Gregg Gunnell directs the fossil primate division of the Duke Lemur Center.
By Karl Leif Bates
A newly discovered 25 million-year-old monkey fossil has been named for Gregg Gunnell, director of the Duke Lemur Center’s Division of Fossil Primates.
The thing is, Nsungwepithecus gunnelli, might turn out to be a pig. “It might be a ‘porky-pithecus,’ ” Gunnell said with a laugh. ”Early monkeys and early pigs looked remarkably alike.”
The fossil, from southwestern Tanzania, consists of a single molar. But it displays nine characteristics that would distinguish it from other Old World monkeys, according to Nancy Stevens, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio who was the lead author on a paper about the discovery in Nature.
Gunnell’s monkey was found at a site in the Rukwa Rift Basin along with another new monkey fossil, Rukwapithecus fleaglei, for which scientists have a jaw and three teeth. It too has nine distinguishing features.
An artist’s conception of the two newly named 25.2 million year old fossil monkeys described in Nature. Gregg Gunnell is the guy on the right. (credit: Mauricio Anton)
Gunnell said Stevens named the monkey after him to honor his role in helping her become a paleontologist. When Stevens was an undergraduate at Michigan State University, and Gunnell worked in the museum at the University of Michigan, he took Stevens and her now-husband and co-author Patrick O’Connor along on archaeological digs in Wyoming. Apparently the lessons stuck.
N. gunnelli is actually Gunnell’s third species. He was earlier honored by the naming of a bat and an extinct tillodont, which was, he reluctantly explains, a rather pig-like little animal.
“I’m hoping that this pig really is a monkey — that’ll improve my self-image,” he said.
Brian Hare and Evan MacLean, co-directors of Duke’s Canine Cognition Center, play with Lilu, a labradoodle. Credit: Ashley Yeager, Duke.
Lilu, a beautiful brown poodle-labradoodle mix, couldn’t sit still. Scents of pizza and peanut butter dog treats and the sights of new people easily distracted her.
The ADD behavior could be one trait that made her fail out of service-dog training.
“Six out of every ten dogs wash out of service training. But it’s hard right now for scientists to understand why,” said Duke evolutionary anthropologist Evan MacLean, co-director of the university’s Canine Cognition Center.
He, along with biological anthropologist Brian Hare and geneticist Misha Angrist spoke about ‘Genes, Brains and Games’ in man’s best friend as part of the Science and Society Journal Club on April 26.
MacLean and Hare explained that dogs have taken on many jobs in human society, acting as everything from pets, to our eyes and ears to being like coal-mine canaries searching for hidden bombs and missing people.
“Dog vocations require different sets of cognitive skills,” MacLean said. He studies military dogs, looking for traits that make them more suited for service tasks than pets like Lilu.
MacLean would ultimately like to identify the genetic components that underlie the characteristics suited for each type of job that a dog might do.
Scientists are interested in correlating dogs’ cognitive traits to their associated genes because the animals are “the most exquisite example of artificial selection,” Angrist said.
In Portuguese water dogs, for example, just six substitutions in individual DNA bases of the dogs explain variations in body size. In humans, nearly every gene could factor into height. It’s the same challenge that makes understanding human cognition and intelligence difficult at the genetic level.
Of course, defining cognition and intelligence at the conceptual level isn’t so clear cut either. “It’s so hard for people, journalists and the general public, to understand multiple intelligences,” Hare said.
He explained that at a basic level, cognition is the ability to make inferences, and that when we think of intelligence we think of IQ and standardized tests. These tests, however, measure only one type of intelligence. They don’t measure the ability to empathize, to verbalize a new idea or to put two completely separate ideas together to form a new one, which are other, important facets of intelligence, or really multiple intelligences.
At the Canine Cognition Center, and through the citizen science website Dognition, Hare and MacLean use standardized tests to study the variation in dogs’ intelligence. The tests, unlike the SAT or ACT, “cast a wide net across skills sets dogs could use for different vocations,” Hare said.
Dogs like Lilu, he added, are “really the hope of the world” for understanding cognition.
This screenshot shows one of the opening pages of a chapter in Johnston’s new iBook. Image courtesy of Dave Johnston, Duke.
Duke marine biologist Dave Johnston and his students are back in business on iTunes.
They’ve just released The View From Below, a free iBook for middle school students and teachers that uses multimedia and classroom exercises to discuss overfishing, marine debris, climate change, invasive species and other issues related to marine conservation.
