brazilian Stingless Bee (I kid you not - there are hundreds of species) which stores large balls of plant resin inside its nests. No one knew why they did so until they observed one such nest under attack by a species of "robber bee" - at which point the defenders took the resin balls and rolled them into the entrance to plug it, thus keeping the robbers out. An example of variable nesting is seen in a number of Sweat Bees, which are ground-nesting species - if a bee is digging her nest in very moist soil, she will alter the arrangement of brood cells to form a comb, with an air space surrounding the comb to keep the cells dry. These combs are thus like your "wolf dens", in that they are constructed only when the bee knows the soil is moist. You might well argue that all of these cases are essentially instinctive, and I'd agree - but remember that being *ABLE* to plan anything is itself dependent on having a brain designed for just such a function - and that's all genetic. There is, technically speaking, no such thing as a behavior with no genetic component. Beware of the trap of conceiving of "instinct" and "learning" as black and white, when all you're really doing is arbitrarily dividing up a spectrum of shades of gray. Also remember that for the behaviors of animals in the wild, the primary evolutionary force will be natural selection - if an animal has no need to plan, it probably won't, and if it does need to plan, it probably will. Until we can read minds, we're not going to get far trying to compare *anything* to humans ;-) > Inquiring minds want to know. > Steve Kommrusch > sjk@hpfcsjk@hplabs.hp.com -------(please include "DY" in subj header of mail to this user)-------- Doug "Speaker-To-Insects" Yanega "UT!" Bitnet: KUENTO@UKANVAX My card: 0 The Fool (Snow Museum, Univ. of KS, Lawrence, KS 66045) "Ev-ry-bo-dy loves the Michigan RAAAAaaaaag!" - The Singing Frog
sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) (05/29/91)
In some previous response to this thread, Doug Yanega writes: > You might well argue that all of these cases [bees] are essentially >instinctive, and I'd agree - but remember that being *ABLE* to plan >anything is itself dependent on having a brain designed for just such >a function - and that's all genetic. There is, technically speaking, >no such thing as a behavior with no genetic component. Beware of the >trap of conceiving of "instinct" and "learning" as black and white, >when all you're really doing is arbitrarily dividing up a spectrum of >shades of gray. Also remember that for the behaviors of animals in the >wild, the primary evolutionary force will be natural selection - if an >animal has no need to plan, it probably won't, and if it does need to >plan, it probably will. Until we can read minds, we're not going to >get far trying to compare *anything* to humans ;-) > >-------(please include "DY" in subj header of mail to this user)-------- >Doug "Speaker-To-Insects" Yanega "UT!" Bitnet: KUENTO@UKANVAX >My card: 0 The Fool (Snow Museum, Univ. of KS, Lawrence, KS 66045) >"Ev-ry-bo-dy loves the Michigan RAAAAaaaaag!" - The Singing Frog >---------- Doug brings up a good point that I've seen come up often in discussions on animal behavior. Drawing a line between instinct and learned behavior is very difficult to do in the wild. Indeed, identifying which of our own (human) behaviors are culturally learned as opposed to genetic is a topic of great debate. This is why I tried to come up with examples that were fairly black-and-white. I received some mail in reply to my query which described another occurance of planning in chimps. This example does seem to show rather clearly non-instinctive non-immediate planning tendencies. The author, however, could not site a reference; has anyone else heard of the following example: >I've heard about a chimp at a zoo that was awake when the keepers put >oranges (or some other fruit) in the pen (it was a large outdoor setup >that mimiced the natural habitat). The chimp buried the oranges. The >other chimps knew that they got oranges daily, and when they woke up, they >started looking for them. The chimp that hid them pretended to look for >them. Then, when they were asleep again, the chimp dug a couple up and >ate them. I think I heard this in an Evolution and Human Behavior course, >but I cannot give you any references. The deception involved is particularly >interesting. Alos, I'm still sort of curious about whether netters think my "chimp in a hailstorm" experiment would result in the chimp learning to plan ahead and build the shelter early... Thanks, Steve
rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe) (05/30/91)
In <17580001@hpfcdj.HP.COM> sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) writes: >Howdy netland, > >Some friends of mine and I were wondering about the particulars of >planning in animals. The only examples of animal planning which we >are aware of involve actions taken in response to a current desire. >And we were wondering if there are examples of animals planning for >a future desire that is clearly NOT instinctive. ... >Some examples in nature which appear to be planning for future desires >but are instinctive would be: ... collecting nuts >in squirrels As at least one other poster (Doug Yanega?) has pointed out, you should be careful about the learned/instinctive dichotomy. There probably isn't one any more than there is a dichotomy between light and dark... However, squirrels are much more fascinating animals than I would guess that you are giving them credit for. Lucy Jacobs has done field work and work with captive squirrels, and demonstrated that they do not just collect nuts; they hide them in little caches that they will dig up again sometimes months later. [Actually this idea of caching has been known for a loooong time... what Lucy showed is that the squirrels apparently remember the locations where they hide things rather than just digging randomly and occasionally coming across something that they had previously stored.] You should watch squirrels carefully sometimes. You may see that in the fall/winter they will carry food around, dig holes and bury the food, and in the spring/summer you should see them wander around and suddenly choose a place to dig. Ofentimes they come up empty, but sometimes (particularly if they are near their home tree) they will come up with something buried there previously. And if that's not enough, there's a guy (Bernd Heinrich?) who has studied bees (I say this possibly to jog Doug Yanega's memory if my memory of his name is incorrect) who has shown that a particular type of squirrel purposely scars the bark of