Apes' Simple Nests Are Feats of Engineering

[xchrom]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=apes-simple-nests-are-fea


Orangutan nest viewed from above.
Image: Adam van Casteren


When they are ready to snuggle up at the tops of trees, great apes make themselves cozy "nests" in which to rest for the night. New studies of these one-night nests reveal their incredible complexity.

"They are almost as complex as a man-made shelter you might make," study researcher A. Roland Ennos of the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom, told LiveScience. "They know how the wood is going to break, and they have a feel for how strong they have to make it [the nest]. That shows the apes have intelligence and have a feel for the physics of their environment."

These nests are about 4 to 5 feet long and about 3 feet wide (1.2 to 1.5 meters long, and slightly less that 1 meter wide). The apes make them in the forest canopy, which can be between 30 and 60 feet (10 and 20 m) up, and it takes them only about 10 minutes to build. They use the nests only once, and then move on. The nests keep them warmer, away from insects and keep them safe, up off the forest floor.

[SemperEadem]

1. It's a shame

that palm oil companies are decimating the Orangutan populations in Sumatra by burning down the forests in which they live and those orangutans who tried to escape were chased back into the flames.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002574512

[xchrom]

2. +1

[1monster]

3. It is, or should be a crime.

[saras]

4. This is a surprise? They sleep 60 ft up and DON'T make good nests? Uh-huh.

Even birds aren't that stupid, and birds are really stupid.

That weird misapplication of Occam's razor, that seems to state that animals are vastly stupider and less complex than either human history has led us to believe they are or than common sense would lead one to suspect, is awesomely alive and well in science.

It is glaringly obvious that monkeys that live in nests know how to make good ones. To argue otherwise, without the evidence of failed nests, is merely foolish.

As to HOW they make them good, what it MEANS to say the apes "know how the wood is going to break", there are some really interesting questions in there. As in "do they really use more physics than, say, bowerbirds?" And they certainly can't know any more "physics" than, say, a medieval ditch-digger. It's also possible, for example, that apes use something more like a "rule of thumb" than an actual scientific principle, such as physics consists of. You don't have to know physics to throw a rock in a parabola.

But the overall tone is so much like "isn't it amazing that they're not so stupid they fall from the trees and die all the time?"

Ultimately I expect the nests to be compromises between a bunch of different features, not maximized for one. DIfficulty of building, effectiveness at pest control, temperature, wind, moisture, nature of predators, nature of forest - I would expect all to have some effect.

I also think these processes are where things like taboo come from in humans. There are things it's really important to do well long before we have realistic theories as to why and how we should do them.

[SemperEadem]

5. the intelligence of many animals is underestimated

and has been for centuries by those who have to hold fast to the theory that man has dominion over them. Each animal has its own unique physics which it has worked out for its survival--if they didn't work it out, they'd be extinct (this is given if man isn't somehow involved in the culling of the species).

for example: It was recently discovered that octopi use tools--taking coconut husks and using the pieces to make hiding places.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8408233.stm

Also, the mimic octopus mimics other creatures in order to fool predators:

their intelligence has been along the order of that of cat, but it would seem they're more intelligent than that, since cats don't use tools from their environment to create shelter or evade predation.

It's just a shame that for the sake of fattening processed foods and cosmetics that these Orangutans are being culled.