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Biological and learning psychology > Safe human - animal interactions and evolutionary origins > Flashcards

Safe human - animal interactions and evolutionary origins Flashcards

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1
Q

Principles of Learning Theory explain how problems
with wildlife develop & how to ‘solve’ them

A

For example:
* tourists bitten by overly habituated ‘wild’ animals that associate humans with food

Avoid problems through:
* Responsible wildlife tourism and educating tourists (do not feed and maintain a distance)
* Ethical field research

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2
Q

WHY ARE CHILDREN MORE AT RISK OF DOG-BITES?

A
  • Smaller physical size increases risk & severity as
    more likely to be injured in head & neck
  • underdeveloped cognitive functioning (e.g. poor
    perception of vulnerability/risk & tendency to
    behave impulsively
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3
Q

POSSIBLE CAUSES OF DOG AGGRESSION

A

AGGRESSION IS PART OF NORMAL BEHAVIOURAL
REPERTOIRE OF DOGS:
* Lack of firm direction, may result in dogs using
aggression to get what they want
* If not socialised and trained, dogs may become
nervous & aggressive
* If owners & victims don’t recognise early signs of
aggressive behaviour, aggressive situations get
out of hand
* Genes may contribute to aggression in dogs

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4
Q

HOW TO PAT A FRIENDLY DOG

A
  • ASK THE ADULT WITH YOU FIRST
  • ASK THE DOG OWNER NEXT
  • ASK THE DOG AS WELL BY:
  • Standing quietly next to dog
  • Placing hand near dog, curl your fingers & allow
    dog to sniff
  • Waiting to see if dog wants to be patted & comes
    to you
  • If it’s OK then just a tickle under the chin or on the
    chest is most welcome
  • Do not pat a dog on its head
  • Do not stare at the dog
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5
Q

WHEN TO LEAVE A DOG ALONE

A
  • Lifts its lips
  • Growls
  • Backs away
  • Raises the hair on its back
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6
Q

WHEN UNLEASHED UNKNOWN
DOG APPROACHES

A
  • Stand still. Be absolutely quiet
  • Hug yourself - tuck your fingers under your armpits
  • Look away from the dog
  • Wait for the dog to go away
  • Tell a responsible adult
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7
Q

WHEN UNLEASHED UNKNOWN
DOG KNOCKS YOU DOWN

A
  • Curl your body up like a snail to hide from the dog
  • Stay quiet
  • Wait for the dog to go away
  • Tell a responsible adult
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8
Q

Dogs may not be friendly when

A

If dog is sleepy, angry, sick, frightened:
it may not want contact
If dog is eating or playing with favourite toy:
it may not want to be interrupted

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9
Q

Angry dog will:

A
  • Stands up on tips of paws
  • Hair on neck & back stands up
  • Tail held high & may wag slowly
  • May snarl with lips lifted, exposing teeth
  • Eyes are wide open and staring; Ears held forward
  • Growling and snarling
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10
Q

Frightened dog will:

A
  • Reduces size by crouching or rolling over to show belly
  • May tuck tail between legs or move side to side in lowered position
  • Ears back or flat on head
  • Eyes may appear slightly closed, looking away or flicking side to side
  • May be panting or licking lips
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11
Q

Happy dog will

A
  • Body usually relaxed
  • head held slightly raised
  • Tail either still or in slow wag
  • tongue hangs out in relaxed manner
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12
Q

Happy cat

A
  • Body is usually relaxed
  • Tail is high with tip hanging over the back or relaxed and low
  • Ears are pointing forwards
  • Eyes open or if completely relaxed may be half closed
  • Whiskers held out to the side
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13
Q

Frightened cat

A
  • Body is low to ground
  • Ears are laid flat on head
  • Whiskers laid back or flattened against face
  • Tail low
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14
Q

Defensive cat

A
  • Tail is low and still or swishing
  • The back may be arched and ears flat to the head
  • Whiskers are back and pupils dilated
  • Hissing
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15
Q

