有关O动物用工具的JJ阅读的背景资料！！请大家确认！！ 我搜了半天在Scientific American上搜到的，有关红毛猩猩的用树皮剥壳~有中英的对照~希望有帮助！！ Technology in the Swamp We were initially attracted to the swamp because it sheltered disproportionately high numbers of orangutans—unlike the islands' dryland forests, the moist swamp habitat supplies abundant food for the apes year-round and can thus support a large population. We worked in an area near Suaq Balimbing in the Kluet swamp [see map at left], which may have been paradise for orangutans but, with its sticky mud, profusion of biting insects, and oppressive heat and humidity, was hell for researchers. One of our first finds in this unlikely setting astonished us: the Suaq orangutans created and wielded a variety of tools. Although captive red apes are avid tool users, the most striking feature of tool use among the wild orangutans observed until then was its absence. The animals at Suaq ply their tools for two major purposes. First, they hunt for ants, termites and, especially, honey (mainly that of stingless bees)—more so than all their fellow orangutans elsewhere. They often cast discerning glances at tree trunks, looking for air traffic in and out of small holes. Once discovered, the holes become the focus of visual and then manual inspection by a poking and picking finger. Usually the finger is not long enough, and the orangutan prepares a stick tool. After carefully inserting the tool, the ape delicately moves it back and forth, and then withdraws it, licks it off and sticks it back in. Most of this “manipulation” is done with the tool clenched between the teeth; only the largest tools, used primarily to hammer chunks off termite nests, are handled. The second context in which the Suaq apes employ tools involves the fruit of the Neesia. This tree produces woody, five-angled capsules up to 10 inches long and four inches wide. The capsules are filled with brown seeds the size of lima beans, which, because they contain nearly 50 percent fat, are highly nutritious—a rare and sought-after treat in a natural habitat without fast food. The tree protects its seeds by growing a very tough husk. When the seeds are ripe, however, the husk begins to split open; the cracks gradually widen, exposing neat rows of seeds, which have grown nice red attachments (arils) that contain some 80 percent fat. To discourage seed predators further, a mass of razor-sharp needles fills the husk. The orangutans at Suaq strip the bark off short, straight twigs, which they then hold in their mouths and insert into the cracks. By moving the tool up and down inside the crack, the animal detaches the seeds from their stalks. After this maneuver, it can drop the seeds straight into its mouth. Late in the season, the orangutans eat only the red arils, deploying the same technique to get at them without injury. Both these methods of fashioning sticks for foraging are ubiquitous at Suaq. In general, “fishing” in tree holes is