By way of Afarensis is news of a new Middle Miocene hominoid species found from the Abocador de Can Mata site in Spain. It is classified as a great ape with many afropithecid and several kenyapithecine features which I’ll give an overview of in a bit. Furthermore, the specimen, IPS43000, is 11.9 million years old, [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Discipline’
June 2, 2009
Lluc, Anoiapithecus brevirostris, A New Hominoid Species from Abocador de Can Mata, Spain
May 29, 2009
A New Malaria Pathogen Found In Chimpanzees From Gabon
Plasmodium falciparum is the protozoan parasite that causes malaria in humans and ultimately the death of 2-3 million people a year. If you didn’t know, malaria is one of the most common infectious diseases and an enormous public health problem. Only one other malaria causing protozoan, a sister species of the P. falciparum parasite, P. [...]
November 18, 2008
Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind
Baboon Metaphysics Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, authors of “How Monkeys see the World” and co-authors of “Primate Social Systems” have published yet another thought provoking book on their studies of baboon. In 1838 Charles Darwin jotted in a notebook, “He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” Baboon Metaphysics is Dorothy [...]
November 6, 2008
MonkeySNP: A Database of Non-Human Primate Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are 1 base pair differences in the genetic code when compared to same sequence from another individual. Many population geneticists who study human genetics compare and contrast SNPs between different populations to understand ancestry and genaology. A new database of non-human primate SNPs, MonkeySNP, has been recently released, and was announced [...]
October 17, 2008
Photos Of San Diego Zoo’s Newborn Gorilla
San Diego Zoo welcomed the birth of a new baby gorilla last month. I just found the photos on ZooBorn, a blog that you maybe interested in if you’re into newborn animals. The details of the birth are documented on the ZooBorn post, so jump on over there to read up. Otherwise, enjoy these photos [...]
October 15, 2008
Right-Handed Bias & The Origins Of Communication
I spent a couple years studying non-verbal communication in gorillas, so to read news that there’s some breakthroughs in our understandings handedness and communication in apes made me extremely excited. The news originates from Gillian Sebestyen-Forrester‘s latest paper in the journal Animal Behaviour, “A multidimensional approach to investigations of behaviour: revealing structure in animal communication [...]
October 14, 2008
LuiKotale Bonobos Hunt Monkeys
Also in the latest Current Biology and first shared by John Hawks is news that may shakeup what you understood was unique to bonobo behavior, that they didn’t hunt other primates. We know that some bonobos eat rodents and small antelopes, albeit infrequently, but for quite sometime we assumed they didn’t consume other primates because [...]
October 14, 2008
A Sharp Decline In Chimpanzee Populations In Côte d’Ivoire
From John Hawks comes distressing news of a 90% decline in headcount of chimpanzees from Côte d’Ivoire, published in the latest issue of Current Biology. The paper, “Alarming decline of West African chimpanzees in Côte d’Ivoire,” is authored by some familiar names. One that I quickly recognized is Christophe Boesche, who captured videos of chimpanzee [...]
August 14, 2008
Tierra Wilson’s Research Project: Sampling Gorilla Saliva For Pathogens
I have had the pleasure of working with Tierra Wilson for a couple years at the Gorilla Foundation. Since then, she’s moved off to veterinary school and I to graduate school. We’ve kept in touch and I was elated to hear that she’s going to Rwanda earlier this summer to study the mountain gorillas there. [...]
August 6, 2008
A Massive Population Of Gorillas In The Congo Discovered, But 48% Of Primates Are At Risk Of Extinction
I have some bittersweet news to share with you. If you’re a regular reader of this site, you may know that gorilla populations have been reported as severely endangered. Most of the problems stem from deforestation and poverty. People chop down trees in Africa and ultimately ruin the ecosystems that support these great apes for [...]
