After the smoke has cleared: Extended low fruit productivity following forest fires decreased gregariousness and social tolerance among wild female Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii)

As climate change continues to fundamentally alter resource landscapes, the ability to flexibly respond to spatio-temporal changes in the distribution of preferred food sources is increasingly important for the overall health and fitness of animals living in seasonal, variable, and/or changing environments. Here, we investigate the effects of an uncharacteristically long period of fruit scarcity, following widespread thick haze caused by peat and forest fires in 2015, on the behaviour and sociality of female Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii). We collected data from 2010 to 2018 at Tuanan, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, and compared the activity, diet, and association patterns of adult females during low-fruit periods before the fires, i.e., regular, seasonal periods of low fruit availability (“pre-fire”), and after the fires, i.e., during the extended period of low fruit availability (“post-fire”). First, we found that, post-fire, female orangutans adopted a more extreme energy-saving activity pattern and diet — resting more, travelling less, and diet-switching to less-preferred foods — compared to pre-fire. Second, we found that the probabilities of association between females and their weaned immature offspring, and between related and unrelated adult females were lower, and the probability of agonism between unrelated females was higher, post-fire than pre-fire. This change in energetic strategy, and the general reduction in gregariousness and social tolerance, demonstrates how forest fires can have lasting consequences for orangutans. Fission–fusion species such as orangutans can mitigate the effects of changes in resource landscapes by altering their (sub)grouping patterns; however, this may have long-term indirect consequences on their fitness.

Collective knowledge and the dynamics of culture in chimpanzees

Social learning in non-human primates has been studied experimentally for over 120 years, yet until the present century this was limited to what one individual learns from a single other. Evidence of group-wide traditions in the wild then highlighted the collective context for social learning, and broader ‘diffusion experiments’ have since demonstrated transmission at the community level. In the present article, we describe and set in comparative perspective three strands of our recent research that further explore the collective dimensions of culture and cumulative culture in chimpanzees. First, exposing small communities of chimpanzees to contexts incorporating increasingly challenging, but more rewarding tool use opportunities revealed solutions arising through the combination of different individuals' discoveries, spreading to become shared innovations. The second series of experiments yielded evidence of conformist changes from habitual techniques to alternatives displayed by a unanimous majority of others but implicating a form of quorum decision-making. Third, we found that between-group differences in social tolerance were associated with differential success in developing more complex tool use to exploit an increasingly inaccessible resource. We discuss the implications of this array of findings in the wider context of related studies of humans, other primates and non-primate species. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

Forming Students’ Value Attitude: Cluster Approach Technology

The article considers one of the approaches to individualization of educational work. It is supposed that educational work based on the main endogenous factors of good breeding will allow to diversify the scope of educational actions and as much as possible to adapt it to specific personal features of the first-year students.Materials and methods. 620 first-year students who joined fulltime courses at Penza State Technological University in the period from 2014 to 2017 participated in the research. Research methods are questioning, a multidimensional analysis of data (factorial and cluster analysis).Results. Two groups of factors of good breeding are revealed. The first characterizes processes of spiritual and psychological new formations of the youthful period – patriotism, humanity and a level of claims. The second one – processes of new formations of the previous teenage period – ecological interests, internal culture and social tolerance. Considering main factors of good breeding, the authors identified 11 typical variations of personal development. These features allowed us to develop the scope of educational actions according to a social and psychological portrait of each group.Discussion and conclusions. The practical importance of the results of the research is finding and description of a certain set of typical variations of a social and psychological portrait of the first-year students through factors of progress and regress of good breeding. It is shown that students with high rates of good breeding have valuable relations, which are integrated into factors of patriotism and humanity, what characterizes the formation of a complete and mature personality. The high differentiation of factors of good breeding and low intra factorial integration of factorial features can be the evidence of the intensive and unfinished formation of a personality.

Intra-specific Variation in the Social Behavior of Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus)

Non-human primates show an impressive behavioral diversity, both across and within species. However, the factors explaining intra-specific behavioral variation across groups and individuals are yet understudied. Here, we aimed to assess how group size and living conditions (i.e., captive, semi-free-ranging, wild) are linked to behavioral variation in 5 groups of Barbary macaques (N=137 individuals). In each group, we collected observational data on the time individuals spent in social interactions and on the group dominance style, along with experimental data on social tolerance over food and neophobia. Our results showed that differences in group size predicted differences in the time spent in social interactions, with smaller groups spending a higher proportion of time in close spatial proximity, but a lower proportion of time grooming. Moreover, group size predicted variation in dominance style, with smaller groups being more despotic. Social tolerance was affected by both group size and living conditions, being higher in smaller groups and in groups living in less natural conditions. Finally, individual characteristics also explained variation in social tolerance and neophobia, with socially integrated individuals having higher access to food sources, and higher-ranking ones being more neophobic. Overall, our results support the view that intra-specific variation is a crucial aspect in primate social behavior and call for more comparative studies to better understand the sources of within-species variation.

Persepsi Dosen Pendidikan Agama Islam Terhadap Rendahnya Sikap Toleransi di Kota Banda Aceh

Tolerance is the key to living comfortably, peacefully and happily. In the life of the people and the nation, tolerance has become the benchmark in realizing the advance of a country, as reflected in the Charter of Medina that the Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h formed a state on the basis of Islamic values, one of which was tolerance. A state or community will embrace safety and peace once its people live in mutual tolerance. In this study, there were three questions needed to be addressed: (1) What is the concept of tolerance in Islam?, (2) What is the attitude of tolerance between religious believers and social tolerance according to Islamic religious education lecturers at UIN Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh? and (3) How is the response of the Islamic religious education lecturers of UIN Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh towards the study which concluded that the city of Banda Aceh was of low tolerance? This study used the qualitative approach with field research methods, employing primary and secondary data. The results of the study revealed that the main criterion in defining religious tolerance was found in the Qur’an Surah al-Kafirun verse 6, while that in defining the social tolerance was in Surah an-Nisaa verse 86. The attitude of tolerance that the Prophet p.b.u.h had shown on various occasions was very comprehensive regardless of place and person, in any capacity. Therefore, the attitude of tolerance of the Prophet p.b.u.h had become a reference for every community to this day and he was also dubbed as the role model (Uswatun Hasanah). Responding to the finding of low tolerance in the city of Banda Aceh from a study, most respondents, however, believed otherwise. They agreed that Banda Aceh has already been a very tolerant city in terms of religious and social aspects in Indonesia. Thus, such low tolerance could not be generalized to all aspects and concluded that the city of Banda Aceh was an intolerant city or had a low tolerance level.