著者
藤田 和生 黒島 妃香 服部 裕子 高橋 真 森本 陽 瀧本 彩加 佐藤 義明
出版者
一般社団法人 日本霊長類学会
雑誌
霊長類研究 (ISSN:09124047)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.24, no.3, pp.241-263, 2009-03-31 (Released:2010-06-17)
参考文献数
85
被引用文献数
2 1

Capuchin monkeys are one of the most important primate subjects in understanding the evolution of kokoro (mind and heart), because of their outstanding intelligence and gentleness despite their phylogenetic distance from humans and apes. Here we report a series of experimental studies on various aspects of the kokoro of tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) conducted at the comparative cognition laboratory, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University. Briefly, for the physical intelligence, the monkeys amodally completed partly occluded figures basically like humans do. They also perceived never-presented contours by spatially and temporally integrating a sequence of fragmentary information just like humans do. They understood physical causality in a type of tool-use task involving tool, goal, and environment. In the social intelligence domain, they spontaneously took actions interpretable as tactically deceiving the conspecific opponent in an experimental food-competition contest. They also cooperated by dividing a sequence of actions leading to rewards. This cooperation continued when only one of the participants obtained a reward at a time. They were sensitive to attentional states of humans shown by eyes, though they might not try to control human attentional focus. They inferred a conspecific's behavior that they never directly observed and adaptively modified their next behavior based on the predicted consequence. They were also able to correct their actions by observing unsuccessful actions of their conspecific partner. One monkey of this species showed evidence that she recognized the knowledge status of humans suggested by their preceding actions toward the items in question. In the affective domain, this species was shown to utilize affective reactions of a conspecific against a hidden object to regulate their own actions toward it. Finally, the monkeys were sensitive to the benefit of their conspecific partner. They sometimes took thoughtful actions toward a low-ranking individual and in other times spiteful actions against a high-ranking individual. All of these results show that this New World species shares many characteristics of kokoro observed in humans.