Primatology.net

After reading an article from Psychology Today by Hal Herzog, it got me thinking about the idea of pet-keeping. The article ”Are Humans The Only Animals That Keep Pets?“, claims that humans are the only animal that keeps members of other species for an extended point of time purely for enjoyment. Herzog points out that while some animals [...]

BBC’s Meeting the world’s smallest primate (click link for the site and video), is being criticized for its inaccurate information.  Made as an educational piece to show that the animal’s popularity with tourists is affecting the animals’ welfare, poor research and possibly bad editing culminated in some errors. While these errors are minute, they affect the overall [...]

The concept of “family” and relatedness are prevalent in the animal kingdom. Individuals seem to be able to tell if they are related to one another, probably in effort to avoid incest breeding (to increase fitness). While “phenotype matching” is proposed to be one of the kin recognition mechanism between animals to assess their relatedness, “phenotype [...]

The saying “You can’t judge a book by its cover” can sometimes be applied to primate mating system and social system. Primate social systems sometimes differ from mating systems, as evidenced by reports of field observation (although sometimes first-hand field observations mistakenly report and link primate social systems to mating systems). For example, geladas (Theropithecus [...]

Ethnoprimatology is defined as the approach that draws from primate socioecology, ethnoecology/environmental anthropology, and conservation biology. This approach enable us to see the multifaceted interaction between humans and nonhuman primates in a dynamic ecosystem. It seems to be something I would like to do and learn more. What’s a better way to incorporate the fundamentals [...]

The IUCN Red List has a Species of the Day feature that highlights species that are threatened of different taxa. Everyday, a species is showcased along with information about the threats they are facing. Species of the Day for March 3, 2010 is a primate name Kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji). Kipunji are endemic to Tanzania and [...]

Laelaps has an interesting post on friendship in male and female baboons. Check out the post, “You just call out my name…”: Friendships in Male and Female Baboons. Insightful hypotheses explaining the friendship between male and female baboon. Would love to read more papers and data on this. Originally posted on The Prancing Papio.

Kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji) Tanzania, Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2008–2010 has been compiled by the Primate Specialist Group of IUCN’s Species Survival Commission (SSC) and the International Primatological Society (IPS), in collaboration with Conservation International (CI). © CI/Illustration by Stephen D. Nash A list of the world’s 25 most endangered primate [...]

Yewande relaxing in human-like pose. Photo from Telegraph. This photo was taken at Calgary Zoo, Canada by zoo visitor Nancy Chow. The baby lowland gorilla, a six month old female name Yewande, decided to “chillax” after playing with her favorite pink blanket. Struck by Yewande’s pose, Chow took this picture. “When I took this shot [...]