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Social Brain
In primatology, the Machiavellian intelligence or social brain hypothesis describes the capacity of primates to manoeuvre in complex social groups. The first introduction of this concept came from Frans de Waal's book ''Chimpanzee Politics'' (1982). In the book de Waal notes that chimpanzees performed certain social maneuvering behaviors that he thought of as being "Machiavellian". This hypothesis posits that large brains and distinctive cognitive abilities of primates have evolved via intense social competition in which social competitors developed increasingly sophisticated strategies as a means to achieve higher social and reproductive success. Overview Origin of the term The term "Machiavellian intelligence" originates from the primatologist Frans de Waal, who noted that the behaviors of primates was so elaborate that it could perhaps be compared to political behavior today. Primatologists Nicholas Humphrey, Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne were instrumental in developing ...
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Chimpanzees In Uganda (5984913059)
The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close relative the bonobo was more commonly known as the pygmy chimpanzee, this species was often called the common chimpanzee or the robust chimpanzee. The chimpanzee and the bonobo are the only species in the genus ''Pan''. Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing shows that ''Pan'' is a sister taxon to the human lineage and is thus humans' closest living relative. The chimpanzee is covered in coarse black hair but has a bare face, fingers, toes, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet. It is larger and more robust than the bonobo, weighing for males and for females and standing . The chimpanzee lives in groups that range in size from 15 to 150 members, although individuals travel and forage in much smaller groups during the day. The species lives in ...
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Primate Cognition
Primate cognition is the study of the intellectual and behavioral skills of non-human primates, particularly in the fields of psychology, behavioral biology, primatology, and anthropology. Primates are capable of high levels of cognition; some make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; some have sophisticated hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, Psychological manipulation, manipulative and capable of deception; they can recognise Family, kin and conspecifics; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence. Studies in primate cognition Theory of mind Theory of mind (also known as mental state attribution, mentalizing, or mindreading) can be defined as the "ability to track the unobservable mental states, like desires and beliefs, that guide others' actions". Premack and Woodruff's 1978 article "Does the chi ...
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Ethology
Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behavior, behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithology, ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles Otis Whitman, Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and the Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three winners of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Etymology The modern term ''ethology'' derives from the Greek language: wikt:ἦθος, ἦθος, ''ethos'' meaning "character" and , ''wikt:-logia, -logia'' meaning "the study of". The term was first popularized by the American entomologist William Mo ...
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Cognitive Science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include perception, memory, attention, reasoning, language, and emotion. To understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as psychology, economics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology.Thagard, PaulCognitive Science, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision-making to logic and planning; from neuron, neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structur ...
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University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It publishes a wide range of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. The press is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900, the University of Chicago Pr ...
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Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586. It is the second-oldest university press after Cambridge University Press, which was founded in 1534. It is a department of the University of Oxford. It is governed by a group of 15 academics, the Delegates of the Press, appointed by the Vice Chancellor, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. The Delegates of the Press are led by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's chief executive and as its major representative on other university bodies. Oxford University Press has had a similar governance structure since the 17th century. The press is located on Walton Street, Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford, opposite Somerville College, Oxford, Somerville College, in the inner suburb of Jericho, Oxford, Jericho. ...
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Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information and to retain it as knowledge to be applied to adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. The term rose to prominence during the early 1900s. Most psychologists believe that intelligence can be divided into various domains or competencies. Intelligence has been long-studied in humans, and across numerous disciplines. It has also been observed in the cognition of non-human animals. Some researchers have suggested that plants exhibit forms of intelligence, though this remains controversial. Etymology The word '' intelligence'' derives from the Latin nouns '' intelligentia'' or '' intellēctus'', which in turn stem from the verb '' intelligere'', to comprehend or perceive. In the M ...
