Anthro2050 1st Edition Lecture 21 Outline of Last Lecture I Primate Cognition and Culture Outline of Current Lecture II Primate Altruism and Affiliation III Primate Conservation Current Lecture Primate Altruism Altruism Getting along with and helping others at the cost of one s own fitness and without any guaranteed help returned although it often is Why display altruistic behaviors when you can get put at risk group selection having altruists in a group can help the group thrive example primates of various species all using various calls to alert each other to threats ken selection since the goal of natural selection is to get as much of your genetic information into the next generation as possible and since kin share genetic information with you then helping them increases their fitness as well as your own comes naturally since in most groups primates are closely surrounded by kin reciprocal altruism is a system where you help others who help you in return this requires knowing and keeping track of who has helped you and coming in contact with that individual multiple times in humans altruism goes further as the acts of altruism in humans are generally done with the recipient in mind even if the person does not personally know the recipient charities Since primates do not do this generally it is difficult to say if their acts of helping others is truly considered altruism Primate Conservation humans have been around for approximately 10 000 years During that time humans have expanded rapidly and everywhere they expand they modify the environments to fit their needs However since the human population has grown and expanded extremely quickly environmental conservation is a very serious problem that needs to be handled with care it is a believed idea that the reason other homo species besides Homo sapiens are no longer around is because Homo sapiens competed with them to extinction We see modern primates These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute as well being pushed to their limits by both natural and increasing human causes of the 625 currently known and existing primate species 37 percent are endangered In Madagascar alone 60 percent of the species living there are endangered Apes are heavily threatened and it is believed in the next 10 years Orangutans will exist only in captivity as they are dying out quickly in the wild habitat destruction is rapid and intense especially with deforestation Selective logging the removal of only specific types of trees has its pros and cons in the way it affects the primates in those areas Fragmentation breaking the forest into chunks of protected and destroyed area has caused rapid changes to animals living in the protected areas of these chunks Since they cannot leave safely into the opened spaces occupied by humans they have a restricted pool of mates to breed with which if the traits available are different enough from other groups in other fragments over time can lead to speciation bushmeat is also a threat to local primates as the people nearby need to feed themselves and their families and will take what they can get including for example colobus monkeys the pet trade of people taking in primates as pets is also risky and dangerous as people often do not fully know how to care for a primate and forget that primates are not domesticated like cats and dogs are when eating primates or keeping them as pets we run in to zoonoses Zoonoses are infections and disease transmitted from animals to humans and each other One example is ebola Ebola is not pleasant but often not fatal to humans However it is very fatal to gorillas During the 2005 ebola outbreak gorillas were dying in huge numbers In just one study group that year 5000 gorillas died from ebola