Scoop on Primates

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,...

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 ba...

Did you ever curse at your dentist for saying you don't floss enough?  Well, you think twice because apparently, some primates do it without the prompt of a professional.  So, whether you agree or disagree that flossing is a necessity to preserve your pearly whites, there might be some benefit to it after all. A Japanese macaque female, named Chompe, resident at Kyoto University Primate Research Institute, was seen pulling a hair tight between her hands and running it through her teeth to remove food remnants.  According to Jean-Baptiste Leca , the lead author of a report published in the January 2013 issue of the journal Primates, flossing may have been an "accidental bi-product of grooming". Apparently, this wise female came up with three different techniques of flossing - 1) by moving her mouth to run hers or another monkey's hair through her teeth; 2) by gently moving her head backwards to run hers or another monkey's hair through her teeth; 3) by pulling a...

I just recently received a copy of "PRIMATES OF THE WORLD" and am delighted to write about it today.  Originally published in French, the English version of this stunningly beautiful book is elegantly translated and will be available as of September 18.  It is "the" reference everyone interested in primates should have by their bedside. It opens with a great overview of primates, their origins, evolution, anatomy, habitats, social organization and communication.  Although succinct, it clearly outlines the diversity of species and how they share resources.  It is full of interesting facts - for instance, a reduction in the number of large trees in the forests of Madagascar " could have led to the first locomotion specializations in ancestral indrids, leading them to leap from trunk to trunk instead of moving around on branches ." Or did you know that the slender Asian loris, when sensing danger, rears up and that the " undulating movements of its bod...

Many articles were published recently to announce the death of a famous advertising talent - Louis, a chimpanzee who starred in PG Tips advertising as a Bond-like character, who saved the world and sure enjoyed a good cuppa! He wasn't the only star in those commercials that aired in the 70s and 80s, the tea company built their entire advertising campaigns on the adventures of a family of chimps. These colorful characters greatly contributed to PG Tips brand awareness and popularity and were voted most "favorite advertising characters" in a 2003 poll  in the Guardian (UK).  Animal rights organizations, however, forced the PG Tips company to stop using primates and nowadays a sock monkey has replaced the talented actor who finished his life at the Twycross zoo in Atherstone, Warwickshire, England. Louis died at age 37 and is survived by his screen and life partner Choppers, aged 42, who will be moved in with other chimps so she can survive the grief of losing a lifelong...

I want to refer you to a very interesting article published in The Economist under the title: " Planet of the Apes ". This article focuses on the results of a report from the American Journal of Primatology by Dr. Freeman and her team who have been studying chimpanzee behavior for a long time.  It would seem that chimpanzee personas have six dimensions (extroversion, agreeableness, openness, reactivity, dominance and methodicalness) as opposed to five for humans (extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness).  Reactivity could be compared to neuroticism in humans but is different enough not be identified as such; methodicalness measures how the apes solve problems (using a twig to retrieve ants for instance) and could be more or less equated to conscientiousness in humans, although different.  However, per Dr. Freeman and her team, there is no human equivalent to chimp dominance. The study is important for zoo keepers since it allo...

Walking down the main road of the sanctuary where I volunteer, I often hear the rhythmic drumming of chimpanzees and think it would be fun to make a music album.  It would be wild, but full of spirit.  Those chimps seem to enjoy the repeating beats and honestly with an electric guitar it would sound fantastic!  After reading the summary of a recent study conducted at the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, I am comforted in this idea that chimps can rock'n roll. Researchers trained a group of three chimpanzees to hit keys on a keyboard and played distractor sounds as they were doing it.  A female then aligned her tapping to the distractor sound.  Although, this may not sound like much and more research is warranted, it could mean that humans are not the only ones who are able to synchronize sound with movement. On the same subject, I recommend a very entertaining article from Psychology Today entitled " Why Chimpanzees Would Dance to Jo...