Chimpanzee And Human Behavior Analysis

I find the study of Chimpanzee and Human behaviour to be a very fascinating subject. Primatology is a field of study that helps us understand many different aspects of how primate’s function and how we are able to compare it to how human’s behaviour and social skills adapt and develop much differently in society. The article I read focuses on this specific topic and shows us how humans and apes develop different social skills from a young age. Even though chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and we share similar DNA, we evidently develop completely different learning and socials skills than them. I think by studying this process it helps us give a broader idea and aspect to the evolution of both primates and humans and how we connect …show more content…
It is clear that we have more intelligence than our closest relatives, but the real question is to what extent. That is exactly what the anthropologist in this article is doing, conducting a study on children and chimps behaviour while in certain settings. The children in this article are able to construct structures before they can even form words. I think this is extremely fascinating because speaking is supposed to be one of the easiest things we tend to pick up on as an infant, but showing how we are able to understand the environment we are in and manipulate it to our advantage even for something as simple as being for our own enjoyment is incredible. These life and social skills are not seen in apes and that is the answer anthropologists are looking for, the question specifically being what sets us apart from each other? By taking both children and chimps of the same age, they are both given similar and easy tasks to complete. Both are shown the experimenter trying to get two pipes to connect with each other but failing to do so each …show more content…
Primates rely on themselves and their parents to be able to function in their environment, utilizing and testing the objects around them to learn their purpose and what they have to offer to help them. They achieve a better understanding through trying and failing, so they know what they did wrong and can fix their errors in the future. I think this is what gives us our advantage over primates. Primates do learn from each other by copying what they see the other is doing and are very dependant from a young age just like us humans. But we are able to understand our emotions and the emotions of others by studying the expressions and body language from other human beings and use that to make rational decisions. These expressions help us understand the intentions or emotions the other person is feeling or the goal they are trying to accomplish. By watching other people we are able to acquire information and help enhance our knowledge about ourselves, other humans and our