occasional and lasts only a few minutes, but when Neesia fruits ripen, the apes devote most of their waking hours to ferreting out the seeds or arils, and we see them grow fatter and sleeker day by day. Why the Tool Use Is Cultural What explains this curious concentration of tool use when wild orangutans elsewhere show so little propensity? We doubt that the animals at Suaq are intrinsically smarter: the observation that most captive members of this species can learn to use tools suggests that the basic brain capacity to do so is present. So we reasoned that their environment might hold the answer. The orangutans studied before mostly live in dry forest, and the swamp furnishes a uniquely lush habitat. More insects make their nests in the tree holes there than in forests on dry land, and Neesia grows only in wet places, usually near flowing water. Tempting as the environmental explanation sounds, however, it does not explain why orangutans in several populations outside Suaq ignore altogether these same rich food sources. Nor does it explain why some populations that do eat the seeds harvest them without tools (which results, of course, in their eating much less than the orangutans at Suaq do). The same holds for tree-hole tools. Occasionally, when the nearby hills—which have dryland forests—show massive fruiting, the Suaq orangutans go there to indulge, and while they are gathering fruit they use tools to exploit the contents of tree holes. The hill habitat is a dime a dozen through out the orangutan's geographic range, so if tools can be used on the hillsides above Suaq, why not everywhere? Another suggestion we considered, captured in the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention, is that the Suaq animals, living at such high density, have much more competition for provisions. Consequently, many would be left without food unless they could get at the hard-to-reach supplies—that is, they need tools in order to eat. The strongest argument against this possibility is that the sweet or fat foods that the tools make accessible sit very high on the orangutan preference list and should therefore be sought by these animals everywhere. For instance, red apes in all locations are willing to be stung many times by honeybees to get at their honey. So the necessity idea does not hold much water either. A different possibility is that these behaviors are innovative techniques a couple of clever orangutans invented, which then spread and persisted in the population because other individuals learned by observing these experts. In other words, the tool use is cultural. A major obstacle to studying culture in nature is that, barring experimental introductions, we can never demonstrate convincingly that an animal we observe invents some new trick rather than simply applying a well-remembered but rarely practiced habit. Neither can we prove that one individual learned a new skill from another