Competition implies value in chimps

Since most behaviour is actually driven by proxies of one kind or another - like the sight or smell of food being a proxy for nutrition - we might expect that competition itself would be a good default proxy for scarcity and value.

I am reminded of ape communities where the top male produces half of the offspring of the troop while at the top then is killed by guy who takes over because he's too dangerous to have around.  A big stakes game.  It would take a few nasty beatings to get to the top and give a few to remain there.  The risk might actually provide the physiological oomph - in the form of stress hormones - that would tell him to stick around and compete.  Competition, stress, value and risk-taking are regularly associated.

The fact that there are random scientists wandering around with undisclosed bowls of food is vaguely misleading to us because of we are trained to think abstractly about chance.  In a more natural situation with imperfect knowledge, competition itself should be a useful indicator of value.  A chimp might reasonably assume* that the hidden bowl contains more if the scientist wants to fight for it or even if there is competition in its general vicinity.

* Ok, I know chimps aren't philosophers who "reasonably assume" stuff.  What I should say is ...

Comment at http://evoanth.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/ape-risk/

Death by Sitting

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

> A growing body of evidence is pointing to the health risks associated with sedentary behaviours, and in particular risks associated with prolonged periods of sitting, independent of other physical activities.

While the benefits of exercise are well-established it is possible that the case against sitting may be oversimplified and the biology may be more causally complex.  The evidence against sitting is largely based on observation rather than intervention studies.  However, people who tend to have lower physical health and lower metabolic rates will tend to end up in sitting jobs and will also tend to die earlier.

See, eg:

 "Are people dying early because they sit too long, or are they sitting so long because they'll die earlier?"
http://drlutz.blogspot.de/2012/07/how-media-monkeys-get-you-panicked.html

Disclaimer: I try to avoid sitting for long periods.  I run a background application "Eyeleo" (in Windows) that tells me to take 8 second eye breaks every 15 minutes and 3 minute get-up-and-move breaks every hour.  It greys the screen during the long breaks and even has a no skip option is available for the recalcitrant.  I try to take the lift to the ground floor and walk up the five floors back to my desk job on four of the long breaks each day.  While the the sitting effect may be overstated, lots of good intervention studies indicate a strong link between improved fitness with improved health.  Some current research efforts are finding that short bursts of intense exercise improves physiological markers as much several times longer gentle exercise. So hit it!
 
Jim

[Link crosspost]