This is Johnston’s second digital textbook. His first was Cachalot, an iPad textbook covering the latest science of marine mammals like whales, dolphins and seals. Experts contributed the text, images and open-access papers.
Undergraduate students in Johnston’s Marine Conservation Service Learning class wrote the book using Apple’s iBooks authoring tool. Johnston and Tom Schultz, Director of the Marine Conservation Molecular Facility at Duke’s Marine Lab, edited it.
“There are a lot of people exploring the use of the iBooks platform for student-generated content, among other development platforms,” Johnston says. “I don’t think we’ve seen many that focus on marine science yet though, and I’m pretty sure it’s the first marine conservation textbook written by students on the iTunes store.”
Johnston says the class chose to use the iBooks software because the technology is free, easy to use and provides “great templates to get things going quickly.” The software also works well because Duke’s Marine Lab has an iPad loaner program, making the tablet the platform of choice for developing and testing the textbook.
The middle school that the service learning class works with also has access to iPads for students and instructors, so the audience was there for the iPad format, Johnston adds.
His students chose to write the book as the class project to spur learning and discussion about some of the most serious problems facing Earth’s oceans.
“As the text indicates, all life on earth is ultimately supported by the ocean, so we need to take care of it,” he says.
A baby albatross carcass full of plastic “food.” Credit: Chris Jordan.
When artist Chris Jordan works on a photograph or film, he doesn’t think about his audience. He said he thinks the phrase “target audience” is a disrespectful, manipulative business concept.
“I want to be as authentic as possible with my work,” Jordan said, explaining that each of his pieces instead taps into that “universality in us that we all carry, a deep appreciation for the abiding beauty of our world and the miracle of our own lives.”
An environmental activist as well as an artist, Jordan is challenging others to target that universality too as they convey messages about the issues that affect the planet.
Jordan spoke March 1 as part of a working group to discuss questions about how environmentalists, neuroscientists and artists can work together to better communicate about issues affecting the planet. The Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences sponsored the discussion.
Duke ecologist Nicole Heller moderated the discussion, opening it with the idea that scientists are frustrated with their inability to communicate with politicians and the public about the environment.
“In the ’70s, yucky or scary images might have worked, but now they don’t. That’s no longer appealing. We need different kinds of imagery to reach across people’s biases,” Heller said. She invited Jordan to speak because of his reputation for being able to move audiences from diverse backgrounds and education levels.
“Second graders are some of the most passionate and responsive to these issues,” Jordan said, adding that perhaps the best thing we can do is to appeal to an individual’s inner child – that curious spirit we have to understand how the world works.
One example of this approach is the film Jordan is working on to explore the mating dance of albatrosses on Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. He’s photographed dead baby albatrosses, whose stomachs are full of plastic trash their parents fed to them because they mistake the plastic for food. The work was to make people aware of the plastic vortex, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, swirling beyond the horizon and therefore beyond our conscious concern.
Jordan decided to capture the wonder of the albatrosses as they mate, rather than just their rotting carcasses, hoping to feed his audiences — no matter their background — with life, rather than depress them with death.
“Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here,” Jordan writes on his Web site.
By Pranali Dalvi
Human and chimpanzees are very similar genetically despite the stark differences in their outward appearances. So it must be just a very small portion of human genes that are responsible for everything from our upright posture to our ability to sing. What makes humans so unique?
“Humans are not the best model organisms since there is a limit to what you can do genetically and mentally. You can’t really make a human knockout (but sometimes, nature makes it for you),” Wray said.
Still, humans are immensely important to study for practical reasons. We have uniquely human courses of disease in part due to our physiological, cognitive, and mechanical properties. Also, we’re just intrinsically curious about our own bodies.
According to Wray, the answer to human uniqueness is our regulome, the genes, mRNAs, proteins, and metabolites that regulate which genes are turned on when.
This graph shows the two major shifts in diet (meat-rich diet and grain-based diet) that likely contributed to our divergence from chimpanzees and thus differential gene expression. Source: Greg Wray
One prevailing hypothesis is that human forerunners likely began diverging from chimps about 2 million years ago when we took on a meat-rich diet in the savannah. The ancestors of chimpanzees retreated to the rainforest to eat a diet consisting mostly of fruits. Our meat-rich diet seems to coincide with an increase in brain size. And today we metabolize fats much differently than chimpanzees.
