Unlike humans, who can maintain relationships and communities beyond temporal and spatial boundaries, nonhuman primates’ relationships are fundamentally grounded in embodied, immediate interactions. In this talk, I present two empirical studies on resource conflicts in semi-naturalistic primate groups, showing how their behavior and decision-making are best understood by considering social and ecological contexts.

The first study examines food transfers in socially housed orangutans. We found that transfer strategies (e.g., taking, co-feeding, requesting) are not independent events, but dynamically calibrated by preceding interactions within dyads.

The second study investigates social tolerance in Japanese macaques, using a hybrid computer vision approach to quantify how monkeys socially navigate in the presence of food resources. Macaques maintained greater-than-chance distances from conspecifics when entering a food-baited circle inside their enclosures. This was especially evident in subordinate males, who took more circuitous routes and maximized their distance from others when approaching the resource in the presence of alpha males. Our results show how macaques’ movement trajectories are socially situated and balance social risk with resource access.

I conclude by discussing how a relational, situated approach is particularly important when designing machine learning datasets in primate research. By grounding models in function and context, we can advance our understanding of primate behavior and communication and avoid pitfalls of projecting human frameworks onto other species.

For more about Stephan’s work see his website:

https://www.stephankaufhold.com/

Zoom link for those unable to attend in person:

https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=0YGsaJFEdLd5cMsOhTh465nwJubz9o.1

Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584

Passcode: 308291