Table Of ContentJ. Yamagiwa · L. Karczmarski Editors
Primates and
Cetaceans
Field Research and Conservation of
Complex Mammalian Societies
Primatology Monographs
Series Editors
Tetsuro Matsuzawa
Inuyama, Japan
Juichi Yamagiwa
Kyoto, Japan
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/8796
Juichi Yamagiwa (cid:129) Leszek Karczmarski
Editors
Primates and Cetaceans
Field Research and Conservation
of Complex Mammalian Societies
Editors
Juichi Yamagiwa Leszek Karczmarski
Professor Associate Professor
Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies The Swire Institute of Marine Science
Graduate School of Science School of Biological Sciences
Kyoto University The University of Hong Kong
Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan Cape d’Aguilar, Hong Kong
[email protected] [email protected]
ISSN 2190-5967 ISSN 2190-5975 (electronic)
ISBN 978-4-431-54522-4 ISBN 978-4-431-54523-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-4-431-54523-1
Springer Tokyo Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013953884
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Cover image: Front cover: Upper: A silverback male gorilla in Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic
Republic of Congo. Photo by Juichi Yamagiwa. Center left: A dusky dolphin performs a noisy leap in
Admiralty Bay, New Zealand. Photo by Chris Pearson. Center middle: Flipper-to-body rubbing in
Indo-Pacifi c bottlenose dolphins off Mikura Island, Japan. Photo by Mai Sakai. Center right: A pair of
white-handed gibbons in a fi g tree in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. Photo by Kulpat Saralamba.
Back cover: Upper: Male and female juvenile bottlenose dolphins pet each other in Shark Bay,
Australia. Photo by Ewa Krzyszsczyk. Center left: A male Japanese macaque in Yakushima Island,
Japan. Photo by Juichi Yamagiwa. Center middle: Grooming chain of three chimpanzee females in
Mahale Mountain National Park, Tanzania. Photo by Michio Nakamura. Center right: Indo-Pacifi c
humpback dolphin mother and newborn calf in Hong Kong waters. Photo by Stephen Chan.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Foreword: From the World of Cetaceans
Cetaceans were long valued for their body mass, and modern cetacean biology
relied greatly on whaling operations for biological materials and ecological infor-
mation from whales. This situation is still true in some communities such as Japan,
where more than 10,000 individuals of 15 species of cetaceans are killed annually
through fi shery operations and scientifi c activities and are subsequently consumed.
Many of these studies aimed at the safe management of whale stocks, but resulted
in such an ironical consequence: that we increased our knowledge about whales
with an accompanying shift of whaling operations from one area to another and
from larger species to smaller ones when the whale stocks thus became depleted.
Examples of such management failures are numerous in the history of Antarctic
whaling. The total population of ordinary blue whales migrating into the Antarctic
Ocean declined from 250,000 in 1904, when modern whaling entered the ocean, to
about 1,000 in the mid-1960s when the hunting was stopped for population recov-
ery; the current number is still only around 2,000. Three other great baleen whales
and the largest of the toothed whales (the sperm whale) had experienced a more or
less similar fate in the Antarctic by the early 1980s. Such management failure also
occurred with large whales in other oceans, and smaller toothed whales (dolphins
and porpoises) were not totally exempt, as seen with striped dolphins off Japan.
Our failures in managing cetacean populations were related, at least in some
degree, to the biology of the species such as their aquatic habitat and low reproduc-
tive rates, and to the nature of the human community wherein decision making and
enforcement were often diffi cult. Information on biology and abundance was hard
to obtain or was not available for management, and whaling industries were power-
ful enough to exert control over their governments for their short-term benefi t by
sacrifi cing management. Additionally, whaling was often so important to the econ-
omy of fi shing nations that governments ignored the management advice of scien-
tists or attempted to control their scientists.