Wray’s lab studied the effects of dietary changes on five tissue samples – the cerebral cortex and cerebellum of the brain, liver, fat, and skeletal muscle. What seems to have changed in chimps versus humans are genes related to neural functioning, development, and metabolism. For instance, 31 of 61 genes involved in insulin signaling are operated differently in chimps and humans. These differences in gene expression may also explain why humans are uniquely susceptible to diet-related illnesses like type II diabetes.
On the other hand, genes involved in the transcription, translation and replication of DNA, RNA processing and protein localization haven’t changed in chimps versus humans.
Fat cells also behave differently in humans versus chimps. Wray’s lab took adult stem cells from adipose tissue in both chimps and humans and challenged them with either more oleic acid (the main fatty acid in a meat-heavy diet) or more linoleic acid (the dominant fatty acid in a grain-based diet). The enzymes involved in fatty acid synthesis were more common in human adipose tissues. Wray believes that the increased fatty acid synthesis is probably responsible for building and fueling a larger human brain.
Another major shift in diet occurred during the agricultural revolution, which introduced omega-6 fatty acids into our diet along with pro-inflammatory compounds. Wray explains that the increase in grains from the shift in diet likely contributes to chronic pro-inflammatory diseases in humans, such as atherosclerosis.
“Understanding our metabolic history from an evolutionary context can potentially give us insight into some pretty prominent health concerns,” says Wray.
Sometimes a middle-school nickname becomes a career.
Graduate student Jingzhi Tan, yawned loudly during a quiet class in middle school in China, garnering the nickname Hippo. So now he’s at Duke, studying yawning behaviors in bonobos.
Jingzhi “Hippo” Tan is a graduate student working on bonobos’ love of strangers.
So-called ‘contagious yawning’ has been found in many species besides humans and other great apes, including baboons, monkeys and dogs. Tan found that bonobos are more likely to yawn along with strangers than they are to yawn with animals they already know. (They also prefer to share food with strangers first.) In the future, he hopes to do a similar study with chimpanzees, but must first modify the structure of the experiment.
“The bonobo study that we just did is technically unethical to do with chimps—you can’t put two strange chimps together because they’re going to kill each other,” Tan said. “Later we’re trying to develop a task that is chimp-friendly and we’re going to use it for comparison between a variety of species.”
His studies on great apes, he said, will hopefully reveal more about the human mind and aid wildlife conservation efforts.
Tan noted that there is no better way of understanding the human mind than studying its evolution. Through his studies, Tan hopes to uncover the constraints of human problem-solving abilities, which will help solve problems relating to conservation.
“There is a gap between people who want to conserve nature versus people who are making decisions and policies. Usually what they do is alienate each other,” Tan said. “You can’t actually do something unless you really understand the mind of people.”
Likasi, a resident of the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, where Hippo does his work. (Jingzhi Tan)
As an undergraduate at Peking University, Tan studied under the only cognitive evolution professor in all of China. He is now the first Chinese person to study great apes in Africa.
Tan said he is concerned that chimps are apparently being illegally exported to China, where they end up in the entertainment industry. Tan said there is one reality show that features three chimps—dressed in human clothes—choosing fruit at a supermarket. Another pair of infant chimps were forced into a fake wedding, complete with a wedding dress, and received national media attention.
China needs stronger animal welfare laws, Tan said. “Going back to the big picture, in the next decade, if you want to help bonobos in Africa or any other animals in Africa, we have to get China involved. Right now it’s just completely empty and blank.”
Spinner dolphins swimming just off the bow of a boat. Image courtesy of Dave Johnston, Duke.
Waianae, HI – Pet a dolphin for me, my sister texted as I stepped onto a catamaran in West Oahu. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that is exactly what I would NOT be doing, under any circumstances.
I have to admit that a little later, as a pod of wild spinner dolphins undulated just ahead of the bow of our boat, it was really hard not to reach out and try to touch one of them.
It was almost as if getting closer to the creatures as they slid through the water would free us, if only for a moment, from our artificial world of buildings, cars, computers and cell phones. But, in reality, interacting with spinners can’t take us away from our hyper-connected world, and chasing and touching the dolphins is not good for them either.
Spinner dolphins — Stenella longirostris – swim into shallow bays off Hawaii’s coast during the day to rest, turning off half of their brain at a time as they sleep. With one half on and one half off, they can still swim to the surface to breathe and ultimately recharge for the next night’s hunt.
