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 [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Ecology’
August 6, 2008
A Massive Population Of Gorillas In The Congo Discovered, But 48% Of Primates Are At Risk Of Extinction
July 21, 2008
Current Biology Covers The 60th Anniversary Of The Founding of Primatology in Japan
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of primatology in Japan, thanks to the works of Kinji Imanishi. Current Biology hosts an essay by Tetsuro Matsuzawa and William McGrew, which reviews Imanishi’s contributions to the field. The essay can be found at this link, “Kinji Imanishi and 60 years of Japanese primatology.”
I’m not [...]
July 8, 2008
Come to Doc’s Clock On Wednesday Night to Raise Money for Infant Gorillas
I used to work at the Gorilla Foundation, and am still on their organizational mailing list. This weekend they sent me an email announcing a fundraiser they setup for the Mefou Sanctuary in Cameroon on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008. Specifically the event is setup to raise money for their infant gorilla nursery.
The event will be [...]
July 7, 2008
Orangutans Are Shockingly Closer To Extinction
Anthropology.net blogger German Dziebel sent me this link about the dim future of orangutans in Indonesia, Brunei, and Malaysia. Afarensis has also covered this news. The results of a new survey of orangutan populations have been published in the journal Oryx. I don’t have access to the early advance view of the paper, but [...]
April 3, 2008
Frans Lanting on the Fongoli Spear Hunting Chimps
It has been far too long since I’ve updated this blog. I apologize, there certainly has not been a lack of material to share — just a lack of time and overemphasis on Anthropology.net, which is totally my bad, I don’t intend to neglect this site again.
Anyways, photographer Frans Lanting recently travelled to take photos [...]
December 10, 2007
Gorilla Genetic Diversification due to Ice Age and Climate Change
PNAS will soon publish a paper from Mike Bruford and colleagues who isolated DNA from gorilla hair and feces and ultimately came up with a conclusion that the modern genetic composition of gorilla populations varies across different parts of their current geographic range and that this variation may be tied to Ice Age climate change [...]
December 7, 2007
Anderson Cooper on the Mountain Gorilla situation
One of our readers, Patty, sent me an email telling me of a 60 Minutes Broadcast with Anderson Cooper reporting on the plight of the Mountain Gorilla. The special is broadcasting on Sunday night, December 9th, 2007 on CBS.
I’ve been keeping track of this situation by reading the Gorilla Protection blog, run by ICCN [...]
November 21, 2007
Bonobo Genome & Bonobo Conservation Efforts
It seems like the news hasn’t gobbled up this news as adamantly as it did the news of the bonobo reserve in the Congo, but it is nonetheless newsworthy and crucial to the study of bonobos. The Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute put out a press release that they just acquired [...]
September 25, 2007
Al Jazeera covers the Plight of the Mountain Gorillas
Gorilla Protection links us up to an excellent report done by Al Jazeera on the threats to mountain gorillas. It’s a bit long, but it is really well done. Before you check out the video, another dead gorilla has been found.
September 12, 2007
Male Chimps solicit fruit to Female Chimps for sex
A PLoS One study of chimpanzees at Bossou in Republic of Guinea, shows that the male chimpanzees raid farms and orchards for fruit that they steal and bring back to the females. In exchange, the males shared their fruity booty with the females in a food-for-sex trade.
The photo to your right shows one of the [...]