group member rather than figuring out what to do on its own. Although we can show that orangutans in the lab are capable of observing and learning socially, such studies tell us nothing about culture in nature—neither what it is generally about nor how much of it exists. So field-workers have had to develop a system of criteria to demonstrate that a certain behavior has a cultural basis. First, the behavior must vary geographically, showing that it was invented somewhere, and it must be common where it is found, showing that it spread and persisted in a population. The tool uses at Suaq easily pass these first two tests. The second step is to eliminate simpler explanations that produce the same spatial pattern but without involving social learning. We have already excluded an ecological explanation, in which individuals exposed to a particular habitat independently converge on the same skill. We can also eliminate genetics because of the fact that most captive orangutans can learn to use tools. The third and most stringent test is that we must be able to find geographic distributions of behavior that can be explained by culture and are not easily explained any other way. One key pattern would be the presence of a behavior in one place and its absence beyond some natural barrier to dispersal. In the case of the tool users at Suaq, the geographic distribution of Neesia gave us decisive clues. Neesia trees (and orangutans) occur on both sides of the wide Alas River. In the Singkil swamp, however, just south of Suaq and on the same side of the Alas River [see map on opposite page], tools littered the floor, whereas in Batu-Batu swamp across the river they were conspicuously absent, despite our numerous visits in different years. In Batu-Batu, we did find that many of the fruits were ripped apart, showing that these orangutans ate Neesia seeds in the same way as their colleagues did at a site called Gunung Palung in distant Borneo but in a way completely different from their cousins right across the river in Singkil. Batu-Batu is a small swamp area, and it does not contain much of the best swamp forest; thus, it supports a limited number of orangutans. We do not know whether tool use was never invented there or whether it could not be maintained in the smaller population, but we do know that migrants from across the river never brought it in because the Alas is so wide there that it is absolutely impassable for an orangutan. Where it is passable, farther upriver, Neesia occasionally grows, but the orangutans in that area ignore it altogether, apparently unaware of its rich offerings. A cultural interpretation, then, most parsimoniously explains the unexpected juxtaposition of knowledgeable tool users and brute-force foragers living practically next door to one another, as well as the presence of ignoramuses farther upriver. 沼泽里的技术 我们决定到沼泽区去研究红毛猩猩，一开始是因为那里的红毛猩猩特别多。潮湿的沼泽栖境与干地的森林不同，整年都有丰富的食物供猩猩食用，因此能够供养大量的红毛猩猩在那里生活。