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. [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Gorilla’
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 [...]
July 15, 2008
Charlie Rose’s Talk On Gorilla Murders In Virunga National Park
Charlie Rose interviewed Emmanuel de Merode of WildLifeDirect, Brent Stirton and Godefroid Wambale four days ago — three men who know about the massacre of gorillas that happened last year in Virunga National Park. Their interview covers their account of the day where six gorillas were killed.
I’m very pleased with this interview, and even more [...]
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 [...]
January 31, 2008
Non-Human Primate Tool Use: Gorillas Weilding Weapons, Macaques & Mirror Neurons
I’m scouring the American Journal of Primatology for a paper on gorillas using tools as weapons in the wild. National Geographic News says the paper is out, but I can’t find it anywhere in the early edition nor in the current issues. I’ll continue looking, but in the mean time here’s what we got to [...]
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 17, 2007
Nakalipithecus nakayamai, a Miocene Ape from Kenya
The collective understanding of Miocene African primate evolution, especially ape evolution, is generally unfounded. Why? Because the fossil record is spotty, there are only a handful of primates from the Miocene. The Miocene lasted from 23.8 to 5.3 million years ago, and a lot of interesting things happened in the ape lineage during that time. [...]
November 13, 2007
A New African Miocene Ape: Nakalipithecus nakayamai
In August, 2007 Gen Suwa and crew reported on a new Ethiopian Miocene Ape, Chororapithecus abyssinicus. And today, Kenyan and Japanese paleoanthropologists have published their study of a fragment of a mandible and 11 teeth, dating back to between 9.8 and 9.88 million years, which was found 2005.
The fossils were unearthed in volcanic mud flow [...]
November 4, 2007
David Mach’s Coat Hanger Gorilla
I’ve been meaning to post about this interesting find for almost two weeks now, but I haven’t gotten around to it until now. What you see is a very impressive statue of a gorilla made out of coat hangers. The artist that I tip my hat to is David Mach.
October 4, 2007
Add DNApes to your bookmarks or RSS Feed
I just stumbled upon a new-to-me primatology blog that I wanted to share with you. The blog, DNApes, comes from Mimi Arandjelovic, a graduate student at the Max Planck power house of anthropology and is chock full of good posts.
Mimi studies variation in male-transmitted Y-chromosome of gorillas, which is extremely important given that gorillas are [...]