All cetacean species are believed to have a high capacity for vocal communica-
tion and a range of communication that extends, particularly among baleen whales,
v
vi Foreword: From the World of Cetaceans
beyond the range of our visual perception: this has limited our understanding of
their biology and social interactions. For example, we do not know how baleen
whales locate the swarms of plankton on which they feed in waters with limited
visibility, or how individual baleen whales cooperate in the activity. Observation of
some dolphin species in captivity has revealed that they are able to identify images
of themselves in a mirror, a suggestion that their level of intelligence is comparable
to or greater than that of apes. Toothed whales in general are apparently more social
than baleen whales, and they live in groups of various degrees of stability. In a com-
munity of such species, contributions of individuals to the group must vary by sex,
age, and amount of accumulated experience. Baleen whales cannot be excluded
from this generalization in view of the current insuffi cient level of our knowledge
of their biology. Management of cetacean populations is likely to fail if these ele-
ments are ignored, as has happened in the past. It is diffi cult for the traditional
methodology of cetacean biology to meet such research needs.
A new type of cetacean research emerged in the 1970s for killer whales, using
photographs as a tool for individual recognition, and expanded to bottlenose dol-
phins, humpback whales, and some other cetacean species in coastal and riverine
habitats. In association with genetic, acoustic, and radio technologies, this new
approach has produced valuable information on the social structure, life history, and
movement of cetaceans. However, these new methodologies still have limitations.
Cetaceans spend most of their life underwater and show themselves to scientists
only for a small fraction of their time, usually in association with breathing, so sci-
entists are now forced to descend underwater to overcome this limitation. Because
cetaceans lifespans cover from 25 to more than 100 years, it takes almost the entire
life of a biologist before we can obtain a picture of the whole life of one cetacean
species, and during that time human activities can signifi cantly alter the aquatic
environment and thus the life of cetaceans as well. A recent promising fi nding is an
aging technique using fatty acid composition in biopsied blubber samples, although
we still need to calibrate the data using animals whose ages are known. Under such
diffi cult circumstances, combining the results of recent nonlethal behavior studies
with those of the earlier fi shery-derived carcass studies has revealed fascinating
aspects of the social structure of some toothed whales and the variability among
species.
It is our current understanding that most baleen whales and some toothed whales
(e.g., harbor porpoise, Dall’s porpoise, fi nless porpoises, and perhaps some river
dolphins) have mother-and-calf associations lasting only several months or a year
as the most stable social units in their communities, whereas other toothed whales
have evolved longer mother–calf associations. Many members of Delphinidae such
as bottlenose and striped dolphins live in fi ssion–fusion communities and have
some degree of matrilineal tendencies, wherein weaned juveniles, particularly
males, leave their mothers’ group to spend the prepubertal period with other indi-
viduals at the same growth stage. More cohesive matrilineal groups are known in
some Delphinidae (killer whale, two species of pilot whales, and perhaps false killer
Foreword: From the World of Cetaceans vii
whale) and Physeteridae (sperm whale), where the mother–daughter association is
believed to last for life, although patterns of mother–son association are not the
same among the species. These species are probably at the top of the specialization
of the social system achieved by recent toothed whales.
In the last-mentioned group of toothed whales, juveniles are known to suckle
occasionally to the age of 10 years or more, and some females are found to lactate
for a similar duration after their last parturition, where communal nursing remains
a possibility to be confi rmed. Females of this group have extended lives after cessa-
tion of ovulation or conception. For example, about 25 % of sexually mature females
of the short-fi nned pilot whales off Japan are over the age of oldest conception
(36 years) and live to an age of 62 years. Such information invites speculation that
an old female is contributing to the life of her kin’s offspring rather than bearing her
own offspring, using her accumulated experience through her extended life.
So-called social sex, identifi ed in the short-fi nned pilot whale based on the fi nding
of spermatozoa in the uteri of non-estrous (including postreproductive) females, is
interpreted as contributing to the stability of the community. This observation bears
similarity to the behavior of some primates, for example, bonobos and humans.
