Frances Burton
University of Toronto, Anthropology, Emeritus
- Educational Anthropology, Primatology, Human Evolution, Anthropology Of Nature, Anthropology of Food, Biological Anthropology, and 13 moreAnthrozoology, Biocultural Anthropology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Foodways (Anthropology), Anthropology, First Study of Orgasm in Monkeys, detailed study of Gibraltar macaques, How Information Shifts in Primate Societies, Climate Change, Gender and Development, Racism, Epigenetics, and History of Anthropologyedit
- Currently retired but still thinking and writing, Frances Burton is interested in social and cognitive behaviour of n... moreCurrently retired but still thinking and writing, Frances Burton is interested in social and cognitive behaviour of non-human primates as well as the anthropology of food. She has published in both areas.edit
Food: Plants and animals Today the world population is 6.7 billion people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2009). In 1900, there were “only” 1.65 billion people on earth, 2.5 billion by 1950, with a projected 9 billion by 2050.... more
Food: Plants and animals
Today the world population is 6.7 billion people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2009). In 1900, there were “only” 1.65 billion people on earth, 2.5 billion by 1950, with a projected 9 billion by 2050. While a number of factors have affected this exponential increase, not the least of which is reallocation of resources and labor (Boone, 2002), the abundance and distribution of food has played a major role, spurring technology to
increase production and distribution. The result is the food crisis emerging in this early part of the 21st century.
Today the world population is 6.7 billion people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2009). In 1900, there were “only” 1.65 billion people on earth, 2.5 billion by 1950, with a projected 9 billion by 2050. While a number of factors have affected this exponential increase, not the least of which is reallocation of resources and labor (Boone, 2002), the abundance and distribution of food has played a major role, spurring technology to
increase production and distribution. The result is the food crisis emerging in this early part of the 21st century.
This anthropological inquiry into the nature of non-human primates considers group social dynamics, organization and behaviour as local phenomena with transcendent properties. It rejects the neo-Darwinian view that social behaviour is... more
This anthropological inquiry into the nature of non-human primates considers group social dynamics, organization and behaviour as local phenomena with transcendent properties. It rejects the neo-Darwinian view that social behaviour is subject to natural selection and that genetic determinism underlies manifest patterns. New models are introduced concerning: where behaviour lies (Paterson, Hornshaw); what the meaning of proximal domain of behaviour is to the actors (Burton); problems of epistemology within primate studies that have sent primatologists off track (Chan, Hornshaw, Burton, Zeller); nature of interaction among young female orangutans and the history of the development of solitary patterns (Galdikas); and how patterns of communication code intricate, complex information of social significance (Burton, Zeller).
Research Interests: Psychology and Recherche
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The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around six to four million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight,... more
The association between our ancestors and fire, somewhere around six to four million years ago, had a tremendous impact on human evolution, transforming our earliest human ancestor, a being communicating without speech but with insight, reason, manual dexterity, highly developed social organization, and the capability of experimenting with this new technology. As it first associated with and then began to tame fire, this extraordinary being began to distance itself from its primate relatives, taking a path that would alter its environment, physiology, and self-image. Based on her extensive research with nonhuman primates, anthropologist Frances Burton details the stages of the conquest of fire and the systems it affected. Her study examines the natural occurrence of fire and describes the effects light has on human physiology. She constructs possible variations of our earliest human ancestor and its way of life, utilizing archaeological and anthropological evidence of the earliest h...
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Methodology is epistemology: the way of studying a phenomenon depends on the view of that phenomenon. In attempting to avoid anthropomorphism endowing or attributing human form and especially feelings and abilities to animals we have... more
Methodology is epistemology: the way of studying a phenomenon depends on the view of that phenomenon. In attempting to avoid anthropomorphism endowing or attributing human form and especially feelings and abilities to animals we have developed a particular mode of finding out which we term science. In this mode we feel it is appropriate to be 'objective' that is to remove our own feelings, thoughts and biases from influencing how we study. In this paper I {1} trace the search for objective techniques in the study of non-human primates and {2} present a rapprochment to established anthropological methods which provide a return to holism in the study of social behaviour.
