Miro Jan Benedict G. Navarro - The Social Climbers and Food for Thought Reaction Paper

Miro Jan Benedict G. Navarro                                                                                                           STS

2010-25812

The Social Climbers and Food for Thought Reaction Paper

                         In the documentary The Social Climbers, it was presented how monkeys interact with each other and how their hierarchy works. In the documentary Food for Thought on the other hand, showed how apes interact with each other and how the human race find ways to improve their food gathering. These documentaries are informative and interesting and a must watch to anybody who is interested in the life of monkeys and apes and also about ourselves.

                         The first concept that the documentary The Social Climbers presented is that monkeys are keen observers and that if an opportunity is presented to them, then they will exploit it. An example of this is when they look for food and how they extract them from inedible sources. Another concept the documentary presented is that monkeys are social beings and they group themselves to protect themselves from predators. Because they group themselves, there exists a hierarchy that they follow and they have a social protocol to implement. All of the facts presented about monkeys are disturbingly similar to humans. We also exploit opportunities when it is presented to us and because of this, we learn new things. Also, we also group ourselves and have a social protocol to implement. I think that by studying monkeys, we can learn something about ourselves too.

                         The Food for Thought documentary showed us how apes operate in the environment they are in. It showed us that apes learn by watching which then shows us that younger apes learn by watching older apes. This then implies that apes are social beings and they have a culture. Like monkeys, apes group themselves and have a hierarchy that they follow. This shows that apes are political creatures. Overall, the apes are social, cultural and political creatures which is similar to humans. Like monkeys, I think that by studying apes, we can learn something about ourselves too. The second part of this documentary describes how humans improve their methodology of how to get food. It started when humans studied animal behaviour and also using this knowledge to make the animal tired so that it is easier to kill. After, we learned how to cultivate plants and how to improve farming for greater yield. Nowadays, we can grow crops in inhospitable areas which dramatically increase our food supply. Due to the exponential increase in population, there will be a time that the food supply will not be enough to supply everybody. Due to this problem, scientists are trying to analyze if it is possible for people to be transported to Mars. The final question I believe in this documentary is this: "Increase food supply or control population growth?". This made me think of the possible ways and I believe it should be both.