The Culture of Chimpanzee!
A The similarities between chimpanzees and humans have been studied for years, but in the past decade, researchers have determined that these resemblances run much deeper than anyone first thought. For instance, the nut-cracking observed in the Taï Forest is far from a simple chimpanzee behavior; rather it is a singular adaptation found only in that particular part of Africa and a trait that biologists consider being an expression of chimpanzee culture. Scientists frequently use the term "culture" to describe elementary animal behaviors – such as the regional dialects of different populations of songbirds – but as it turns out, the rich and varied cultural traditions found among chimpanzees are second in complexity only to human traditions.
B During the past two years, an unprecedented scientific collaboration, involving every major research group studying chimpanzees, has documented a multitude of distinct cultural patterns extending across Africa, in actions ranging from the animals' use of tools to their forms of communication and social customs. This emerging picture of chimpanzees not only affects how we think of these amazing creatures but also alters human beings' conception of our own uniqueness and hints at ancient foundations for extraordinary capacity for culture.
C Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes have coexisted for hundreds of millennia and share more than 98 percent of their genetic material, yet only 40 years ago we still knew next to nothing about chimpanzee behavior in the wild. That began to change in the 1960s when Toshisada Nishida of Kyoto University in Japan and Jane Goodall began their studies of wild chimpanzees at two field sites in Tanzania. (Goodall's research station at Gombe – the first of its kind – is more famous, but Nishida's site at Mahale is the second oldest chimpanzee research site in the world.)
D In these initial studies, as the chimpanzees became accustomed to close observation, the remarkable discoveries began. Researchers witnessed a range of unexpected behaviors, including fashioning and using tools, hunting, meat-eating, food sharing and lethal fights between members of neighboring communities. In the years that followed, other primatologists set up camp elsewhere, and, despite all the financial, political and logistical problems that can beset African fieldwork, several of these outposts became truly long-term projects. As a result, we live in an unprecedented time, when an intimate and comprehensive scientific record of chimpanzees' lives, at last, exists not just for one but for several communities spread across Africa.
E As early as 1973, Goodall recorded 13 forms of tool use as well as eight social activities that appeared to differ between the Gombe chimpanzees and chimpanzee populations elsewhere. She ventured that some variations had what she termed a cultural origin. But what exactly did Goodall mean by "culture"? According to the Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary, culture is defined as "the customs … and achievements of a particular time or people." The diversity of human cultures extends from technological variations to marriage rituals, from culinary habits to myths and legends. Animals do not have myths and legends, of course. But they do have the capacity to pass on behavioral traits from generation to generation, not through their genes but by learning. For biologists, this is the fundamental criterion for a cultural trait: it must be something that can be learned by observing the established skills of others and thus passed on to future generations.
F What of the implications for chimpanzees themselves? We must highlight the tragic loss of chimpanzees, whose populations are being decimated just when we are at last coming to appreciate these astonishing animals more completely. Populations have plummeted in the past century and continue to fall as a result of illegal trapping, logging and, most recently, the bushmeat trade. The latter is particularly alarming: logging has driven roadways into the forests that are now used to ship wild-animal meat-including chimpanzee meat to consumers as far afield as Europe. Such destruction threatens not only the animals themselves but also a host of fascinatingly different ape cultures.
G Perhaps the cultural richness of the ape may yet help in its salvation, however. Some conservation efforts have already altered the attitudes of some local people. A few organizations have begun to show videotapes illustrating the cognitive prowess of chimpanzees. One Zairian viewer was heard to exclaim, "Ah, this ape is so like me, I can no longer eat him."
H How an international team of chimpanzee experts conducted the most comprehensive survey of the animals ever attempted. Scientists have been investigating chimpanzee culture for several decades, but too often their studies contained a crucial flaw. Most attempts to document cultural diversity among chimpanzees have relied solely on officially published accounts of the behaviors recorded at each research site. But this approach probably overlooks a good deal of cultural variation for three reasons.
I First, scientists typically don't publish an extensive list of all the activities they do not see at a particular location. Yet this is exactly what we need to know-which behaviors were and were not observed at each site. Second, many reports describe chimpanzee behaviors without saying how common they are; without this information, we can't determine whether a particular action was a once-in-a-lifetime aberration or a routine event that should be considered part of the animals' culture. Finally, researchers' descriptions of potentially significant chimpanzee behaviors frequently lack sufficient detail, making it difficult for scientists working at other spots to record the presence or absence of the activities.
J To remedy these problems, the two of us decided to take a new approach. We asked field researchers at each site for a list of all the behaviors they suspected were local traditions. With this information in hand, we pulled together a comprehensive list of 65 candidates for cultural behaviors.