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This paper describes a primatology project using computer assisted learning and interactive multimedia to help students at the University of Toronto (Canada) learn about non-human primates. The purpose of the interactive program is to... more
This paper describes a primatology project using computer assisted learning and interactive multimedia to help students at the University of Toronto (Canada) learn about non-human primates. The purpose of the interactive program is to present the "natural history" of the majority of the 200-plus species of non-human primates in constant association with that species' portrait and a map of its distribution. Nine categories of information are grouped under the major headings of Attributes, Ecology, and Social Behavior. The paper describes the procedures for accessing information in the multimedia package and discusses pedagogical considerations of active learning and image association. The program is intended to be an adjunct to an introductory course, used in conjunction with lecture and other instructional styles with an introduction to research. Still in the experimental stage, this multimed:i.R program has not been formally tested. Costs and expenditures are discusse...
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Page 1. Hand's Span Frances Burton IN: And a Deer's Ear, Eagle's Song and Bear's Grace: Animals and women. ... Page 3. Frances Burton 59 Churchill, who, recognizing the morale value of... more
Page 1. Hand's Span Frances Burton IN: And a Deer's Ear, Eagle's Song and Bear's Grace: Animals and women. ... Page 3. Frances Burton 59 Churchill, who, recognizing the morale value of such an act for Great Britain as well as locally in Gibraltar, issued the order. ...
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Page 1. Still More on Predatory Behavior in Nonhuman Primates Geza Teleki; Alison De Pelham; Frances D. Burton STOR ® Current Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), 107-109. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici ...
This study reports on 142 incidences of geophagy observed over 700 hours in 1995 amongst the hybrid macaques of Kowloon. These synanthropic monkeys live in the southern region of the Peninsula along Tai Po Road. The purpose of this study... more
This study reports on 142 incidences of geophagy observed over 700 hours in 1995 amongst the hybrid macaques of Kowloon. These synanthropic monkeys live in the southern region of the Peninsula along Tai Po Road. The purpose of this study is to describe the behaviour of geophagy and consider the implication of it for this population. Soil is an important component of the diet: nutrients are derived from soil, plant toxins are neutralized and/or adsorbed. While all age groups and both sexes eat soil, adult females were the most frequent users. Soil is sought and purposefully selected, and some sites are preferred. Geophagy increases after holiday provisioning. The population has grown over time, encouraging the use of plants high in secondary compounds the ingestion of soil with significant levels of kaolin probably mitigates these factors. INTRODUCTION Geophagy, the deliberate act of eating soil, is widespread in vertebrates (Beyer et al., 1994). Soileating is also well attested in a...
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... Increasing Protein Poultry Increasing Protein Poultry Frances Burton University Toronto Scarborough Dept Anthropology and Peter Silverman Ombudsman CITY Toronto Poultry can important source food following drought and crop failure... more
... Increasing Protein Poultry Increasing Protein Poultry Frances Burton University Toronto Scarborough Dept Anthropology and Peter Silverman Ombudsman CITY Toronto Poultry can important source food following drought and crop failure Unfortunately reduced staple crop ...
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The view that female infra-human primates do not achieve orgasm is widespread [e.g. FORD and BEACH, 1952; MORRIS, 1967]. It has been assumed that this aspect of sexual behaviour is qualitatively different in man. While there has been much... more
The view that female infra-human primates do not achieve orgasm is widespread [e.g. FORD and BEACH, 1952; MORRIS, 1967]. It has been assumed that this aspect of sexual behaviour is qualitatively different in man. While there has been much experimentation in the neurophysiology and endocrinology of sexual behaviour in infra-human primates over the past 30-40 years, the assumption that female monkeys do not achieve orgasm has never been tested. The purpose of this report is to relate research begun on the question of whether or not female monkeys have orgasms and to discuss some of the theoretical questions related to this research, I would like to emphasize here that the research accomplished is only preliminary in terms of the research design employed, and that the results therefore are considered tentative.
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Hybrid Macaques.Adult male amputee surrounded by young, hears noise, turns quickly, young disperse.
