Essay On Nonhuman Primates

Tomasello and Call (1997) state that it is likely that nonhuman primates and other animals have natural concepts in their everyday lives nonetheless it is difficult to demonstrate in training procedures and observe in their natural habitat. Currently the conclusion of whether or not nonhuman primates can form natural categories is still missing; the linguistic and symbolic barrier may prevent researchers from acquiring further evidence. The studies explored in our paper consistently support the argument made by Vonk and MacDonald (2002), that many examples of natural concept formations in nonhuman primates and other animals do not conclusively eliminate the use of perceptual rather than conceptual processes. The role of perceptual information in discrimination to indicate conceptual behaviour in …show more content…
Expanding cognitive research into other species may give a better understanding of concepts developed through other cues other than visual. For instance recent studies on the evolution of canine cognition discuss the cognitive capabilities of dogs have been altered through the process of domestication to interact with humans, it is proposed that dogs have acquired keen abilities to read human communicative cues and perhaps emotion cues (Udell et al., 2010). Insight from other animal research may be able to contribute to questions still unanswered, not just characters selected in visual objects but other environmental and experimental cues attributing to concept. Two principal groups, as Tomasello and Call (1997) mention have still yet to gain considerable attention, the great apes, who are humans’ closest relative, and prosimians, the primate group with whom the human evolutionary lineage departed from the longest. Since then more research has been conducted for