K Then we distributed our list to the team leaders at each site. In consultation with their colleagues, they classified each behavior in terms of its occurrence or absence in the chimpanzee community studied. The key categories were customary behavior (occurs in most or all of the able-bodied members of at least one age or sex class, such as all adult males), habitual (less common than customary but occurs repeatedly in several individuals), present (seen at the site but not habitual), absent (never seen), and unknown.
The Rise of Agritourism
In advanced industrialised countries, small farmers have been challenged by changing economic and social conditions, such as increased global competition, falling commodity prices, and capital- and technology-intensive agricultural production. In addition, there has been added public pressure to make expensive changes in farming methods, due to public environmental concerns about industrialised agricultural production in combination with political pressures to reduce agricultural subsidies. These changing economic and social conditions have disproportionately impacted smaller farms in Europe and the US.
Agritourism is becoming an increasingly popular way for rural property owners to earn additional income from agricultural properties. In addition to more traditional farm tours and seasonal activities, such as hay rides, corn mazes and u-pick fruits, farm owners are devising new ways to bring people to their door by offering more entertainment-oriented activities. Some farmers are offering their barns as venues for weddings, parties, dances and other special events. Others are opening their homes to visitors for vacations, so guests can experience life on a working farm by helping out with routine farm chores, such as feeding or herding the livestock, milking the animals, making cheese, collecting eggs, picking vegetables and preparing farm fresh meals. Agritourism works in combination with a growing public desire to engage in rural experiences and outdoor recreational activities. By combining agriculture and tourism, agritourism offers these rural experiences to urban residents and economic diversification to farmers.
Part of the attraction of agritourism is the nostalgia it creates for a simpler time and its authenticity. Tourists are being sold, not only on beautiful sceneries and visual aesthetics, but also experiences that are meant to open up a new world for these customers who are tired of the hustle and bustle of city life. Authenticity has been an abiding theme in tourism studies and it may have a special meaning in this combination of agriculture and tourism. For one thing, the image of the family farm remains imbued with deep authenticity, the surviving representation of an old world ideal. To partake in agritourism is therefore likely to convey the sense of having a deeply authentic experience. Critics have claimed that this desire to reconnect with the life world of one's ancestors may conflict with the nature of modern agriculture and whether the tourist will want to face its true realities. It seems therefore that often the most distinctive innovative effort involves the reinvention of tradition and rural tourism products. Examples are the recreation of home-produced products long since replaced by manufactured commodities and the provision of hands-on-experiences in crafts often recreated for tourists. As a result, some critics argue that the tourists who are running to the countryside are overcrowding and ruining the pristine beauty that they so desperately want to experience.
Agritourism can benefit the life and economy of local communities, as well as the farms themselves. Agritourism firstly means that some farms can continue in business and employ workers. Employment underscores the genuine importance of agritourism farms to local economies, as rural communities are usually areas that both have high unemployment and few alternatives for the unemployed to find work. Secondly, a significant number of agritourists come from areas reasonably local to the visited farms. This means that tourist spending on agritourism often stays in the region, helping to generate taxable revenues and more disposable incomes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's agricultural census, taken every five years, found that last year approximately 23,000 farms took part in agritourism.
These farms each earned $24,300 from agritourism, compared to five years ago, when farms engaged in this brought in only $7,200 per farm. The trend is clearly growing and the money generated will stimulate local economies. Thirdly, agritourism benefits the local community in terms of education. Many farms offer tours for elementary school-age children, who can learn where their food is coming from and how it is produced.
Farms choosing to develop agritourism have had reasonable government support. Over the last 20 years, European Union countries have spent 2 billion euros to subsidise agritourism development in rural farming areas that cannot compete in a global market with declining commodity prices. This, in turn, helps governments by keeping farmers on land, protecting picturesque rural landscapes that attract tourists, and supporting the production of regional agricultural products. As well as finance, local and national governments should create in the areas under their jurisdiction favourable environments for the development of agritourism, by changing regulatory and tax constraints, so that more farms are encouraged to enter the industry.
It is clear that there are strong economic and social benefits that agritourism can provide farmers, customers and the local areas where the farms are situated. Agritourism contributes to and enhances the quality of life in communities by expanding recreational opportunities, differentiating rural economies, and promoting the retention of agricultural lands. Working agricultural landscapes reflect the efforts of generations of farm families and often provide a defining sense of culture, heritage, and rural character. Agritourism provides educational opportunities for school children and adults to learn about this agrarian heritage, the production of food, and resource stewardship. Finally, many agritourism operations provide consumers with direct access to fresh farm goods. Agritourism is an industry with an enormous potential for growth. With it, farming could become more efficient and sustainable, rural areas could become more beautiful and farmers could become better off and more significant employers and contributors to economies.
