Primate Research Supplement

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Hall B (International Conference Hall II)

Animals used for entertainment has a long history dating back thousands of years. Archaeological evidence as far back as 2,000 B.C. in Macedonia show that lions were kept in cages. Nowadays, performances using whales, dolphins, horses, and non-human primates are very popular around the world. These species are used for entertainment in several different arenas, from zoos, theme parks, circuses to small scale illegal shows. However, a dichotomy exists in the training of animals, where either a positive reinforcement or punishment contingency is used. Some entertainment purposes have included violent shows, animals exoticized as objects of curiosity, and the anthropomorphization of animals through training and the modification of appearances. In Jakarta, for example, poverty drove the local population to train monkeys to take part in street performances wearing masks and to perform activities such as shopping, riding bicycles and other simulations of human behavior. Scientists have raised several concerns about the training techniques used and the physiological impact on these animals, such as injuries caused by the harsh training or due to financial restriction that does not allow the owners to provide a proper veterinarian care to the animals. In Japan, on the other hand, the monkey performance began as a religious ritual during which a trained monkey danced to music in order to cure horses. Through the years, trainers strived to culturalize the animal by teaching the bipedal posture, and this tradition remains nowadays in the streets as part of Japanese culture. Nevertheless, morphologists are concerned with the changes associated with training animals to mimic "human-like" behaviors. Studies have shown that the long-term training of Japanese monkeys to maintain upright posture introduced marked lumbar lordosis in monkeys. Bone remodeling in the postcranial skeleton also evidenced functional adaptations for stresses induced by sustained bipedalism. The aim of this workshop is to introduce the history and the consequences of animal usage for entertainment, focusing on street monkeys in Japan and abroad, and to raise a general discussion from cultural and welfare perspectives.

Tentative schedule: 3 talks (25 min each + 5 min questions) followed by discussion
Organizers: Rafaela S. C. TAKESHITA, Sofia BERNSTEIN, Prof. Masaki TOMONAGA, Prof. Takakazu YUMOTO (Kyoto University)
Contact: Rafaela S. C. TAKESHITA (Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University), rafaela.takeshita.32c@st.kyoto-u.ac.jp

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Organizer: Michio NAKAMURA (Kyoto University), Kazuhiko HOSAKA (Kamakura Women's University), Noriko ITOH (Kyoto University), Koichiro ZAMMA (Kyoto Uni-versity)

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Although prosocial behaviours are commonplace in human societies, their cognitive mechanisms and evolutionary roots are yet to be explained. Studies of pro-sociality in great apes, involving food sharing tasks, suggest that altruistic food sharing may be a uniquely human characteristic (Tian et al., 2013; Bullinger et al., 2014). However, tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella), a New World species diverged from apes about 40 million years ago, which have been shown to be sensitive to others' welfare (Takimoto et al., 2010), remain untested on this question of altruism. To investigate capuchins' food sharing capacities, 12 pairs composed of a benefactor and a partner were tested in two adjacent compartments. We observed whether the benefactor monkeys (those in possession of food) would benefit their partner by voluntarily delivering them food. In the first experiment, the cost of sharing was high; benefactors had to allow their partner to eat a portion of their own food (altruistic sharing). In the second experiment, the cost was reduced so that the benefactors no longer had to share their own food but inaccessible one (active giving). The results suggested that capuchins were unwilling to share food altruistically. However, when the cost of sharing decreased, they sometimes chose to act pro-socially toward selected individuals. The results will be discussed in line with previous ape studies reporting that partners' behaviours may also play an important role for pro-sociality to appear, by driving the benefactor's response (Yamamoto et al.,2009).

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Hygiene encompasses behaviours that maintain individuals and their environments clean to prevent infectious disease. Hygienic practices are human universals, but less is known about such behaviours in other species. While diverse strategies for avoiding parasites have been proposed, and despite the ubiquity of faecal-oral parasites, feeding-related infection-avoidance strategies remain poorly understood in other vertebrates. We tested through experimentation and observation whether food manipulation behaviours and faeces avoidance in a non-human primate could reflect hygienic tendencies that reduce parasite burdens. We show that collective food-related risk-sensitivities, manifest as tendencies to process food items before consumption and avoid faeces, are correlated negatively with intensity of infection by faecal-oral geohelminths in Japanese macaques in their natural habitat. This behavioural suite may therefore reflect hygienic tendencies, providing a mechanism of behavioural immunity with implications for the evolution of health maintenance strategies in humans.

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