Primatology.net

The Canadian blood donor form has a new question, “Have you, in your past or present job, taken care of or handled monkeys or their body fluids?” The Canadian Press reports that it’s being used as a precautionary measure to avoid the Simian Foamy Virus (SFV), thought to be contracted through bites and scratches from monkeys, chimpanzees, and baboons (which is interesting since they sum up these primates as “monkeys” in the form’s question).

Doris Kaufmann of the Canadian Blood Services, Calgary Office:

“Simian foamy virus is actually considered a retrovirus. Retroviruses that are known to affect humans do include HIV and others that we routinely test for.”

While there are no known cases of humans becoming sick from SFV, the precaution is taken in the event that the disease has a lengthy incubation period. The new question is estimated to eliminate less than 1,000 potential donors – a lower cost than testing all donated blood for the virus.

In a paper from the November issue of Genome Research, researchers from the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics at the National Health Research Institutes are closely examining the genetic variation between humans and chimpanzees (I don’t have access to it yet – free online access is available to Genome Research articles 6 months after publication, but the article highlighting the paper is available in the China Post). Chimps don’t suffer from some of the debilitating diseases that humans can endure, so looking at our genetic differences may lead to information that might enable scientists to alter gene expression and therefore the environment in which these diseases thrive. More information on gene expression is hoped to play a role in finding cures for Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS, and hepatitis B and C.

(Photo courtesy of Bristol Zoo Gardens)

With a little help from clomifene (a drug that women have been using to aid in ovulation), Salome, a western lowland gorilla, carried a baby to term and gave birth on December 15th. The 30-year-old gorilla from the Bristol Zoo was mating, just not successfully conceiving. Veterinarians reported that she had a diminished ovarian reserve and after gynecological consults, Salome was given a drug to stimulate ovulation. Three months later she became pregnant.

Bristol Zoo deputy director, Dr. Bryan Carroll reported that,

“Female gorillas, like their human counterparts, find conceiving more difficult as they get older, so zoos may now be able to give some of their important breeders a helping hand. Being able to treat female gorillas with human fertility drugs is potentially a very important breakthrough.”

It will be interesting to see where this goes and what debates, if any, it sparks in zoo science over the next few years.

Six out of 21 monkeys in the Shirakami Mountains tested positive for B virus according to the Daily Yomiuri. In a statement issued by Kazutaka Osawa of Nagasaki University, the infected monkeys (between 3 and 13 years old) were captured near residential areas between July and November. The transfer of the disease to humans usually occurs through bites and scratches by monkeys.

Bad news for humans as 80% of those who have contracted the B virus and go untreated die from complications. Since 1932, approximately 40 human deaths have been reported in relation to monkey bites.

Today’s interesting press release from the University of St Andrews calls attention to a paper on the singing behavior of gibbons as a mechanism to ward off predators in addition to mating practices. Esther Clarke, Klaus Zuberbuhler, both of the University of St Andrews and Ulrich Reichard, of the Max Planck Institute observed the singing behavior of white-handed gibbons in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand. The experimenters said:

“We are interested in gibbon songs because, apart from human speech, these vocalizations provide a remarkable case of acoustic sophistication and versatility in primate communication. Our study has demonstrated that gibbons not only use unique songs as a response to predators, but that fellow gibbons understand them.

This work is a really good indicator that non-human primates are able to use combinations of calls given in other contexts to relay new, and in this case, potentially life-saving information to one another. This type of referential communication is commonplace in human language, but has yet to be widely demonstrated in some of our closest living relatives – the apes.

Not unlike humans, gibbons assemble a finite number of call units into more complex structures to convey different messages, and our data show that distant individuals are able to distinguish between different song types and understand what they mean. This study offers the first evidence of a functionally referential communication system in a free-ranging ape species.

Finding this ability among ape species, especially gibbons who in a sense bridge the evolutionary gap between great apes and monkeys, could shed light on when this ability developed in the primate lineage.”

Here’s the paper.

Fifty years is all it would take to destroy two-thirds of the forests in the Congo River Basin. Currently, about 3.7 million acres of forest each year is lost to logging, agriculture, and road development (among other things). In a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report, Laurent Somé, WWF’s Central African Regional Office Director, briefly touches on some of the problems associated with deforestation:

“Tropical forest is vanishing at a rate of 5 percent a decade, wrecking habitats and releasing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is a fifth of global greenhouse emissions.”

The WWF report further elaborates:

“The region is blanketed by a patchwork quilt of logging concessions. While the logging itself is usually selective and does little damage, the associated roads, infrastructure and migration degrade surrounding landscape and result in massive wildlife depletion.”

