Homework Assignment 2

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School

University of Central Florida *

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2511

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Anthropology

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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docx

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Homework Assignment 2: Caila Surdin One important behavior I picked up on while watching the video is that young baboons participate in social learning. In order to learn new skills for survival in the future, young primates will watch and mimic the behaviors of the other primates around them. I observed this in one infant that attempted to find his own way up a tree after he watched an older male climb onto its branches. Another concept I observed is that baboons are sexually dimorphic. Male baboons are much larger than their female counterparts, have larger canines, and also have a lighter color fur. The large body size and canines of the males in useful for defending their territory and their females from other males when participating in male-to-male competition. The first concept tells us that, like all primate offspring, baboon infants learn many key survival skills by learning from their parents. Not only do the infants observe important behaviors like how to find food or climb trees, but they can also learn the basics of child-rearing from their mother, assuming that their mother was able to learn it from her own parents. This shows us that many behaviors that we observe from primates do not come just from their instincts but come from generations of observation to develop new and already used skills. The second concept tells us that male baboons will engage in competition between each other, whether it be for resources or for mates. If there was little competition between these males they would more than likely be sexually monomorphic and be more similar to the females. I believe that in some ways primates could be considered human. During human development, we also rely on observation of those around us to teach us socially acceptable behaviors. While social learning in humans is a bit more complex because of our many different cultures, it is the same concept that we see in the primates as the young have nowhere else to learn new skills except those around them. Another similarity between humans and other primates that I observed in this video is the way our social systems work. The baboons I observed were in a multi-male and multi-female group. This compares to humans because we live in large and complex societies where both males and females interact. Along with similar social systems, these primates and humans also have similar life histories. As noted in Explorations chapter 5, all primates have longer gestation periods which produces very few offspring and take a longer time to raise their offspring to maturation. These are just a few examples of the ways in which primates exhibit many human characteristics and, in some ways, can be considered human.

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