Sunset for the Oil Business
The world is about to run out of oil. Or perhaps not. It depends whom you believe…
A Members of the Department Analysis Centre (ODAC) recently met in London and presented technical data that support their grim forecast that the world is perilously close to running out of oil. Leading lights of this moment, including the geologists Colin Campbell, rejected rival views presented by American geological survey and the international energy agency that contradicted their findings. Dr Campbell even decried the amazing display of ignorance, denial and obfuscation by government, industry and academics on this topic.
B So is the oil really running out? The answer is easy: Yes. Nobody seriously disputes the notion that oil is, for all practical purposes, a non-renewable resource that will run out someday, be that years or decades away. The harder question is determining when precisely oil will begin to get scarce. And answering that question involves scaling Hubbert's peak.
C M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist of legendary status among depletion experts, forecast in 1956 that oil production in the United States would peak in the early 1970s and then slowly decline, in something resembling a bell-shaped curve. At the time, his forecast was controversial, and many rubbished it. After 1970, however, empirical evidence proved him correct: oil production in America did indeed peak and has been in decline ever since.
D Dr Hubbert's analysis drew on the observation that oil production in a new area typically rises quickly at first, as the easiest and cheapest reserves are tapped. Over time, reservoirs age and go into decline, and so lifting oil becomes more expensive. Oil from that area then becomes less competitive in relation to other fuels, or to oil from other areas. As a result, production slows down and usually tapers off and declines. That, he argued, made for a bell-shaped curve.
E His successful prediction has emboldened a new generation of geologists to apply his methodology on a global scale. Chief among them are the experts at ODAC, who worry that the global peak in production will come in the next decade. Dr Campbell used to argue that the peak should have come already; he now thinks it is just around the corner. A heavyweight has now joined this gloomy chorus. Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton University argues in a lively new book ("The View from Hubbert's Peak") that global oil production could peak as soon as 2004.
F That sharply contradicts mainstream thinking. America's Geological Survey prepared an exhaustive study of oil depletion last year (in part to rebut Dr Campbell's arguments) that put the peak of production some decades off. The IEA has just weighed in with its new "World Energy Outlook", which foresees enough oil to comfortably meet the demand to 2020 from remaining reserves. René Dahan, one of ExxonMobil's top managers, goes further: with an assurance characteristic of the world's largest energy company, he insists that the world will be awash in oil for another 70 years.
G Who is right? In making sense of these wildly opposing views, it is useful to look back at the pitiful history of oil forecasting. Doomsters have been predicting dry wells since the 1970s, but so far the oil is still gushing. Nearly all the predictions for 2000 made after the 1970s oil shocks were far too pessimistic. America's Department of Energy thought that oil would reach $150 a barrel (at 2000 prices); even Exxon predicted a price of $100.
H Michael Lynch of DRI-WEFA, an economic consultancy, is one of the few oil forecasters who has got things generally right. In a new paper, Dr Lynch analyses those historical forecasts. He finds evidence of both bias and recurring errors, which suggests that methodological mistakes (rather than just poor data) were the problem. In particular, he faults forecasters who used Hubbert-style analysis for relying on fixed estimates of how much "ultimately recoverable" oil there really is below ground, in the industry's jargon: that figure, he insists, is actually a dynamic one, as improvements in infrastructure, knowledge and technology raise the amount of oil which is recoverable.
I That points to what will probably determine whether the pessimists or the optimists are right: technological innovation. The first camp tends to be dismissive of claims of forthcoming technological revolutions in such areas as deep-water drilling and enhanced recovery. Dr Deffeyes captures this end-of-technology mindset well. He argues that because the industry has already spent billions on technology development, it makes it difficult to ask today for new technology, as most of the wheels have already been invented.
J Yet techno-optimists argue that the technological revolution in oil has only just begun. Average recovery rates (how much of the known oil in a reservoir can actually be brought to the surface) are still only around 30-35%. Industry optimists believe that new techniques on the drawing board today could lift that figure to 50-60% within a decade.
K Given the industry's astonishing track record of innovation, it may be foolish to bet against it. That is the result of adversity: the nationalisations of the 1970s forced Big Oil to develop reserves in expensive, inaccessible places such as the North Sea and Alaska, undermining Dr Hubbert's assumption that cheap reserves are developed first. The resulting upstream investments have driven down the cost of finding and developing wells over the last two decades from over $20 a barrel to around $6 a barrel. The cost of producing oil has fallen by half, to under $4 a barrel.
L Such miracles will not come cheap, however, since much of the world's oil is now produced in ageing fields that are rapidly declining. The IEA concludes that global oil production need not peak in the next two decades if the necessary investments are made. So how much is necessary? If oil companies are to replace the output lost at those ageing fields and meet the world's ever-rising demand for oil, the agency reckons they must invest $1 trillion in non-OPEC countries over the next decade alone. That's quite a figure.