HOMINID EVOLUTION

A
  1. Before 5 mya: In Africa, our ancestral lineage & chimpanzee lineage split.
  2. Before 4 mya: hominid Australopithecus anamensis walked around (in Kenya) on hind legs.
  3. 3 mya: Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy”) lived in Africa.
  4. 2.5 mya: Some hominids made tools by chipping stones to form a cutting edge. There were perhaps 4+ species of hominid living in Africa.
  5. 2 mya: first members of Homo clade, with their relatively large brains, lived in Africa.
  6. 1.5 mya: Hand axes used; hominids spread out of Africa- into Asia & Europe- included
    ancestors of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) in Europe & Homo erectus in Asia.
  7. 100,000 years ago: Human brains reached ~ current range of sizes. Early Homo sapiens
    lived in Africa & Homo neanderthalensis & Homo erectus lived in other parts of ‘Old World’.
  8. 50,000 years ago: Human cultures produced cave paintings & body adornment, &
    constructed elaborate burials; some groups of modern humans extended their range
    beyond Africa.
  9. 25,000 years ago: Other Homo species had gone extinct, leaving only modern humans,
    Homo sapiens, spread throughout the Old World.
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16
Q

FOSSIL EVIDENCE

A
  • Fossils provide anatomical evidence and provide clues for behaviours.
  • Knowledge about historical climate changes (& tectonic changes) also offers useful clues.

FOSSILS
* Bones (posture)
* Skulls (big brain)
* Teeth (meat or veg)
* Stone tools (process
food, hunting)
* Footprints (bipedal)

BEHAVIOURAL ECOLOGY
* of closest living
relatives (cultures)

DNA (closest apes)

17
Q

FOSSIL EVIDENCE: TEETH

A

If you look at fossil teeth under a microscope, you can work out what kinds of food were eaten, by looking at the scratches and pits on the tooth surface:

  • if the molar is very pitted, the foods eaten were harder (e.g. seeds, nuts, tubers or bone)
  • if a molar tooth has a very scratched shearing facet, it was used to shear leaves or meat
  • A bit of both patterns suggests a mixed diet.
18
Q

Primates evolved in tropical and subtropical climates as plant eaters.

A
  • Primates differentiated into several species of apes around 15 million years ago.
  • Around 12 million years ago the climate became drier and parts of the African tropical forest niche
    was replaced by grasslands & new behaviours were needed to survive (e.g. fewer plants to eat)
  • About 6-5 million years ago apes began to evolve into Australopithecus, with bipedal posture and
    bigger brain (Chiarelli, 1994, cited by Jacobs, 2000a).
19
Q

Historical findings

A

The area around ancient Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya (Rift Valley) is known as a cradle of human life.
There is evidence of hominids that lived there 4.2 million years ago.

  • In 1972, Bernard Ngenyeo, colleague to Richard and Maeve Leakey, discovered the fossil of a Homo
    habilis (about 1.9 million years old).
  • In 1984, the Leakey team found an almost-complete fossilized Homo erectus skeleton (about 1.5
    million years), known as “Turkana Boy.”
  • In 1995, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Maeve Leakey and her team made a very important discovery at Lake Turkana, Kenya- fossils of Australopithecus anamensis, which showed occurrence of bipedalism needed to be moved back by half a million years, to about 4.2 million
    years ago.
20
Q

FOSSILS AS EVIDENCE OF BEHAVIOUR

A

Fossils provide little evidence of behaviours. Behavioural ecology involves studying an animal in its natural
environment, and investigating all behaviours that occur in various contexts:
* distribution of food resources and water
* predators and prey
* group size and composition

A lot of the behaviour observed in primates is a result of learning rather than genetic and is passed from
generation to generation as part of culture (e.g. tool use). Learned behaviours can also impact reproductive success and evolution.