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Research Interests: History and Human Biology
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An unusual but sustaining case of interspecific infant care behaviour was observed in June 1985 while an ecological and behavioural study of the macaques was being conducted in the forest of the Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong. We describe... more
An unusual but sustaining case of interspecific infant care behaviour was observed in June 1985 while an ecological and behavioural study of the macaques was being conducted in the forest of the Kowloon Peninsula, Hong Kong. We describe this specific interaction among three long-tail macaque infants (Macaca fascicularis) and their mothers and two stump-tail macaque (Macaca thibetana) females who acted as "babysitters." The cross-species infant care observed took place in a polyspecific group which also included rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and hybrids of rhesus and long-tail monkeys. This unique combination of macaque species in a large social and biological group provides an opportunity for the investigation of the role of behaviour in species identification and hybridization in natural habitats.
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Intestinal parasitism in 30 free-ranging Macaca sylvanus is limited to three forms of nematode.
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this is a personal reminiscence and contemplation of primate studies.
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The structure and dynamics of the present population of Barbary macaques in Gibraltar have already been described in Burton, 1972 and this volume Ch. 11, (Fa). The purpose of this paper is to examine the genetic composition of the... more
The structure and dynamics of the present population of Barbary macaques in Gibraltar have already been described in Burton, 1972 and this volume Ch. 11, (Fa). The purpose of this paper is to examine the genetic composition of the population with regard to its health and future conservation.
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Linear measurements and body proportions for a set of free-ranging Macaca sylvanus twins are presented. Their measurements are compared to a full-term perinatal dead female. The twins are dizygous and probably 28 days premature.
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When I joined Anthropology in the 1960s, there was a clear struggle within the discipline to get away from the blighted history of the field which had been tarnished by the racial studies of the late 19th and flourished in the period... more
When I joined Anthropology in the 1960s, there was a clear struggle within the discipline to get away from the blighted history of the field which had been tarnished by the racial studies of the late 19th and flourished in the period leading up to and indeed, inspiring WW two. Anthropology was redefining itself as an advocate of the “Rights of Man”: as outlined in the UN Declaration. Anthropology taught biological process, but the importance of the environment—behavioral and physical---had not yet been accepted as important to ‘heredity’, although a component of hereditability. While biology was pitted against culture, culture was not seen to be an influence on biology: the ’outside’ simply could not have influence on the ‘inside’. The search for an integration and the reluctance to accept one are discussed in this paper. The need for a mechanism presents itself in the’ new’ concept of epigenetics. I conclude with thoughts on the current importance of this concept to the field of Anthropology.
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Research Interests: Zoology and Primatology
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The length of the birth interval inMacaca sylvanus of Gibraltar was defined and one-year intervals were found to be normative. The effect of infant loss on the interbirth interval was assessed and found to have no influence. Variability... more
The length of the birth interval inMacaca sylvanus of Gibraltar was defined and one-year intervals were found to be normative. The effect of infant loss on the interbirth interval was assessed and found to have no influence. Variability in the birth interval in comparable species is noted.
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... McKinney recently (1990) coauthored a seminal work discussing heterochrony--changes in rates of growth and development within the evolutionary context. ... 6.4 is not exclusive to chimps: macaques classify male from female; old from... more
... McKinney recently (1990) coauthored a seminal work discussing heterochrony--changes in rates of growth and development within the evolutionary context. ... 6.4 is not exclusive to chimps: macaques classify male from female; old from young; stranger from pack (Burton 1984). ...
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Two new books argue that fire was the key driver of human evolution
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The american journal of primatology. Volume 1, number 1. Edited by J. Erwin and Terry L, Maple. New York: Alan R. Liss, Inc. 1981. 123 pp. Volume 1, 1981: $70.00. Volume 2, 1982, plus supplement 1, 1982 (five issues): $94.00 U.S., $110.00 Europe, The Middle East, and Africa; $105.00 other countri...more
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The current view that behaviour which is manifest in non-human primates forms a baseline for human behaviours is examined with special reference to the development of gender determination. A review of 21 non-human primate societies... more
The current view that behaviour which is manifest in non-human primates forms a baseline for human behaviours is examined with special reference to the development of gender determination. A review of 21 non-human primate societies suggests that the behaviour of the sexes relates to assumption and occupation of societal roles defined by the local group. The significance of these findings for the human condition is discussed.
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