We ain’t monkeyin’ around here.
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.... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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:
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... Continue Reading →
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 relieve tension... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