21
Q

TOOLS

A

Tools are sometimes found with fossils.
* The earliest hominid tools are associated with scavenging (evidence for eating meat), which allowed them to cut up food and give them a chance to eat a wider range of nutritional resources, imparting a survival advantage.

  • Stone tools are extensions of the forelimb and hand for breaking down or processing tough foodstuffs (Larick & Ciochon, 1996, cited by Jacobs, 2000a).

Early tools have been dated to 2.5 million years ago (in Hadar, Omo & Turkan in the eastern Rift Valley):
* They are simple core choppers and rough flake scrapers made of stone

By 1.9 million years ago:
* Homo ergaster show long torso and limbs, narrow hips, a large brain and reduced dentition, which
suggests they moved great distances.

Newer fossil evidence from Longgupo, Java and Riwat, suggests that early Homo (immediate ancestor to
Homo ergaster & Homo erectus) and simple stone tools arrived in tropical and subtropical Asia by about
2.0 million years ago.

22
Q

INCREASED BRAIN SIZE & NEW BEHAVIOURS

A

Increased brain size has occurred several times in hominid evolution, at times when there has been a big
environmental or ecological change. This suggests that major environmental change has resulted in new
adaptations and extreme survival pressure (which has selected for greater brain size).
* The size of the hominid brain has increased from about 500 cc. to 1500 cc. during the last 2 to 3
million years (Chiarelli, 1996, cited by Jacobs, 2000a).

New adaptations and behaviours (e.g. meat eating & use of tools) should correspond to increased brain
size.
* About 3.0 - 2.4 million years ago, the Middle Pliocene cooling produced a relatively cool, dry
climate in tropical Africa, further altering the ecology.
* 2.5 - 2.0 million years ago, the earliest species of the genus Homo emerged, (Larick & Ciochonto,
cited by Jacobs, 2000a).
* The first Homo seems to have exploited the new habitats as an aggressive scavenger.

23
Q

DISPERSAL OF HOMINIDS FROM AFRICA TO ASIA

A

Asian hominid fossils and stone-tools have been found that are almost 2.0 million years old, suggesting that an early population of Homo arrived in eastern Asia within a few hundred thousand years of arising in Africa.

Other mammals were also affected by the changing ecology in Africa:
* 6 species of African bovid dispersed to Asia during the Middle Pliocene
* They might have been hunted or scavenged by Homo and therefore dispersed at the same (Larick &Ciochon, cited by Jacobs, 2000a).

24
Q

USE OF TOOLS & EARLY LANGUAGE (Homo habilis)

A

Homo habilis (‘handy human’) fossils are dated at 2.4 - 1.5 million years ago:
* tools found with habilis fossils earned it the name, ‘toolmaker’
* H. habilis had a brain size of 500 - 800 cc and brain shape is more human like
* Bulge of Broca’s area visible in one habilis brain cast, suggests a possible capability of rudimentary
speech (Foley, 1997, Jacobs, 2000a).

Early humans were scavengers not hunters.

25
Q

MORE SOPHISTICATED TOOLS & LARGER BRAIN (Homo erectus)

A

Homo erectus (‘upright human’) fossils are dated at 1.8 million - 300,000 years ago:
* they made and used more sophisticated stone tools
* brain size was 900 cc - 1100 cc

26
Q

ORIGINS OF BIPEDALISM

A

Standing and moving bipedally is a defining characteristic of hominids. Three different hypotheses have
been posited to account for the origin of bipedalism (Jacobs, 2000b).

Early footprints evidencing a convergent toe and well-developed arches were found at Laetoli and dated to
3.56 million years ago (Klein 1999, cited by Jacobs, 2000b).