But lots of vacationing people swimming and sailing in the bays aren’t thinking of the dolphins’ schedule and rest, they are only wanting to get closer to the wild animals. And the dolphins, much like humans, are curious. They’re going to check you out if you’re in their space, just like you would if you hear a strange noise in your room while your trying to sleep, our guides from Hawaii Nautical tell us as we cruise out of Waianae Harbor on West Oahu.
We sail for a bit and then come upon a pod of spinner dolphins resting off our port side. Everybody bunches to the front of the boat to get as close as they can to the animals. Our guides remind us of the dolphins’ sleep cycle and explain that the tour company follows the NOAA-sponsored Dolphin SMART program.
SMART stands for: Staying back from the dolphins; Moving away if they seem disturbed; Always keep a boat engine in neutral if you are near a pod; Refraining from feeding or touching them; and Teaching others to be dolphin SMART. Needless to say, we didn’t swim with or touch the dolphins. Sorry sis. Instead, we sailed a bit more, snorkeled with some sea turtles, not touching them of course, and then sailed back toward the harbor.
On the way back, we spotted another pod of spinners, and even more inspiring, we simply watched the animals. They were enjoying their rest, undisturbed in their home — something we all crave and appreciate when we can get it.
Guest Post by Robin A. Smith, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
A male peacock roosting at the top of a tree in India at dusk. (Jessica Yorzinski photo)
Deep in the scrublands of Keoladeo National Park in northwest India, one thing was hard for biologist Jessica Yorzinski to ignore: It wasn’t the heat. It wasn’t the jackals. It was the squawks of peacocks in the throes of passion.
From behind the trees in the distance, she could hear a loud two-part whoop, the distinctive call that male peacocks make right before mating.
During the peacock courtship dance, a male announces that he’s ready to make his move by dashing towards the object of his affection and emitting a singular squawk before mounting his mate.
“Peacocks have a number of different courtship calls, but this is the only one specifically associated with the moment before copulation, a time when the female is finally right in front of the male. It’s called the hoot-dash display,” said Yorzinski, who is a post-doctoral fellow in the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke.
The amorous peacock’s signature hoot poses a puzzle for scientists. For one thing, he’s already got the girl. “By that point she’s already right there, checking him out. You’d think that he might not need another signal at such a late stage in the courtship process,” Yorzinski said.
What’s more, the calls could alert potential predators to an easy meal. Jackals, tigers and hawks can make a quick snack of a wild peacock in their native habitat of South Asia. “In a sense, they’re advertising that they’re distracted and vulnerable. It would be wise for a predator to capitalize on that,” Yorzinski said.
Yorzinski on stakeout inside a blind on a day hotter than 100 degrees F. (courtesy of Jessica Yorzinski)
Intrigued, Yorzinski recorded the loud carrying-on of males in mid-conquest. Then she played the calls to free-ranging females in India and videotaped their reactions. At each site, a loudspeaker played copulation calls on one day and silent controls on another day.
The result: the recorded love sounds made by amorous peacocks in the throes of passion drew eavesdropping females from afar. Females approached and spent more time near speakers that were playing hoots compared to silent controls.
To make sure the birds weren’t simply drawn to any noise, Yorzinski repeated a similar experiment with captive birds in an outdoor enclosure at Duke. There, a speaker played two different sounds: peacock copulation calls, or crow caws.
The results matched what she found in the wild. Captive females paid little attention to the speakers when crow caws were playing, but when the love whoops were played, the females moved toward the source of sound and spent more time near the speaker.
“Why they’re attracted to these calls and what it tells them — these are still open questions,” Yorzinski said.
Announcing the fact that he’s getting a girl could help a male attract additional mates, she explained.
Studies in other species have shown that females flock towards popular males. “It’s like someone’s already vouched for him. If he’s good enough for one girl, then he might be good enough for another girl, too.”
That dating boost could make up for the risks involved in disclosing his whereabouts to potential predators, especially in the birds’ native habitat where dense trees and grasses make strutting males hard for females to spot.
If distant females are drawn to the love calls made by mating males, why don’t the males simply boost their call rate to give the impression that they’re more successful than they actually are?
“One of the biggest unanswered questions is why males don’t fake it,” Yorzinski said. “I’ve heard males making false calls when there’s no mate in sight, so there definitely is some level of cheating going on. Figuring out why they don’t do it more often would be the key.”
