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Fabrega, H. J. (2006). Making sense of behavioral irregularities of great apes. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 30(8), 1260–73; discussion 1274–7.
Abstract: Psychopathology, mental illness, and psychiatric treatment are concepts relevant to modern medicine and medical psychology and replete with cumbersome intellectual and literary baggage. They bear the imprint of suppositions, world views, and general beliefs and values exemplified in the science, history, and general culture of Anglo European societies. The study in higher apes of phenomena addressed by such concepts raises conceptual dilemmas, usually termed speciesism and anthropomorphism, not unlike those encountered in comparative human studies of similar phenomena across cultures and historical periods, namely, ethnocentrism and anachronism. The authors' synthesis of literature and their analysis of the implications of higher ape psychopathology represent an epistemically compelling account that broadens the scope of the comparative study of behavioral irregularities, a topic that provides a different slant for examining challenging questions in evolutionary biology and primatology, such as cognition, self awareness, intentional behavior, culture and behavioral traditions, social intelligence, sickness and healing, and altruism. Theoretical and empirical study of this topic expands formulation and can help provide informative answers about human evolution as well as essential features of human psychiatric syndromes, with potential practical implications. The study of psychopathology of higher apes and other non human primates represents an appropriate focus for neuroscience and bio-behavioral sciences.
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Parish, A. R., & De Waal, F. B. (2000). The other “closest living relative”. How bonobos (Pan paniscus) challenge traditional assumptions about females, dominance, intra- and intersexual interactions, and hominid evolution. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 907, 97–113.
Abstract: Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) societies are typically characterized as physically aggressive, male-bonded and male-dominated. Their close relatives, the bonobos (Pan paniscus), differ in startling and significant ways. For instance, female bonobos bond with one another, form coalitions, and dominate males. A pattern of reluctance to consider, let alone acknowledge, female dominance in bonobos exists, however. Because both species are equally “man's” closest relative, the bonobo social system complicates models of human evolution that have historically been based upon referents that are male and chimpanzee-like. The bonobo evidence suggests that models of human evolution must be reformulated such that they also accommodate: real and meaningful female bonds; the possibility of systematic female dominance over males; female mating strategies which encompass extra-group paternities; hunting and meat distribution by females; the importance of the sharing of plant foods; affinitive inter-community interactions; males that do not stalk and attack and are not territorial; and flexible social relationships in which philopatry does not necessarily predict bonding pattern.
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