From Barbara King of the Friday Animal Blog:

This week, the Daily Press, one of the larger papers in my area of southeastern Virginia, published an op-ed I wrote. Here it is:

Wednesday, July 14, marked the 50th anniversary of Jane Goodall’s stepping onto the shores of Lake Tanganyika at Gombe in Tanzania, East Africa, to observe wild chimpanzees. Or to be more precise, of Goodall’s day after day waiting and hoping to see more than only dark ape shapes brachiating away from her in the trees. Five decades later, her patience—and her success—are legendary, worldwide.
Like most primatologists, I owe a huge debt to Goodall. As is now known to every beginning anthropology or animal-behavior student, before Goodall we had no clue that chimpanzees make and use tools, or hunt other animals, or express deep emotions that undergird behaviors ranging from violence to compassion. If I had to choose one accomplishment and only one to highlight, though, it’d be this: Goodall opened our eyes to apes’ individuality, to the variant and vibrant personalities of our closest living relatives.
Through her books and films we came to see that some chimpanzee mothers are loving and others indifferent; some chimpanzee males are striving alphas and others apolitical bumblers; some chimpanzee youngsters are innovative and others rely on brawn more than brain. Through Goodall’s unique blend of science and spirituality, of research and activism, we came to see that every single chimpanzee matters.
How amazing for an ape-watcher to have become a household name—and a household face! One time when I was with her—I’ve been lucky enough to spend small bits of time with Goodall in Williamsburg, in Santa Fe, and in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania—we entered a fancy hotel and the entire lobby plunged into staring silence. Desk clerks, porters, passersby, everyone knew who she was and they fell into a hush.
We read her books, we watch her films, and we attend her lectures to hear that gorgeous chimpanzee pant-hoot that she does.
Sometimes, though, it seems to me we care just so much and not quite enough—and I include myself in this charge. Yes, we learn about threats to apes and we may even send in some donation dollars to help. But if Goodall can crisscross continents year after year to help chimpanzees, can we do more?
As a starting point, here are five things we can do to honor Goodall on her golden anniversary:

* Read the science and politics of the terrible bushmeat trade, where poachers kill animals for big-scale supplying of meat. Documents are available at the Jane Goodall Institute or via any Google search.

* Follow through with the “take action” suggestions at the institute’s website, so that we may press governments to take concrete steps to turn poachers into protectors worldwide.

* Spend our dollars not on observing apes in poorly run zoos or at the movies—and not on swimming with dolphins or other exploitative entertainment either—but instead to support Goodall’s work or the work of another animal-welfare organization of your choice.

* Recycle each and every one of the hundreds of thousands of cellphones in use in our community because mining of coltan (used in the phones) is so harmful to African apes (gorillas, mostly).

* Apply Goodall’s logic in our own backyards, so that we stay inspired even in the face of animal suffering. Goodall’s philosophy is basically this: “Think you can’t make a difference? When you save one animal, you make a huge difference for him.” More than once, this idea has lifted my spirits in the feral-cat rescue work I do with my husband. Even in challenging economic times, many of us can manage to spay-neuter one more feral cat; adopt or foster one more abused dog or abandoned rabbit; press for stiff legal punishment for people convicted of animal abuse; practice kindness to the birds, turtles, groundhogs, and other species around us every day; and eat and wear what will help and not harm animals.

To Goodall, I send you my gratitude and admiration on this 50th anniversary. Your fans stand with you—for the animals.

From Tom Rees of Epiphenom:

There’s a little corner of your brain—the anterior cingulate cortex—that’s thought to play a role in monitoring errors. The electrical signals that flow from this part of the brain ramp up when the mind is challenged with conflicting information, an effect called “error response negativity.” In short, ERN represents that anxious, uneasy feeling you sometimes get when you’ve made a mistake.
Back in 2009, Michael Inzlicht at the University of Toronto found that religious people had lower ERN compared with nonreligious people when trying to complete a challenging task. Religion seemed to be acting as a kind of anxiolytic, a bit like the drug Xanax.
But is it religion or religious people? Perhaps people who are attracted to religion are just naturally more chill. Or can you actually reduce anxiety by infusing religious thoughts? In his latest study, Inzlicht aimed to find out.
He took a bunch of students of varying religious beliefs and subliminally primed some of them with religious thoughts by making them unscramble sentences with religious content. Others had to unscramble neutral sentences. Then he got them to do the Stroop Color-Word Test, a challenging test that generates ERN.
Both the religious and nonreligious performed equally well. And, unlike Inzlicht’s first study, there was no intrinsic difference between the two groups’ ERN after the neutral prime.
However, for those students who were religious, priming with religious thoughts beforehand reduced their ERN. For atheists, the opposite occurred. Their ERN actually increased if they had been previously exposed to religious messages.

It’s not clear why this should be. Perhaps religion makes the religious feel comfortable, while for atheists, it sets up an immediate conflict, heightening their response. Maybe priming with reassuring thoughts about atheism would have the opposite effect:

“Maybe when atheists think about science, and the way our world is organized through that lens, it would offer them the same reassurance,” suggests Inzlicht. “The point here is the power of the mind to change external circumstances” (Vancouver Sun).

It’s also worth thinking about the implications of this study. On the face of it, reducing anxiety sounds like a good thing. But, like the sensation of pain, ERN is there for a reason. It’s there to tell us when we are going down a blind alley, and to motivate us to stop. A low ERN is linked to pathologies such as autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
In this light, it’s interesting to compare these results with another study earlier this year. This study found that priming with religious thoughts made people work longer to try to complete an impossible task—when the sensible thing to do was to abandon it as a lost cause. What’s more, people primed with religion were actually more anxious afterward, not less.

