How To Be a Monkey
A Talk by Matt Z, at Main Conference
Abstract
Why did monkeys evolve to be so smart? We'll explore the latest scientific research, and get into the minds of our non-human primate relatives.
Main Description
Behavioral ecology is the study of behaviors as evolutionary adaptive responses to environmental pressures.
So what environmental pressures drove the evolution of primate intelligence? The 3 main hypothesis are 1) the managing the complex relationships in monkeys' social lives, 2) their mental “map making” to keep track of their foods, and 3) eating complex foods, that often take several steps of processing before they can be eaten.
We'll explore some of the scientific research about the minds of monkeys, and I'll tell some of my favorite monkey stories from my time spent researching wild capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica.
Speaker
Some of you may remember me from the main conference last year – I'm a biologist, a software dork, silly dancer, and bicycle enthusiast.
2 years ago, I worked as a field assistant collecting scientific data about wild capuchin monkeys. Now days, I'm working on a website to try to teach people about monkeys and share my experience. http://winslowhomerday.net (better domain name coming soon)
- title:
- How To Be a Monkey
- by:
- Matt Z
- eventtype:
- Main Conference
- date:
- --
- time:
- --
- duration:
- 50 minutes
- http:
- //winslowhomerday.net (better domain name coming soon)