BBC News recently reported on a pretty interesting three-year long research project that is not the typical non-human primate-focused research we usually highlight on this site, but I couldn’t resist bringing it up. The project, FEELIX Growing, a multi-national project is aiming to create robots that read and react to humans in an appropriate manner. [...]
Entries from February 2007
February 28, 2007
Cotton-top Tamarin twins born in Hampshire Zoo
If you’ve never seen a cotton-top tamarin, it doesn’t take much imagination to visualize what they look like. These little monkeys, are native to Colombia, and have a tale-tell head full of white fluffy hair. The general outlook on cotton-top tamarin survival has been pretty low because,
“a combination of deforestation and exports for biomedical [...]
February 27, 2007
Baby Orangutan & Tiger are the best of friends
Captivity does strange things to animals, but what’s happening at Taman Safari animal hospital in Java, Indonesia is outright remarkable!
They have four babies in their care who normally wouldn’t get along. From the Daily Mail article, “The deadly enemies who are the best of friends,”
“Two Sumatran tiger cubs and two baby orang-utans, each pair abandoned [...]
February 27, 2007
Tarsier eating some sweet cricket chow
Funny how this video came up on one of my favorite blogs, because I’ve been meaning to talk about how tarsiers fit into the primate phylogeny.
But, I won’t get into that yet because this video of a little tarsier chowing down on some cricket is thoroughly entertaining:
February 24, 2007
Reassessing the time at which human-chimp lineages diverged
A new statistical calculation called the hidden Markov model has been applied to four regions of the human, chimpanzee and gorilla genomes as reported in the PLoS Genetics journal.
But, before I jump into a discussion of the implications of this paper, let me explain to those unfamiliar with the hidden Markov model that it was,
“developed [...]
February 23, 2007
Spider monkeys already know: Sometimes you need a hug.
Animals that live in groups often break into smaller groups (fission), and later recongregate (fusion). Fission-fusion behavior is often tied to resource availability, but can also be related to social dynamics (competition among group members can lead to conflict, and breaking into smaller groups can alleviate the conflict). While fissioning into subgroups can [...]
February 23, 2007
Little Rock Zoo’s gorilla family, Sekani, Fossey & Mosi playing
Alright, I’m assuming that if I need a break from our recent discussions on chimps using spears, stress & primate physiology, ethics, and new species then so do you. So, to break the monotony here’s a set of entertaining and heart-warming videos of one of Little Rock Zoo’s gorilla families.
In the first video you will [...]
February 23, 2007
One more word on, and a video of, chimps hunting with spears
Two more things about the chimps using spears to hunt other primates.
Firstly, it looks like Christopher Mims is just as unsurprised as I have been about the news of the chimps using spears to hunt. He outlines why, in the form of what we already know about chimpanzees. I skimmed over these reasons, so here’s [...]
February 22, 2007
Savanna Chimpanzees Hunt with Tools
So the paper, I mentioned this morning, on chimpanzees hunting with spears has come out… and literally the entire blogosphere I know and track has reported on it. If that’s any indication that this is a remarkable finding to them, then so be it. By the way, Digg loves this news too.
To me this [...]
February 22, 2007
Is this breaking news: Chimps hunt using spears?
What’s this? Chimps hunt using spears?
That’s what the authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, are reporting in a yet to be published paper in the journal Current Biology.
Since we don’t have the primary source, I’m relying on a news article published by the BBC News to share this with you. Here’s all I got so [...]