From Barbara King of the Friday Animal Blog:

For the primate enthusiast, it’s easy enough to fixate on the alpha species: the baboons, chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos favored by many primatologists and film crews. Relentlessly self-oriented, Homo sapiens enjoy a close look in the mirror—evolutionary or otherwise—so it’s no accident that these popular monkeys and apes are among the ones most closely related to us.
But there’s much to learn from—and much-needed work to do with—primate species less closely our kin, and less celebrated. Owl monkeys are an excellent example.
Biologically, owl monkeys of Central and South America are unique. Their huge eyes reveal their nocturnal nature, unheard of in other monkeys (or in apes). Socially, they are atypical, too. In the wild, adult males share food with and otherwise care for their young, a pattern shared with other monogamous monkeys like marmosets and tamarins, but highly unusual in the primate order as a whole.
For me, these days it’s all about getting to know animals as individuals. So I’m grateful to my friend Sian Evans, a primatologist and managing director of the DuMond Conservancy, a nonprofit organization located on the grounds of Miami’s Monkey Jungle. During my recent trip to Florida, Sian introduced me to Connie and Spruce, a pair of owl monkeys.
Spruce descends from a group that “went wild” after the winds of Hurricane Andrew destroyed its conservancy home—though eventually they were lured back to shelter. Connie’s history is different: Wild-caught in Peru, she lived for years as a lab animal, undergoing malaria research at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now, the pair lives in safety. Both monkeys greatly enjoy the enrichment activities that Sian and her primate supervisor Molly Dodge prepare for them. Molly told me, “Connie and Spruce’s favorite treats are cinnamon-raisin bread, shortcake, and of course bananas. Also, we cut corn cobs in half, dip them into a mash of banana and honey, and hang them from the branches. This enrichment works well because it’s big enough for both to get at, at the same time. They eat it Lady and the Tramp style, each at his or her own end.”



Sian related to me an owl monkey story. Years ago, on her morning monkey rounds, she spied a hole in the foundation of one enclosure, created by a wayward raccoon. Head-counting, she discovered that the owl monkey Buster, father of one small family, was no longer alongside the others.
Sian recounts what happened next: “Happily, I immediately spied a very worried Buster sitting on the limb of a large oak tree close to the enclosure. As soon as Buster spotted me, he moved eagerly toward the cage as if to indicate he wanted to rejoin his family. Relieved that Buster’s return appeared easy to orchestrate, I opened the cage door. I was not at all prepared for what happened next. Buster’s 3-month-old infant ran eagerly toward the open door in an unambiguous attempt to reunite with his father.”
Sian knew the wild data: Intense father-infant bonds are common for owl monkeys. She continues, “I was witnessing further evidence of this and it was complicating my efforts to reunite Buster with his entire family. An exercise I had anticipated would take only 30 seconds finally took 30 minutes, but careful maneuvers with the door eventually had the desired result with Buster and baby reunited INSIDE their enclosure!”
Already a fan, I was further impressed to learn that the conservancy runs a program to connect “trainable mentally handicapped” (TMH) youth with care of the owl monkeys. The THM students, from a local high school, may have Down syndrome or IQs under 60, for example. The students learn readily how to help prepare food for these gentle monkeys; in a giant feedback loop, people and monkeys all benefit. As a conservancy document puts it, “In most cases, this is the first time these students have had the opportunity to be a caregiver and to see a living being thrive under their care.”

From Tom Rees of Epiphenom:

Most research on religion is done in the United States, a country that is something of an outlier among modernized nations because of the importance of religion in daily life. So, for example, the nonreligious in the United States tend to be “disagreeable” (meaning that they are nonconformist and prefer to go their own way). But is this something general about the nonreligious, or does it simply tell us something about what it takes to be openly nonreligious in the United States?
A recent analysis of the values of the religious and the nonreligious in the United Kingdom is particularly interesting. The United Kingdom is moderately godless—few people go to church, and a substantial minority (30 to 40 percent) don’t believe in God.
The researchers sent surveys to 2,000 people in two towns in the southeast of England (Woking and Guildford, to be precise) and got 260 back. So it’s not exactly a random sample! They asked people about their values, using a standard scale (the Schwartz Value Scale) that splits values into nine broad categories.
You can see their main findings in the figure below (click on image for larger view). Basically, the peaks relate to values that are endorsed more strongly by the religious. The troughs relate to values that are endorsed more strongly by the nonreligious.

These are the values held dear by the nonreligious in the United Kingdom:

• universalism: understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature.
• achievement: personal success through demonstrating competence according to social standards.
• hedonism: pleasure and sensual gratification for oneself.
• stimulation: excitement, novelty, and challenge in life.
• self-direction: independent thought and action—choosing, creating, exploring.

By contrast, these values are held dear by the religious:

• benevolence: preservation and enhancement of the welfare of people with whom one is in frequent personal contact.
• conformity-tradition: restraint of actions likely to upset or harm others or violate social norms; respect, commitment, and acceptance of the customs and ideas that traditional culture or religion provide.

And there are two values for which the relationship changes according to how religion is defined—higher for “religiousness” and “attendance” than for “spirituality” or “identification.” These are:

• security: safety, harmony, and stability of society, or relationships, and of self.
• power: social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources.

All in all, I don’t think there are any major surprises. The religious are relatively more focused on their immediate friends as well as respect for tradition and conformity. The nonreligious, in contrast, tend to be those with the widest horizons and the most independent, confident spirits.