Monkey Business - Robin Dunbar, Dave Gorman and Jo Setchell
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What is the main focus of the episode about primates?
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Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robert Ince. And this is the monkey-est infinite monkey cage yet. It's key childhood memory for many to be walking around the zoo and getting to the monkey enclosure and then seeing that something is going on. You're just a young, innocent child and you say, Mummy, what's that monkey hanging in that tyre doing? And she goes, look away, Brian, look away! LAUGHTER There's nothing of interest here. But, Mum, I'm really interested. There's all things going... No, let's go to the chinchilla enclosure! But, Mother, I'm left with questions unanswered that might damage me in the future. And I'll only be able to deal with particles, not living things.
LAUGHTER
Psychotherapists actually do believe that it is this experience that Brian and so many of you have had in the zoo that can lead to a rubber fetish, though only if the rubber has a six-inch tread. But today... I love the way that rippled around, because... People were reading different images in and surprising yourselves. I think most people are just questioning a six-inch tread. That's enormous. What kind of tyre is that? That's just a tractor, isn't it? Not six inches. That's two or three inches at most. No, I don't know anything about cars. This is going to make no sense now, but anyway. But today we're looking beyond the tyre. Or indeed... We're going through the tyre, which was one of Lloyd Grossman's less successful animal-based shows.
Because we're going to look at what we can learn from, and I will use more Radio 4 language than my colleague here, the romantic behaviour of monkeys. We will be asking about the monogamy of the mandrill, the gregariousness of the gibbon and the temptation of the tamarin. Do monkeys appear to fall in love? How does sibling bonding vary? What gets a monkey hot under the furry collar? And how often do we see them exhibit same-sex behaviour? Ultimately, what do we learn about ourselves by learning about the love life of monkeys? To aid and abet us, we are joined by a psychologist, an anthropologist and a cruciverbalist. And they are.
Hello, I'm Robin Dunbar. I'm a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford. And I spent most of my life studying monkeys and humans and feral goats. And I think the most surprising thing that I've seen really with monkeys is just how Machiavellian and scheming they can actually be. They really are like watching humans.
Hello, I'm Jo Setchel. I'm a professor of anthropology at Durham University. I study mandrills, who are a very large, very colorful species of monkey that live in the rainforest of Gabon in Central Africa. And the most peculiar thing that I have learned from studying those monkeys is that they use their vibrant colour to avoid conflict, and that they have a scent gland on their chest which they rub against trees to advertise who they are, how high-ranking they are, and even their DNA.
My name's Dave Gorman. I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses. I've just learnt that a mandrill is a type of monkey and not a euphemism. And the thing I found most edifying from watching monkeys is the knowledge that they are literally too busy singing to put anybody down. And this is our panel.
Let's first of all just start off, Jo, in terms of what is the kind of variety of, I suppose, well, romantic relationships that we see in monkeys or sexual?
It's hugely varied. So if we think about primates, all of the primates, it can be from a long-term bond that lasts decades through to a relationship that lasts seconds.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main focus of the episode about primates?
0:00–15:48
2
How does Dunbar's number relate to monkey social structures?
15:48–16:13
3
Do monkeys experience love similarly to humans?
16:13–25:26
4
What variations exist in romantic relationships among monkeys?
25:26–37:50
5
How does monogamy manifest in different monkey species?
37:50–44:58