我们在库鲁依特沼泽区（Kluet swamp），接近斯瓦克杨桃园（Suaq Balimbing）的地方（见左图），从事田野观察。那儿也许是红毛猩猩的天堂，对研究者可是地狱：地面黏黏的泥巴教人行动不便，昆虫叮着人咬教人无所逃遁，空气闷热潮湿教人透不过气。 在这个特别的环境中，我们最初的发现就令人惊讶：斯瓦克的红毛猩猩会制造、使用许多不同的工具。虽然在人工环境中生活的红毛猩猩很会使用工具，然而学者观察野生红毛猩猩的共同印象都是：牠们不使用工具。斯瓦克的红毛猩猩使用工具，主要目的有二。第一，牠们较常捕食蚂蚁、白蚁，并特别喜爱蜂蜜（主要是无刺蜜蜂的产品），其它地方的同胞比不上。牠们常常盯着树干看，寻找昆虫在小洞飞进飞出的动静。一旦发现了，那些洞就成为牠们视觉的焦点，接着就以手指插入探索。通常手指都不够长，红毛猩猩就会以树的枝条制造工具。牠们小心插入工具后，灵巧地移进移出，再抽出将枝条舔过，然后再度插入。这种操作大部份是以牙齿咬住工具进行；只有最大的工具才以手操作，主要用来敲击白蚁巢，敲碎了找白蚁吃。 斯瓦克的红毛猩猩使用工具的第二种情况，涉及尼西亚树（Neesia aquatica）的果实。这种果实是五角形的木质蒴果，25公分长，10公分宽。蒴果中藏有皇帝豆大小的褐色种子，那些种子将近50%是脂肪，非常营养；在没有快餐店的自然栖境中，那是希罕而抢手的美食。尼西亚树以非常坚韧的果皮保护种子，为了吓阻专门吃种子的动物，果皮上布满了尖锐的刺。不过，种子成熟后，果皮就会裂开；裂缝逐渐扩大，将排列整齐的种子暴露出来，种子表面还长出红色鲜艳的假种皮，脂肪含量达80%。斯瓦克红毛猩猩会找短而直的树枝，剥去树皮，含在嘴里，插入果皮上的裂缝。牠们以工具在缝里上下游移，使种子脱离周遭组织，然后就能将种子直接倒入嘴里。到了季节晚期，红毛猩猩只吃红色的假种皮，牠们以同样的技术取得假种皮而不受伤。 这两种以修整过的树枝觅食的方法，斯瓦克的红毛猩猩都会。一般而言，钓树洞中的虫吃，牠们只是偶一为之，每次持续几分钟而已。但是尼西亚果成熟时，红毛猩猩醒着的时间大多都在弄种子或假种皮吃，我们就眼看着牠们身体越来越肥，体毛越来越油亮。 为什么使用工具是文化行为 为什么只有斯瓦克的野生红毛猩猩使用工具，其它地方的就缺乏这种意向？莫非斯瓦克的红毛猩猩比较聪明？可是大多数生活在人工环境中的红毛猩猩都能学会使用工具，可见牠们都有从事这种行为的基本脑力。 因此我们推测，斯瓦克的环境可能是关键。过去学者研究的野生红毛猩猩大多生活在干燥的森林中，而沼泽栖境郁郁葱葱，极为独特。这里在树洞里筑巢的昆虫，数量比干燥森林中多得多；尼西亚树只在湿地生长，通常在接近流水的地方。不过，环境理论固然诱人，却不能解释斯瓦克附近几个红毛猩猩族群，为什么对这些营养丰富的食物资源统统都不在意；也无法解释，为什么有些食用尼西亚种子的族群不利用工具（牠们吃下的尼西亚种子，因而比斯瓦克的同胞少得太多了）。同样的情形也发生在利用树洞食物的工具上。偶尔，斯瓦克附近山丘的干地森林中有大量果实成熟了，斯瓦克的红毛猩猩会到那里去大快朵颐，牠们不但采集水果，还会顺便以工具探索树洞。在红毛猩猩生活的地理范围内，处处都有山丘栖境，因此，要是斯瓦克附近的山丘上会出现工具，其它地方为什么不会？ 于是我们考虑了另一个理论：生活在斯瓦克的红毛猩猩实在太多了，于是对食物的竞争更为激烈。俗话说得好，需求为发明之母。许多红毛猩猩为了吃饱，非得开发本来难以利用的食物资源，不然只好坐以待毙。换言之，牠们得有工具，才能吃饱。反对这个理论的论点，以下面这一个最有力：糖份高、脂肪多的食物本来就是红毛猩猩的最爱，无论牠们生活在哪里，应该都会全力以赴，怎么会只有斯瓦克的族群为取得美食而发明了工具呢？举例来说，不论哪个地方的红毛猩猩都爱吃蜂蜜，宁愿冒蜂螫的风险，在所不惜。因此需求理论没有什么说服力。 另一个可能是，这些行为是几头聪明的红毛猩猩发明的创新技术，其它个体透过观察学会了，于是就在族群中散布开来，并且传递到下一代。换言之，使用工具是文化行为。研究野生文化有个主要障碍，那就是：我们无法教人信服地证明，我们观察的野生动物发明了一个新技术，而不只是展现早已记住却很少实践的习惯，除非我们设法将新技术教会牠们。我们也无法证明：某个个体从社群中的另一个成员学会了一个新技巧，而不是自己想出来的。虽然我们可以证明红毛猩猩在实验室中能够彼此观察与学习，这样的研究并不能增进我们对野生文化的理解，无论是野生文化的一般性质或具体内容。因此，田野研究人员为了证明某个行为有文化基础，就必须发展出一套判准。 首先，那个行为的分布必须有地理变异，显示它是在某地发明的；而在发现它的地方是共有的行为，表示它在族群中已散布开，并且能代代相传。斯瓦克的红毛猩猩使用工具的行为，轻易就通过这两个检验。其次，有些比较简单的解释，可以造成同样的空间模式，但是与社会学习无关，研究者必须排除那些解释。我们已经排除了生态解释（生活在特定栖境中的个体会各自独立发展出同一技术）。我们也排除了遗传解释，因为在人工环境中生活的红毛猩猩大部份都能学会使用工具。 第三个也是最严格的检验是，我们必须找到能以文化解释的地理分布，而任何其它方式都不容易解释。例如一个行为出现在某个地方，但是在某个自然的传播障碍以外，它就消失了。这样的分布模式是关键证据。以斯瓦克的红毛猩猩使用工具的行为来说，尼西亚树的分布是最重要的线索。阿拉斯河（Alas River，见下方地图）是一条宽阔的河，两侧都有尼西亚树与红毛猩猩。辛及尔沼泽（Singkil swamp）位于斯瓦克的南方，与斯瓦克在河的同一侧，那里地面上可以见到猩猩丢弃的工具，与河对岸的巴图巴图沼泽（Batu-Batu swamp）形成强烈的对比；我们在好几年内分别去了巴图巴图许多次，从来没见过工具。在巴图巴图，我们的确发现有许多尼西亚果给撕开了，显示这些红毛猩猩食用尼西亚果的方法，与婆罗洲咕农巴龙（Gunung Palung）的远亲如出一辙，反而与对岸辛及尔的表亲完全不同。 巴图巴图是一块很小的沼泽地，那里的森林资源算不上丰饶，因此能供养的红毛猩猩并不多。我们无法确定那里的红毛猩猩究竟是从来没有发明过工具，还是较小的族群中无法维持使用工具的行为；我们确实知道的是：阿拉斯河实在太宽，红毛猩猩绝对无法渡过，于是从来没有移民将这种行为传播进去。在河的上游，牠们就能够横渡了，那里偶尔有尼西亚树生长，但是当地的红毛猩猩完全不理会尼西亚果，显然是不知道这种果子的价值。对同一种食物资源，相邻的两群中，一群懂得利用工具享用，另一群使用蛮力；而大河上游远处还有一群暴殄天物的乡巴佬。对这样出人意料的发现，「文化」才能做最简洁的解释。作者: nioni 时间: 2010-9-29 21:24
建议lz，将类型改为考古，这样也比较显眼作者: 飞逝孤星 时间: 2010-10-8 01:40
感觉和狗狗有些像 请考过的同学确认一下吧 谢谢作者: 刘可见要读研 时间: 2017-1-10 07:13
Mark一下！