In their study, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ biologist Sonya M. Kahlenberg and biological anthropologist Richard W. Wrangham of Harvard described the first suggestive evidence of a wild non-human species playing with rudimentary dolls, as well as the first known sex difference in a wild animal’s choice of playthings.

As a report in Science News states, the research “supports a controversial view that biology as well as society underlies boys’ and girls’ contrasting toy preferences.”

Their study of Ugandan chimpanzees spanned 14 years and showed that juveniles carried sticks as they went about their daily activities without using them for any particular purpose, such as foraging. They even sometimes slept in nests with their sticks. The researchers suggest that these may in fact be ‘dolls’ and, as in human children, found the behavior is more common in females than males. Adult females do not carry sticks once they have infants of their own, also suggesting a link with play mothering.

Given that chimpanzees and humans are closely related, the researchers say their work adds to a growing body of evidence that human children too are probably born with their own ideas of how they want to behave, rather than simply mirroring other girls who play with dolls and boys who play with trucks.

“In humans, there are robust sex differences in children’s toy play, and these are remarkably similar across cultures,” says Kahlenberg. “While socialization by elders and peers has been the primary explanation, our work suggests that biology may also have an important role.”

Regular doll-like stick play has not yet been reported from any other chimpanzee group, so it’s possibly unique to the Ugandan population studied. If so, the practice may have a cultural as well as biological component.

“It’s likely that how all chimpanzees play is influenced by their sex,” Kahlenberg says, “But only at our study site did the juvenile females get the clever idea to use sticks as ‘dolls.’ So this is a neat case that demonstrates how intertwined nature and nurture are when it comes to influencing behavior.”

Some of first stories:

Current Biology

USA Today

The New York Times

National Geographic

Science News (carried in U.S. News & World Report)

LA Times

The Guardian

Discovery News

Wired.com

New Scientist (UK)

Harvard Gazette

Science Magazine

In coming weeks, look for news accounts on the research findings in other science-oriented publications as well as media serving the general public.  In addition to links above, Kahlenberg and co-author Wrangham have been interviewed or had their publication requested by the Times (London), CNN International, National Geographic Magazine, Discovery Channel, BBC Wildlife Magazine, BBC Radio, CBS Radio, NPR Radio and other news media from Brazil to India.

“If I wasn’t teaching this course, I wouldn’t have the time to investigate energy issues on the same level,” says Josh Henry, visiting assistant professor of chemistry at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

“It’s a topic that’s been important to me since I was a little kid. But it’s such a vast problem — it encompasses economic, social, political factors, as well as fields like geology, biology, chemistry.”

Henry can pursue his investigations through a new course he designed, “Energy and Sustainability,” thanks to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ Short Term. This five-week spring semester differs from the fall and winter terms in that students choose just one intensive course from a . This format is amenable to all kinds of academic experimentation, but one of its most desirable qualities is the precious time it affords for sustained concentration.

For lab work in “Energy and Sustainability,” Henry has had his students create biodiesel fuel and build an electricity-producing windmill that they tested during an overnight visit to the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½-Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

In fact, extended field trips are another bonus of the Short Term format. Henry’s class has also visited a trash-to-energy incinerator in Westbrook, New Hampshire’s Seabrook nuclear power plant and Maine’s first wind farm, in the northern town of Mars Hill.

Like Henry, Lecturer in Biology Sonya Kahlenberg has found in Short Term a chance to teach from a profound interest. She is an expert in primate ecology and behavior whose research has included eight years in Uganda studying chimpanzees. Her Short Term course, “Conserving the Great Apes,” affirms the urgent need to protect chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos — all species endangered by human activity.

Kahlenberg’s course explains these primates’ distinctive biological circumstances — for instance, slow reproductive rates that compound the human threat to their survival — and she involves her students in efforts to protect the great apes.

Her very first lecture laid out specific reasons for saving these animals. For instance, they play important roles in their ecosystems, such as being the only means by which certain plant seeds are dispersed. And, Kahlenberg notes, “there are moral reasons.”

“They’re our closest living relatives . . . and we’re finding glimmers of human-style intelligence in apes,” she says. “The longer we study great apes, the more we’re seeing that they actually have cultures,” in the sense that distinct groups of apes often behave in ways unique to their group.

The list of Short Term courses that reflect exigent issues goes on:

• Alexandre Dauge-Roth, assistant professor of French, brought students to Rwanda to perform an oral history project with orphans of the 1994 genocide.

• Kimberly Simmons, visiting assistant professor of sociology, is teaching the new course “Social Diversity and Social Justice,” whose students learn about diverse cultural identities by performing a social justice action project.

• In “Immigrant Rights Theory and Practice,” another new offering, Visiting Instructor in Politics Leila Kawar asks students to explore the empowerment of immigrants through, among other means, a Maine-based service-learning project.

And then there are the courses that are, in a sense, timeless. One of these marks its 20th anniversary as a Short Term course this year: “Principles and Applications of Accounting,” taught since its inception by Lecturer in Economics Barry Farber.

The course is one of those that sees the world in terms of black and white — or is it black and red, as in ink? That is, there are accepted methods and standards that don’t change and aren’t subject to interpretation or argument, explains Christine Roemer ’10.

Roemer is a psych major and economics minor taking the course for a specific reason: She has a Ladd Internship at an investment bank in Boston this summer, and needs to be able to understand financial statements.

In typical ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ fashion, Farber wants his students to grasp the fundamentals before allowing them to take advantage of computerized accounting. “We don’t use computers at all, so it’s really all hand-written,” Roemer explains.

“If I’d taken it during the regular semester, I think I would have felt overwhelmed,” she adds. “It’s nice to be able to dedicate however much time I need to it, without other classes getting in the way.”

– Doug Hubley, Office of Communications and Media Relations