Understanding the Ins and Outs of Tool Use in Capuchin Monkeys with Professor Patricia Izar

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In this episode of The PrimateCast origins, we’re sharing a lecture from primatologist and cognitive ethologist, Patricia Izar from the University of São Paulo.

Pat is one of the eminent Latin American primatologists, and along with her close friends and colleagues Drs. Dorothy Fragaszy and Elisabetta Visalberghi - see episode #68 for more on this from Elisabetta Visalberghi - she’s been studying the incredible tool use behavior of robust capuchins for the past few decades.

Capuchins are one of the very few non-great ape primates that are known to commonly use tools in nature - they use stones and anvils to crack open tough nuts and aquatic invertebrates (Paywall).

Pat walks us through a series of fascinating experiments with these charismatic monkeys - who by the way you can hear make a series of audio-only cameos in the background while she shows our Zoom audience some videos. Her target? Trying to understand what they know about the tools they use and what benefits they gain from using them.

Check out a short documentary about the EthoCebus project, of which Pat is a key member.

Because of her long history of observing and experimenting with wild capuchins, she challenges the idea from laboratory experiments with captive-reared individuals that capuchins don’t  understand how or why the tools they use work; a commonly held belief that, unlike humans, monkeys don’t really have a strong sense of the ‘folk physics’ underlying their behavior.

Other topics that come up:

• selecting the best tools to use 
• what environmental factors affect when and how capuchins use tools
• how using tools might affect social relationships
• the nutritional benefits of tool use in different seasons
• Have you ever wondered how heavy those stones are?
• playing with perception by providing huge stones that are light as a feather

Pat ends by talking about how this iconic behavior in capuchins can tell us a lot about the evolution of tool use in humans. By studying animals like capuchins, we can learn a lot about the kinds of conditions that are likely to have fostered this cognitively demanding behavior during our evolution.

Although she doesn’t mention it in the lecture, Pat is also a key figure in the profession and development of primatology, both locally in Brazil and internationally. She is currently the President of the Brazilian Society of Primatology, and serves the International Primatological Society as its VP for Education.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves.

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