Recent posts have raised the important issue that deforestation and habitat destruction are contributing to the spread of Ebola — in which the importance of forests could not be clearer. The WWF and other organizations (like the Wildlife Conservation Society) are working to promote awareness of this severe situation in hopes of saving the land and its inhabitants. Reuters UK reports that the WWF, which in the past two decades has protected millions of acres, is in the process of gaining 300,000 more protected acres in the next few months.

About six days ago, I shared with y’all some horrific news that 5,000 or so gorillas have lost their lives to Ebola.

For me it has been a hard number to grasp. But, some bittersweet news is coming out of Rwanda about how mountain gorillas are too isolated to contract the disease… for now. The news article that reported this, “Rwanda: ‘Gorillas Safe From Ebola‘,” writes,

“Mountain gorillas in Virunga Park do not face a threat from Ebola, a senior official with Rwanda Office of Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN), has said. Fidel Ruzigandekwe, the Executive Director of Rwanda Wildlife Authority, a department under ORTPN, said on Monday that the primates are not endangered as those in the Congo basin region…

…The Congo basin which covers DRC, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic is located about 2000 kilometres from the Virunga Mist, home to hundreds of the Mountain gorillas.

Ruzigandekwe said there are both regional and international efforts to prevent the deadly disease from spreading to the apes.

He said that one of the existing efforts was that of the Mountain Gorilla Health Contingence Plan (MGHCP), which is shared by the three countries, which checks for possible disease outbreaks in the Virunga Mist.”

This is good news, for now, but we cannot rely on the physical barrier, being the Virunga mountains, as the sole deterent of this highly communicable and virulent disease. Knowing that over 5,000 gorillas lives have been lost, a much more smaller, denser, fragile and immunologically isolated population of Mountain gorillas is more at risk than the populations of Western lowland gorillas that are facing this horrible disease.

A commenter by the handle, DAB, made me very aware of Chimp Haven’s mismanagement details when I was praising them on their AAALAC accreditation achievement. And it seems like now mismanagement problems DAB eluded to have now become official enough to sue Chimp Haven over.

Here are some of the details of the suit being charged against the organization that I got from here, “Chimp Haven directors sued; group claims mismanagement,”

“A group of donors and supporters of Chimp Haven Inc., in Keithville have filed suit accusing the institution’s directors of mismanaging the facility.

Virginia K. Shehee, Mary Jansen, Tim and Sarah Goeders, Linda Koebner and others have asked the court for an injunction against the directors of the nonprofit residence for chimpanzees formerly used for research.

Director and President Linda Brent and director and Chairman of the Board Tom Butler are directly named in the suit.

The plaintiffs believe the defendants “have mismanaged the Chimp Haven Project in Caddo Parish in violation of that corporation’s purpose, to the detriment of the animals residing at Chimp Haven and to the detriment of fundraising and additional grant opportunities on which Chimp Haven must rely on to survive,” according to the suit filed recently.”

Of course the organization is denying the claims, as the organization opened its doors to a news team “in response to a lawsuit from some donors and supporters claiming mismanagement and poor care.” While, I know the best interests of the chimpanzees are at stake, I am a bit concerned how the death of a chimp named Woodruff who died of a heart attack while placed with three aggressive males, will be used as corroborative evidence for mismanagement. It may have been the directors decision, but a heart attack can be stress induced, genetic, or diet/excercise related. For an animal in capitivity, a combination of these three had a play in his untimely death.

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Soon the Baktikop forest will have few more inhabitants. According to Willie Smith, founder of BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival) Foundation (as reported in ANTARA News), the Forestry Ministry will allow for about 200 orangutans to be released to the protected Baktikop forest in early 2007.

The Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Center in Central Kalimantan has been caring for these orangutans since they were seized in Semarang, Yogyakarta, Bandung, and Sukabumi, where many were exploited for entertainment. The success of nursing the orangutans back from poor health and releasing them will open up much needed space at Nyaru Menteng for those in need.

I saw these images from a link on Neatorama to nature photographer Solvin Zankl’s website and gallery, and I had to share.

I especially liked the photographs of some black apes (Macaca nigra) looking into a broken off car mirror. It is an awesome moment and it captures these primates as they discover and become aware of themselves, or at least their reflections. Also the Tarsier’s (Tarsius spectrum) stare is awesome.

Here’s the thumbnails. Click on each to goto a higher resolution image on the photographer’s site.