Gorilla News!

Gorillas are endangered and your children may never see one alive.  This is why the event that just took place in London is so encouraging.  Who would have thought a bunch of runners could raise funds and awareness for gorillas when the world is going through so many trials and there are so many things to worry about.  Yet, these runners were able to raise the not so shabby sum of one hundred thousand pounds!

Read the full article in the Irish Independent here.

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More gorilla news…

Kiki a seven year old epileptic gorilla was transferred from her home in Germany to the Antwerp zoo where she will find some much needed quiet and rest.  She is being integrated slowly into her new group.

For more information read the full article in Flanders Today.

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Some hope for Bua Noi (Little Lotus) a female gorilla who has been exhibited in a high rise zoo in Bangkok since 1987.  It is now a well known fact that great apes (but really all primates) are social animals who do not do well in small cages and isolation.  Activists are requesting Bua Noi be transferred to a facility offering a better environment and it seems they are being heard.
Let's hope this works out and let's follow-up on the story.

More on BBC news.

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Let's watch some happy baby gorillas now.

Chimpanzee Gestures Interpreted

While for many years researchers focused on teaching great apes how to learn our language, through sign or symbols, Dr Catherine Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews in Scotland just published an article in the journal Current Biology. She expands on her research into chimpanzee communication and says that wild chimpanzees are able to communicate very specific messages to one another using specific gestures.
For instance, offering a particular part of the body to another chimpanzee is a request to be groomed; whereas tearing strips from a leaf indicates a chimpanzee is showing sexual interest in another individual.
The study findings are based on the analysis of numerous videos made while the research team was following chimps in Uganda.
While we are not quite ready yet to understand the subtleties of chimpanzee gestures and partake in comprehensive conversations with our next of kin, it is great news.

You can consult the BBC article for more details.

Along the same line, an article "Pantomine in Great Apes", published by Anne E. Russon (Professor of Psychology, Glendon College, York University, Toronto) and Kristin Andrews (York University, Toronto) outlines that wild orangutans can communicate using gestures as well.
Orangutans solicite grooming by initiating grooming with another individual; they pretend to be unable to do something when they need help and like chimpanzees, they teach other individuals how to do something through demonstration.

Why Do Apes Point? (Janni Pedersen, Iowa State University), Par Segerdahi (Uppsala University) and William M. Fields (Great Ape Trust of Iowa), argue that bonobos deliberately use pointing gestures.

Although not related to primates, here are two interesting articles addressing how dogs and elephants understand human gestures and sometimes can use that knowledge to their advantage.

The Scientist : Catch My Drift?

National Geographic: African Elephants Understand Human Gestures

A great start for 2014 in the primate world!

I have been so busy, I have neglected my blog but I have decided 2014 would be a little more prolific.  So, to begin with, I browsed through all the news related to primates since the beginning of January and there are already quite a few exciting highlights.

The Cincinnati zoo celebrated the first birthday of Gladys, the baby gorilla raised by surrogates.  It's like Tarzan, but in reverse - human surrogates helped raise a baby primate - not an easy task but definitely worthy.
In this video you can see Gladys and her gorilla friends eating a very special birthday cake and hear about the great conservation work the zoo is doing.

Bonobos are extremely rare and only found in one specific region of the Congo.  Needless to say they are extremely endangered.  Only a handful of zoos in the US have the privilege to exhibit bonobos and  the same Cincinnati zoo introduces to the world a young bonobo female (the 8th bonobo birth in that facility).   See the baby in the video below.

Then… out of nowhere comes the great news that a "chimpanzee mega-culture"has been discovered in the central Uele region of Northern DRC.  A group of thousands of individuals sharing the same "customs" and behaviors. Knowing the chimpanzee populations have been declining drastically over the years, this was totally unexpected.  For more information, read this article in the Huffington Post.

Wounda, a female chimpanzee overcame illness and is released on the island of Tchindzoulou. Watch the story of Wounda now.  So very touching.

What would you do if one of your animals escaped?  Well, a zoo in Japan holds drills every two years to keep its staff on the alert.  See for yourself…

Come back soon for more news on primates.