27
Q

POSTURAL FEEDING HYPOTHESIS (most support)

A

This hypothesis was posited by Hunt (1996, cited by Jacobs, 2000b). When apes feed in trees, they use the
postures of arm-hanging and vertical climbing. These postures are a specialization of apes, a shared
adaptation and influence anatomy:

  • 80% of chimpanzee bipedalism is during feeding with arm-hanging stabilizing the posture 93% of
    the time in terminal branches and 52% in the central parts of trees.
  • Torso form in australopithecines features adaptations to arm-hanging, inferring australopithecine
    adaptation to arboreal bipedal fruit gathering.
  • This early and specialized origin of bipedalism only later evolved into habitual bipedal locomotion.
28
Q

BEHAVIORAL HYPOTHESIS (less support)

A

Lovejoy (1981, cited by Jacobs, 2000b) bases his hypothesis on social behaviours that influence birthrate and survival. He suggests that:

  • Human monogamous mating strategies lead to male provisioning, i.e., the male brings food to the
    mate and offspring, which improves survival of offspring and increases reproductive rates
  • Using the upper limbs to carry food is a strong selection factor for bipedal walking.
29
Q

THERMOREGULATORY HYPOTHESIS (least support)

A

Wheeler (1991, cited by Jacobs, 2000b) suggests that hot tropical climates provided the selective pressure
that lead to bipedalism:
* Standing upright raises the main body surface higher above the ground (more wind, higher heat loss).

  • Bipedalism reduces evaporative cooling requirements and conserves body water
  • It also minimizes direct solar exposure during the middle of the day

Habitat reconstruction based on faunal associations with hominid fossils demonstrates that
Australopithecus species lived in wooded and well-watered environments (Reed, 1997, cited by Jacobs, 2000b).

  • Homo is the first hominid known to have adapted to open, savannah-like habitats, well after the
    evolution of bipedality.
  • Arm-hanging anatomy persists long after the onset of bipedal characteristics, indicating occupation
    of wooded niches for the early bipedal hominids.
30
Q

Similarities between humans and chimpanzees

A

a) FOSSILS dug up recently in Ethiopia suggest that more than 4.5 million years ago, a bipedal ancestor of humans with a head like a chimpanzee walked across the African landscape.

(b) BEHAVIOURAL STUDIES in the field and captivity are producing many parallels or similarities between
chimpanzee and human behaviour.

Wrangham and Peterson (1996) point out, that chimpanzees:
* show affection with kisses, embraces and pats on the hand;
* have menopause, develop lifelong friendships, grieve for their dead babies;
* can do sums, communicate with hand signs, use and make tools, hunt, collaborate or barter with
sexual favours;
* hold long-term grudges, deliberately hide their feelings, or bring rivals together to make peace;
* share a ‘dark-side’ with humans—lethal inter-group aggression by males of neighbouring
communities, rape, and battering of females

Although chimp and human ancestors started branching apart about 9 million years ago,
hybridization may have occurred twice, with a full split (i.e. speciation) not taking place until 5.3 million
years ago.

31
Q

Most rapidly changing genes in human DNA involved in:

A
  • olfaction (smell & taste)
  • reproduction &
  • host defense (immunity to disease)
  • Caspase-12 gene mutated in humans but not in
    chimps:
    may explain human-specific features of Alzheimer’s
  • APOL1 gene mutated in chimps and not humans:
    may explain why chimps are susceptible to a bloodborne parasite (sleeping sickness) which doesn’t
    infect us
32
Q

Other genetic differences relate to diseases specific to
humans, such as:

A
  • diabetes mellitus (Type 2 diabetes)
  • insulin resistance
  • coronary artery disease
  • Alzheimer’s disease
  • oral cancer, and
  • pancreatitis (digestive disorder).
33
Q

What is DNA

A

DNA is a double helix formed by base pairs attached to a
sugar-phosphate backbone.

A string of 4 chemical bases:
* adenine (A), guanine (G),
cytosine (C), & thymine (T)
* messages these bases
form act as a ‘recipe book’
for making our bodies.
* order of these bases
decides what we look like
(e.g. skin colour, hair
colour) & can make us
prone to some diseases

Biological and learning psychology (7 decks)

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