The social structure of Ziphiidae, a group of middle-sized, poorly known toothed
whales of 21 pelagic species, merits particular attention. The age structure of a few
species suggests that, in contrast to other toothed whales, males of Ziphiidae live
longer than females. For example, males of Baird’s beaked whales off Japan have a
higher survival rate and live about 30 years longer than females, which live to
54 years and are reproductive for life. More information has to be obtained before
we understand their social structure and its diversity within the family Ziphiidae.
Evidence of culture in whales and dolphins is still limited by technical diffi cul-
ties in detection but is known for both baleen and toothed whales. Individual ceta-
ceans have the ability to accumulate information and behavior patterns during their
extended lifetime, and the social structure provides them with opportunities to
transmit the acquired information and behavior to other members of their commu-
nity. This is the formation of culture, which I defi ne as information and behavior
traits retained in a community by learning. Culture allows the community to adapt
quickly to a new or a changing environment and thus enables the community to bet-
ter utilize resources in an unpredictable environment. If a species contains commu-
nities with diverse cultures, it allows the species to utilize a broad spectrum of
habitats and thus increases the species opportunity to survive. Therefore, it is impor-
tant for social species to conserve both social structure and cultural diversity.
Driving a whole pilot whale school to shore for subsequent slaughter, which is
practiced in Japan and the Faroe Islands, is hard to accept for the conservation and
management of the species from this point of view.
Cetaceans entered into the aquatic environment in the early Eocene period, and
through a history of more than 50 million years in that environment they have
acquired a morphology which is quite different from that of terrestrial mammals.
viii Foreword: From the World of Cetaceans
Their life history and social structure must have also undergone modifi cations during
this long period and must have achieved broad radiation. Although our knowledge
of this part of cetacean biology is still in its infancy, I believe it is interesting to see
some similarities between the radiation pattern of the social structure of cetaceans
and that of primates which evolved in the terrestrial environment. Comparison of
social structure and its diversity between the two animal groups will help us to
understand the evolution of mammal communities.
Toshio Kasuya
Pref ace
Cetaceans and primates have developed comparable cognitive abilities in different
environments. Their social systems vary from dynamic fi ssion–fusion to long-term
stable societies; from male-bonded to bisexually bonded to matrilineal groups.
Despite obvious differences in morphology and eco-physiology, there are many
cases of comparable, sometimes strikingly similar, patterns of sociobehavioral com-
plexity. Recent studies suggest that many of these similarities and differences are
infl uenced by the ecological factors of their natural environments. A number of
long-term fi eld studies have accumulated a substantial amount of data on the life
history of various taxa, their foraging ecology, social and sexual relationships,
demography, and various patterns of behavior. We can now attempt to view pri-
mates and cetaceans in a comparative perspective: such comparisons between social
animals that are evolutionarily distant but live in comparable complex, sociocogni-
tive environments boost our appreciation of their sophisticated mammalian systems
and may advance our understanding of the ecological factors that have shaped their
social evolution.
Cetologists and primatologists, however, rarely get together to explore common
interests of their research. To facilitate such an exchange of ideas, we initiated a
sharing of knowledge and a discussion of the topics common to the studies of both
taxa in a symposium at the 9th International Mammalogical Congress (IMC), held
in 2005 in Sapporo, Japan. Many important topics were discussed, involving mating
strategies, social behavior, social networks, foraging strategies, communication,
social learning, culture, economics of behavior, behavioral plasticity, social evolu-
tion, and application of new research tools in fi eld studies. Each topic was presented
by a speaker and commenter from the two fi elds. The Congress was preceded by a
symposium on the social ecology of primates and cetaceans held two days earlier in
Kyoto. Another joint meeting took place in Cape Town, South Africa, during the
17th Biennial Conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in 2007, where we
were joined by colleagues working on other group-living mammals including carni-
vores, ungulates, and pinnipeds. This edited volume was prepared as a collection of
selected presentations from these three symposia and additional invited contribu-
tions. All chapters were reviewed by two or more external referees. The publication
ix
