Midlife Crisis in Apes

Are you feeling anxious, forlorn, tired and washed-up lately? Do you want to quit your job due to boredom, dump your spouse for someone else or perhaps buy a red convertible to make up for those lost years? Maybe you are experiencing midlife crisis – a state or a time in one’s life where there is emotional transformation between the ages 40 to 60 years old. Although not all people go through midlife crisis, some really have difficulty coping with such a stressor. There comes a point that comes in the way of personal relationships, careers and even health.

Well, you are not alone. Chimps and apes experience midlife crisis, too. What do they usually do when they experience this kind of emotional crisis? Too bad apes cannot buy a red sports car to ease their anxiety and kiss those emotional stressors goodbye. If they can only buy a red Ferrari, they surely will but of course, it would not be possible. So how these have researches proven this state of midlife crisis among apes just like humans?

Studies have shown that captive chimps do experience the same low emotional state during midlife in the same way it has also discovered in people. Midlife crisis and discontent has been proven to be true and has been experienced in the universal sense. Some may not go through with this, but others virtually try to live with it and take matters into their own hands resulting to depression, divorce, job loss, health problems and many more negative effects. This need not be the case. This event need not be a crisis. This should be a time of reflection and an opportunity to discover new things and embrace changes for the better.

Now, let’s go back to midlife crisis in apes. Though most humans do go through midlife crisis brought about by social, cultural and emotional concerns, the midlife crisis in apes may be a result of biology that can be traced back to its evolutionary roots and not culture.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Is the midlife crisis of humans caused too by biology and evolutionary roots since apes and humans basically come from the same Homonidae which forms the taxonomy of primates?

According to the study revealed in Yahoo News, “It suggests the human tendency toward midlife discontent may have been passed on through evolution, rather than resulting simply from the hassles of modern life, said Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England who presented his work Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Apes and Surrogacy

Apes and surrogacy has long been something which modern researchers and scientists have looked into, as well as classic fiction writers and scribes.

The 1984 movie starring Christopher Lambert, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, stands to be the most popular yarn touching up on the subject, with countless variations and versions of the Tarzan legend.

But as popular as the Tarzan legend and character is, no factual record telling of a human baby being raised by apes in the jungle has yet been known, but records which touch up on how infant apes and monkeys respond to “surrogate mothers” are around.

The most famous would be the circa 1950s studies of Harry Harlow, who conducted experiments delving into an infant monkey’s ascription of the maternal instinct and how infants are liable to respond to surrogate mothers.

In his study, Harlow separated infant rhesus monkeys from their mothers just a couple of hours after they were born. In a controlled environment, the researcher provided two “man-made” surrogate mothers, one constructed out of simple wire meshes and the other made with a layer of “fur”.

Both “man-made” surrogate mothers were designed with hardware components made to dispense milk. Given a choice, the infant monkeys would opt for the “man-made” surrogate mother with a layer of “fur”, rather than the one bearing a more “industrial look”.

The groundbreaking study has proven to be influential in further delving into how surrogate mothers have an effect on infants, with its implications delving into the areas of psychology, as well as emotional dynamics involved in adoption situations and cases.

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Gorillas and Sign Language

The subject of gorillas and their capacity to comprehend sign languages has long been debated and argued about by experts and scientists, just as the gorilla’s said capacity to comprehend sign languages has been the subject of countless short stories and feature length movies.

The 1995 released Born to be Wild would be one good example of such featured stories, given how Katie, the main protagonist gorilla in the movie, managed to communicate with a human juvenile delinquent named Rick.

Thought he movie did effectively illustrate how Katie managed to engage in a conversation with Rick, a real gorilla named Koko is known for having established an understanding capacity for sign languages, one which has been heavily studied and looked into by researchers.

Koko’s handler, Francine Patterson, contests that Koko is capable of understanding an approximated 2,000 words of English, as well as comprehend a thousand signs which are based on the sign-standards of the American Sign Language.

However, other scientists and researchers are convinced that Koko is simply “imitating” the signs without exactly comprehending them, given the fact that Koko’s “training” works with a rewards system.

Still, a number of researches are convinced that gorillas do actually comprehend the meaning of signs, though not at human-level degrees, given their general capacity in expressing signs or aggression using their hands.

Given that Koko appears to be the only gorilla capable of understanding sign languages, it appears that further studies and inquires are required to fully asses the gorilla’s actual capacity in communicating via hand languages.

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Orangutans

An orangutan took center stage in the 1996 feature, Dunston Checks In, co-starring with Jason Alexander from Seinfeld-fame, Faye Dunaway, Eric Lloyd and Rupert Everett.

Telling the tale of how a mischievous orangutan made friends with a boy in a luxury hotel, the movie didn’t exactly become the epic comedy/adventure film flick it was poised to be, but it effectively managed to draw attention towards one of the most easily and readily recognized of apes in the world, the orangutan.

Found in the jungles of Malaysia and Indonesia, the orangutan remains to be one of the most famous of the great apes, known for living most of their lives up in trees. But as they are the most “tree dwelling” or arboreal of the great apes, the orangutan is also the most solitary of the bunch, known mostly for the bond between mothers and their young, with baby orangutans predominantly dependent on their mothers for two years since their birth.

As the orangutan’s redish-hued fur remains to be one predominant orangutan characteristic, the intelligence of orangutans is another trademark sported by the species, with different orangutans exhibiting extensive intelligence markers such as the implementation of tools for various “jobs” and activities, as well as the creation of “beddings” utilizing leaves, barks and twigs.

Being the subject of various tests and studies focused in assessing the orangutan’s intelligence capacities, they have also long been poached by poachers, leaving the great ape with its highly endangered status.

With its name attributed to have been taken from the Malay “person of the forest”, the orangutan is truly one of the world’s most beautiful creatures, the gentle giants of the forest whose endearing existence means a lot in the conservation and preservation of the world’s natural ecology and natural habitats.

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