trees in order to get sap from them. The problem is that the squirrels would not get a high enough energy return if they licked at the bark immediately after they bit into it, so they must wait for the sap to ooze out and partially evaporate so that the sugar concentration goes up. The squirrels make an incision in the bark, and then must return to that place some hours later to reap the reward that they set out to obtain... >The clearest proof of planning for future desires would be a controlled >experiment. Consider a captive chimp held in a room in which artificial >hail falls every 48-72 hours. This chimp has been provided with the >materials she needs to build a complex shelter (3 or 4 minutes for the >chimp to build the shelter). ... So, when it starts hailing, our >intrepid chimp builds the shelter in the storm and hangs out until the >hail stops (a half-hour later, say). After 2-24 hours, we go in and >dismantle the shelter. After a sufficient number of hailstorms, will >the chimp realize she should build the shelter soon after we dismantle >it, or will she always build it AFTER the hail begins falling? Similar (but much less complicated) experiments have been performed in many animals, I believe. One obvious one that comes to mind is that bees can be trained to come to a particular place at a particular time. You can try this yourself by carefully placing a bowl of sugar water in a particular location every day at the same time, and then removing it after a fixed interval (say two hours). After a few days (maybe a week) you should see that bees will begin to arrive there shortly before you place the bowl, and will be gone shortly before you remove it. Similarly it has been observed that sharks off of enewetok atoll would begin to congregate at a particular dock every day just before the garbage was about to be dumped there. I suspect that it is very common for animals to "plan" to be at a particular location when food is likely to be available. In the case of bees, the ability comes in handy wrt flowers that open at certain times during the day. For sharks the natural correlate would likely be the circadian activity patterns of coral reef fish. Not quite as elaborate as your gedanken chimp experiment, but it still represents anticipation of an event prior to sensory experience of it. > Steve Kommrusch > sjk@hpfcsjk@hplabs.hp.com And: In article <1850@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> shafto@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Eric Shafto) writes: >Unfortunately, I can't remember where I read this, but I've been >meaning to ask someone if it was true for quite a while, anyway. > >Supposedly, some researchers following a chimp troop heard some >strange chimp noises coming from another troop. They followed >the noise, and found the troop gathered outside the den of some >large cat (Leopard?). > >The three biggest males were standing just outside the entrance, >yelling and waving their arms, apparantly to intimidate the leopard. >Eventually, they started darting in and out of the den, and finally >one of them emerged with a newly born cub, which they then played >with until it was dead, and they all left. > >I cannot conceive of any rationale for that behavior except >planning. Of course, it is an evolutionary advantage to do this, >so it *could* be instinctual, but I don't know how likely that >seems. > >Anyone have better information? >-- >*Eric Shafto * Sometimes, I think we are alone. Sometimes I * >*Institute for the * think we are not. In either case, the thought * >* Learning Sciences * is quite staggering. * >*Northwestern University * -- R. Buckminster Fuller * I read about this in a popular science rag (Discover, Science Digest or Science [year]) about 5 or 6 years ago, I think. It was claimed that the chimpanzees carried the dead cub around as though a human might treat a Teddy bear or a doll--they cradled it, and cooed to it as if it was one of their own infants. Eventually it was dropped and recovered by the researchers who observed the chimps' behaviour. I can't recall as that this was observed more than once, but your characterization rings true to my memory; the chimps purposely drove the mother away so that they could get to the cub and kill it. I remember the whole thing seeming kind of gruesome... Mickey Rowe (rowe@pender.ee.upenn.edu)
XRHAH@SCFVM.GSFC.NASA.GOV (Herbert A. Huston) (05/30/91)
In article <17580002@hpfcdj.HP.COM> sjk@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Steve Kommrusch) writes: }I received some mail in reply to my query which described another occurance of }planning in chimps. This example does seem to show rather clearly }non-instinctive non-immediate planning tendencies. The author, however, }could not site a reference; has anyone else heard of the following example: } }>I've heard about a chimp at a zoo that was awake when the keepers put }>oranges (or some other fruit) in the pen (it was a large outdoor setup }>that mimiced the natural habitat). The chimp buried the oranges. The }>other chimps knew that they got oranges daily, and when they woke up, they }>started looking for them. The chimp that hid them pretended to look for }>them. Then, when they were asleep again, the chimp dug a couple up and }>ate them. I think I heard this in an Evolution and Human Behavior course, }>but I cannot give you any references. The deception involved is particularly }>interesting. This sounds like a slight mistelling of an incident that Frans de Waal describes in _Chimpanzee Politics_. It takes place at the large, open-air chimpanzee compound at the Burgers Zoo in Arnhem. De Waal and a keeper carried in a crate of grapefruits, buried them inside the compound, and carried out the empty crate. The first and last parts were done in full view of the chimps, who were still confined to their sleeping cages. When they were released, there was a frantic but unsuccessful search for the buried fruit (it was findable, but not easily findable). Eventually they all gave up. Well, not quite. A few hours later Dandy, an adolescent male, looked about and noticing that none of the others were around, dashed over to the burial site, dug up the fruit, and ate all of it. His action was so fast that the photographer was unable to capture it on film, having not left his equipment set up. De Waal's conclusion was that Dandy had discovered the location of the grapefruits on the earlier search but refrained from announcing it to the others to get a much bigger share (like 100%). _Chimpanzee Politics_ has been republished in paperback by Johns Hopkins University Press. I found it fascinating. -- Herb Huston