Reaction Paper on Social Climbers and Food for Thought

2010-07915

Ongsyping, Anderson S.

      Monkeys are diverse mammals that not only rely on muscle but to cunning and intellect as well. Compared to most animals, monkeys can perform more things such as nut cracking. The monkeys can use their brains to adapt to the environment and learn to crack nuts as shown by elders, or even self-taught. They also have an ability to climb trees, which is an advantage compared to other animals where it can see from a better perspective, eat fruits, insects and other animals that are inaccessible to most animals. They can use this ability as well to alert other monkeys of approaching danger. Because they have excellent color vision, they can assess/differentiate plants that are poisonous over another. The most important quality of developed mammals is its ability to socialize. As shown in the documentation, monkeys and apes are in fact very sociable and research suggests that a larger brain is needed to socialize. On average, humans can have around 150 close relationships while the monkeys (with large brains relative to other monkeys) in the documentation can have around 50 close relationships. The social aspect of animals is very important because it entails diversity such as sharing food, travelling in groups, hunting in groups, and even coexisting with other monkeys of different species. They learn to take advantage of each species’ specialties such as hunting at night, climbing very high trees otherwise inaccessible to other monkeys, fruit gathering, ability to collect food deep within a tree, etc. The socializing aspect of monkeys is what makes them in a sense ‘more advanced’ than other animals, which is primarily one of the main reasons why we are often taught that we have evolved from monkeys. This is still controversial and subject to debate, but the one sure thing that we can learn is that socializing can go a really long way. Human beings have developed itself above all animals because of the aspect to which we socialize. Most if not all of our advances can be rooted to how intricate and developed are brains are compared to other animals. At the near end of the documentary, we are shown the technological advancement of the civilization of the human being, from the creation of stone tools all the way to the cities, and paved way to the fruits of the modern age that we enjoy today.  Without the ability to socialize, we will still be left as primitive creatures that hunt day to day just to survive. In essence, monkeys aren’t the only ones that are ‘social climbers’ because we, humans, are social climbers too.