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Human preferences to primate species and their consequences
Zelenková, Michaela ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Sedláček, František (referee)
One of the most important traits of an individual is the appearance. Though mankind desires to unlock the "beauty code" for centuries, it is very difficult to do so. A lot of papers focuses on the characterization of appearance and preferences towards it. It is now obvious that instead of using just one factor to describe the nature of "beauty", we need to comprehend a lot of factors that put together the puzzle pieces of an attractive individual. Nowadays, a widely accepted fact is that symmetry makes facial and other body features attractive. Other important factors are averageness or so-called baby schema with distinct young features. Similar rules apply for evaluation of preferences towards other, non-human species, especially primates. The most attractive primates have facial features that resemble humans or that are round with big, distinctive eyes (baby-schema). Thus, for humans, the most attractive primates are the ones that are similar to us and that are large in body size, while the unattractive ones have an appearance distinctive to humans. Moreover, humans distinguish two main primate faces: nice and friendly, baby-like faces, and aggressive, dangerous faces.
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Face recognition and emotional expression processing in primates
Englerová, Kateřina ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Fajnerová, Iveta (referee)
Visual modality is one of the most important senses for primates and also for many other an-imals. It allows them to perceive stimuli from their environment - important objects and places, and also conspecifics or individuals of other species. One of the crucial cognitive skills, especially for social animals, is the ability to distinguish between individuals and their emotions due to different facial features and expressions.Aim of this work is to summarize the current knowledge about face and emotion recognition. It includes neurological mechanisms, experimental methodologies and comparison between species.
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Vliv fragmentace a ztráty habitatu na primáty
Sniegon, Arthur F. ; Sedláček, Ondřej (advisor) ; Pluháček, Jan (referee)
Anthropogenic activities and human encroachment may cause profound and often irrevocable changes in an environment. This may result in challenges for most of the wildlife, including our closest extant relatives, non-human primates. Worldwide, primates may be particularly susceptible to human-induced habitat alterations owing to their large body size, social way of life, slow reproduction, large home-ranges, naturally low population densities and often strong dependence on forest cover. Three main phenomena have been described as major threats for primates: loss of the natural habitat and its conversion to human-dominated landscape, fragmentation of the remaining patches of suitable habitat, and commercial bushmeat hunting. Here I review the first two processes. If primates survive the initial disturbance, they are forced to adjust their demographic, behavioural and dietary traits. However, this may not be enough for their persistence in a long term as their genetic diversity might be compromised. Moreover, also parasitic infections may impact severely the disrupted populations. In this thesis, I reviewed the current knowledge in primates demography, population genetics, dietary changes and parasite interactions in altered habitats. Most of the studies examined the African continent and Latin America, a...
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Success of reintroduction and supplementation programmes and behavioural changes in captive birds and primates.
Janovcová, Markéta ; Landová, Eva (advisor) ; Kůs, Evžen (referee)
The aims of this study are to: 1) review and evaluate the data available in scientific literature about reintroduction and supplementation programmes in birds and primates. The success of founder population reintroduction into the nature was assessed by its population size, survival rate and other life history traits. The breeding in captivity vs. using wild-caught animals for reintroduction and breeding conditions (longevity of captivity) would be checked. Breeding in enclosure versus semi-captive conditions was also checked. 2) mainly, assess behavioural and morphological changes of populations in relation with captive breeding in relation to success of reintroduction. 3) Map the geographic distribution of reintroduction programmes of particular higher taxa and evaluate the IUCN species status of animals used for conservation programmes.
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Responses of naive primates to snakes: experiments with selected species kept in Prague zoo
Kutinová, Lucie ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
In the wild, snakes are known to elicit strong antipredator responses in primates. Primates often mob the snakes, which is also accompanied by loud calls. In evolution, the deadly threat posed by snakes goes as far as to the origin of placental mammals. In this study, the reactions of naïve individuals to snakes were tested. Naïve pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina) and mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus) avoided the snake stimulus. For the macaques there was a longer latency to touch the rubber snake compared to the latency to touch the rubber lizard. The mouse lemurs avoided feeding on the side of experimental box where the snake odor was presented. The reactions of macaques and mouse lemurs were not accompanied by vocalizations and they seemed to be overall mild. Nevertheless, the snake stimuli used here were strong enough for these naïve primates. For ringtail lemurs (Lemur catta), the reactions to uncovering a hidden rubber snake was tested. But the lemurs showed no avoiding reactions. A question for further research is whether the different results for lemurs were not caused by different experimental procedure. As well as in macaques and mouse lemurs, the reactions seemed to be very mild. But no deeper analysis of the behavior was performed. Thus, a reaction could have been overlooked, which...
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Allomothering in mammals
Šedivá, Jitka ; Dokoupilová, Adéla (advisor) ; Masopustová, Renata (referee)
Allomothering is defined as a substitute parental infant care provided by an individual who is not a parent of the infant, but lives within the same group or pack. This behaviour helps the infant with the evolution and is an advantage in times when the mother is absent. In the group context, allomothering strenghtens social bonds by lowering the aggresivity and in the contrary, supporting the cooperative behaviour.
Allomothering occurs among social species and has been observed in both animals in the nature and animals held in captivity, mostly birds, primates, rodents, cetaceans, ungulates, beasts and human.
Evolution biology, who tries to explain the reasons why such a behaviour has evolved, connects allomothering mainly with Hamiltons theory of kin selection and Trivers theory or reciprocial altruism.
Ethology describes different specific forms of non-parental care where allomothering belongs. This can be devided into direct care when the infants are influenced actively (eg. breastfeeding or holding) and indirect care that does not include direct activity (eg. defence against predators). Many different forms of allomothering exist and can vary both in between species and individuals. Mostly we can observe provisioring, defence agains predators, allosucking, grooming, adoption, holding and carrying of the infant.
Practical consequences of allomothering have been well described and studies agree that this behaviour is a benefit for the mother, the infant and the helping individual. Benefits for he mother inhere the enegry savings in the period of lactation which is one of the physically most exhausting. Apart of having to invest less energy it is beneficial for the mother to be able to integrte back to the reprodutional life. Helping females, mostly infantless by the time, can get some maternal experience and for infants themselves, allomothering rises their chances to survive.
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