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Primate Evolution
The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 57-90 million years. One of the oldest known primate-like mammal species, ''Plesiadapis'', came from North America; another, ''Archicebus'', came from China. Other similar basal primates were widespread in Eurasia and Africa during the tropical conditions of the Paleocene and Eocene. ''Purgatorius'' is the genus of the four extinct species believed to be the earliest example of a primate or a proto-primate, a primatomorph precursor to the Plesiadapiformes, dating to as old as 66 million years ago. The surviving tropical population of primates, which is seen most completely in the upper Eocene and lowermost Oligocene fossil beds of the Faiyum depression southwest of Cairo, gave rise to all living species—lemurs of Madagascar, lorises of Southeast Asia, galagos or "bush babies" of Africa, and the anthropoids: platyrrhine or New World monkeys, catarrhines or Old World monkeys, and the apes, including ''Homo sapiens''. O ...
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Gelada
The gelada (''Theropithecus gelada'', , ), sometimes called the bleeding-heart monkey or the gelada baboon, is a species of Old World monkey found only in the Ethiopian Highlands, living at elevations of above sea level. It is the only living member of the genus '' Theropithecus'', a name derived from the Greek root words for "beast-ape" (θηρο-πίθηκος : thēro-píthēkos). Like its close relatives in genus ''Papio'', the baboons, it is largely terrestrial, spending much of its time foraging in grasslands, with grasses comprising up to 90% of its diet. It has buff to dark brown hair with a dark face and pale eyelids. Adult males have longer hair on their backs and a conspicuous bright red patch of skin shaped like an hourglass on their chests. Females also have a bare patch of skin but it is less pronounced, except during estrus, when it brightens and exhibits a "necklace" of fluid-filled blisters. Males average and females average in weight. The head-body length is ...
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Primatology
Primatology is the scientific study of non-human primates. It is a diverse discipline at the boundary between mammalogy and anthropology, and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, veterinary sciences and zoology, as well as in animal sanctuaries, biomedical research facilities, museums and zoos. Primatologists study both living and extinct primates in their natural habitats and in laboratories by conducting field studies and experiments in order to understand aspects of their evolution and behavior. Sub-disciplines As a science, primatology has many different sub-disciplines which vary in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches to the subject used in researching extant primates and their extinct ancestors. There are two main centers of primatology, Western primatology and Japanese primatology. These two divergent disciplines stem from the unique cultural backgrounds and philosophies that went int ...
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Machiavellianism (psychology)
In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism (sometimes abbreviated as MACH) is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. Psychologists Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis created the construct and named it after Niccolò Machiavelli, as they devised a set of truncated and edited statements similar to his writing tone to study variations in human behaviors. Apart from this, the construct has no relation to the historical figure outside of bearing his name. Their '' Mach IV'' test, a 20-question, Likert-scale personality survey, became the standard self-assessment tool and scale of the Machiavellianism construct. Those who score high on the scale (High Machs) are more likely to have a high level of deceitfulness, exploitativeness and a cold, unemotional temperament. It is one of the dark triad traits, along with the subclinical versions of ...
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Richard William Byrne
Richard William Byrne is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience of the University of St Andrews. With an h-index of 77, he is renowned in the area of the evolution of cognitive and social behavior, and being one of the leading scholars of the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis In primatology, the Machiavellian intelligence or social brain hypothesis describes the capacity of primates to manoeuvre in complex social groups. The first introduction of this concept came from Frans de Waal's book ''Chimpanzee Politics'' (19 .... Selected research *Townsend, S.W., Koski, S.E., Byrne, R.W., Slocombe, K.E., Bickel, B., Boeckle, M., Braga Goncalves, I., Burkart, J.M., Flower, T., Gaunet, F. and Glock, H.J., 2017. Exorcising G rice's ghost: An empirical approach to studying intentional communication in animals. Biological Reviews, 92(3), pp. 1427–1433. *Hobaiter, C. and Byrne, R.W., 2014. The meanings of chimpanzee gestures. Current Biology, 24(14) ...
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