In the quest to further its research capabilities, Iowa State recently signed an agreement with the Great Ape Trust of Iowa to establish more cooperation in the field of primate studies.

Although Iowa State has been working with the Great Ape Trust since its inception in 2004, this collaboration will functionally provide future primatology students with invaluable research experience and may lead to the establishment of a masters and doctoral program in primatology at Iowa State.

Al Setka, director of communications of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa, said this opportunity was enormous for both parties.

“There is opportunity to study things in so many disciplines: biology, psychology, anthropology, environmental science. This can bring scientific research to a new level, particularly in Iowa,” Setka said.

The scientific mission of the Great Ape Trust is “to understand the origins and future of culture, language, tool use and intelligence.”

There have recently been major discoveries in the field of primate studies.

Jill Pruetz, associate professor of anthropology, whose research in Senegal received a monetary donation from the Great Ape Trust, announced her discovery last spring that there were chimpanzees using spear-shaped hunting tools.

Her research will be aired in a “Nova” documentary, and National Geographic magazine will run a story on her work.

“In addition to helping us understand the species and individual primates we study, primate studies are also integral to understanding aspects of our own species,” Pruetz wrote in an e-mail.

There have been advances in the field of primate language studies, as well.

“Work with great apes on their language abilities, using symbolic keyboards, for example, has been applied to methods of ‘talking’ with humans who have difficulty speaking,” Pruetz wrote.

Pruetz also wrote that great apes cannot speak as humans do because they don’t have the anatomy to emit the same sounds.

The research also delves into the origins of mankind.

“Studies of language abilities in apes [nonverbal] and their ability to make and use tools has been used to construct hypotheses and theories about the behavior of extinct human relatives,” Pruetz wrote.

Pruetz’s research of the chimpanzee has helped her to align current primate behavior with theories of how primates behaved millions of years ago.

It has been demonstrated that the Bonobos, or common chimpanzee, are capable of using abstract symbols and can string words together. Both of these behaviors were previously thought to be unique to humans, Pruetz said.

“The Bonobos have a 400-word vocabulary, but their comprehension includes many more words than that,” Setka said.

The Bonobos communicate using a series of lexigrams, or abstract symbols, which were developed in the 1970s by Iowa-native Duane Rumbaugh.

However, the great apes of the world are going extinct. Setka said the bulk of the problem is a loss of habitat, although other factors include poaching and people who eat them. Bonobos, for instance, are only found in the Congo, where there are estimated to be between 10,000 and 50,000 left.

Setka said the number is hard to pinpoint exactly because of the density of the jungle they inhabit and the conflict escalation the region has seen in past years.

This conflict is also a factor in the disappearance of the great apes.

Setka said the Great Ape Trust is actually funded by one private donor. There are no federal or state tax dollars going into the preservation of their research. The person funding the organization has donated about $23 million thus far.

“I think that by studying the apes, hopefully we will know a little about ourselves,” Setka said.