June 2011
24 posts
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Barbary Macaques Recognise Photos Of Their Friends
Adult monkeys recognise photographs of their friends, according to scientists.
In an experiment, untrained Barbary macaques showed interest in the photos and spent more time scrutinising pictures of unfamiliar animals.
Juvenile monkeys were fascinated but puzzled by the photographs. They often tried to greet or touch the animal in the image.
The findings suggest that the primates learn with...
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Chimpanzees Mentally Map Fruit Trees →
Chimpanzees remember the exact location of all their favourite fruit trees.
Their spatial memory is so precise that they can find a single tree among more than 12,000 others within a patch of forest, primatologists have found.
More than that, the chimps also recall how productive each tree is, and decide to travel farther to eat from those they know will yield the most fruit.
Acquiring...
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Mourning Gorilla Mother
Last month in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Virunga National Park, ranger Innocent Mburanumwe captured pictures of the first-time mother, Ruzuzi, appearing to grieve over her less-than-two-week-old baby. Ruzuzi kept the body with her for more than a week, according to Mburanumwe.
Gorillas have long been known to exhibit care for the dead. Mburanumwe, for instance, has seen...
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Chimpanzees' 66 Gestures Revealed
Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists.
A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland filmed a group of the animals in order to decipher this “gestural repertoire”.
The team then studied 120 hours of footage of the chimps interacting, looking for signs that the animals were intentionally...
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Baboon Adopts Galago
A seven-month-old yellow baboon (Papio cynocephalus) carries a Galagos, also known as a bushbaby, at the Animal Orphanage in the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) headquarters in Nairobi, June 10, 2011. Defying nature, the Yellow Baboon, rescued in Maralal (northern Kenya), has quickly adopted a Galagos, rescued in Nyeri (central Kenya), after meeting at the orphanage, giving it affection and...
“Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals “love” them. But those who respect...”
– Edwin Way Teale (via myanimalkingdom)
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Bruised, tied up and caged: The desperate plight...
Arms wrapped dejectedly around his mother, this baby orangutan can only cling on to her for comfort after being tied up in a cage.
The pitiful creatures were captured after going into a village in Sungai Pinyuh, Indonesia, in a desperate search for food.
They were then beaten by villagers so badly one of the primates died before being locked in the tiny cage without food or water.
Read...
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Young Chimps In The Wild Show Signs Of Doll Play,...
(Originally published December 2010)
It’s just days till Christmas, and many young girls around the world will be thrilled to find little dolls under the tree to play with.
But there is new evidence that it’s not only human girls who enjoy playing with imaginary babies — young apes may be showing the same behavior.
A research paper published Tuesday has found what its...
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The Slow Loris has a toxic bite. When a gland on their arm is licked, the secretion mixes with saliva, and activates. As part of grooming, a mother Slow Loris will lick this toxin onto the coat of her young, in order to protect them from predators.
Photo Credit : Frans Lanting
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Do Monkeys Wonder?
People have internal thoughts – we know that, because we think them. But it can also be confirmed by neuroimaging studies; which have revealed that our brains have a “default mode of activity”.
Now we might expect that when the brain is actively thinking, the brain itself becomes more active. That’s true.
But some areas of the brain actually become more active when resting than when they...
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Chimpanzees Find Yawning Contagious, Too - If They...
23 adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were separated into two groups, and were shown videos of familiar chimpanzees both yawning, and just going about their usual business, as well as videos of unfamiliar chimpanzees.
The video of the familiar chimapanzee yawning resulted in the subjects yawning - while the video of the familiar chimpanzee just being a chimpanzee showed no effect.
When the...
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EU : Primates Now Protected From Testing
European Union on Wednesday ruled to ban animal testing on primates — including chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans — as it tries to scale back the number of animals used in scientific research.
After two years of intense debate on how to protect animal welfare without hindering scientific research, the European Parliament agreed to cut back the number of animal tests...
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Monkeys Display Basic Numeracy
Old World monkeys have better numerical skills than previously thought, researchers have discovered.
In a basic numeracy test, long-tailed macaques were able to work out which of two plates contained more raisins.
Strangely, they only excelled in this test if they were not allowed to eat the raisins they were shown.
The scientists report in the journal Nature Communications that the animals...
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New Study Shows That Gay Orangutans Are More...
A recent study shows that homosexual behaviors in orangutans occur more frequently and could possibly mean that there are more homosexual orangutans than we previously thought. The study by Smith et al. (2011) found that, statistically, 1 out of 10 orangutans are actually gay. One of the example from the study described two male Sumatran orangutans (Pongo abelii) whom the authors believe are...
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Western Lowland Gorilla Born At Zoo Miami
On Father’s Day — June 19 — after months of anticipation, a tiny Western Lowland Gorilla was born to mom Kumbuka, 14-year old, at Zoo Miami in Florida.
