MetaFilter posts tagged with Anthropology and Biology

Animal behaviour: Grape expectations

kliuless — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:10:32 -0800

Revealing how we are just a bunch of monkeys... (via) Franz de Waals and Sarah Brosnan

...trained brown capuchin monkeys to give them pebbles in exchange for cucumbers. Almost overnight, a capuchin economy developed, with hungry monkeys harvesting small stones. But the marketplace was disrupted when the scientists got mischievous: instead of giving every monkey a cucumber in exchange for pebbles, they started giving some monkeys a tasty grape instead. (Monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers.) After witnessing this injustice, the monkeys earning cucumbers went on strike. Some started throwing their cucumbers at the scientists; the vast majority just stopped collecting pebbles. The capuchin economy ground to a halt. The monkeys were willing to forfeit cheap food simply to register their anger at the arbitrary pay scale.

in other words, it could be up to our kids to replenish our trust networks... BONUS GRAPES

How We Evolve

homunculus — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:16:29 -0800

How We Evolve: "A growing number of scientists argue that human culture itself has become the foremost agent of biological change, making us — for the past 10,000 years or so — the inadvertent architects of our own future selves." Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution (previously). International HapMap Project (previously). The Genographic Project (previously).

Shades of Grey in a Black & White Issue.

Gyan — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 01:29:25 -0800

The Inequality Taboo - Charles Murray defends his ideas, published in the controversial book The Bell Curve.

From Big Bang to Humankind

WolfDaddy — Tue, 13 May 2003 16:55:31 -0800

Cosmic Evolution -- Particulate, Galactic, Stellar, Planetary, Chemical, Biological, Cultural (Via the Exploratorium)

steve.wdc — Mon, 20 May 2002 12:22:00 -0800

The famous biologist and anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould died in his home today of cancer at the age of 60.