Scoop on Primates

Climate change is real - we are already seeing the effects worldwide.  It is affecting everything on earth, large and small creatures alike; non human primates are no exception. According to an article published in the Journal of Primatology and Concordia University last year, the species that will be the most affected by climate change are located in Central America, the Amazon, Southeastern Brazil, East and Southeast Asia.  The authors Tanya L Graham, H. Damon Matthews (Concordia University of Montreal) and Sarah Turner (McGill University) predict that some will experience "1.5 degree Celsius for every degree Celsius of global warming". This is not something new.  Scientists have known for some time that climate change, combined with other factors linked to human activity, such as deforestation, pose a major threat to the survival of our closest cousins.  I would recommend checking another article published in 2010 in the Journal of Biogeography which emphasiz...

As is the tradition in many zoos and sanctuaries, we distributed Christmas boxes filled with shredded paper and some treat items to small primates at the place where I have been volunteering for many years . "What is the point?" - will you ask - "animals, do not know the meaning of Christmas." True.  They don't, but keepers have a duty to ensure animals in their care are busy. They must provide some enrichment to their lives in captivity and the gift boxes are an opportunity to forage for treat items. Foraging is a natural behavior in the wild. Figuring out how to unwrap and open a box provides primates with an opportunity to use their brains and hands.  It is an exciting moment.  All observe carefully as volunteers place the boxes in their enclosures.  They get excited. They know it is for them. No sooner is the catch cage open than they each rush and grab a box. They bring it to a corner where their mates will not disturb them and start the grand ceremon...

Cheek pouches are pockets between the jaw and the cheek used to temporarily store food.  Many rodents, marsupials and monkeys have them. Apes and New World monkeys do not have cheek pouches. Old World monkeys have cheek pouches but do not use them with the same frequency.  For instance, baboons in the wild don't seem to use their cheek pouches as much as they do in captivity. It was long believed that cheek pouches were the result of an adaptation to ground foraging, to store food in high risk situation while on the ground and consume it later high in a tree, however Ciochon and Feagle argue that cercopithecines who live mostly arboreal have the largest cheek pouches. ( Primate Evolution and Human Origins ). Unlike those of rodents, primates' cheek pouches secrete large quantities of amylase - which converts starches into sugar.  In her book " Primate Behavioral Ecology ",   Karen Strier writes: " this adaptation for digesting unrip fruits, which are o...

Humans and great apes seem to be the only creatures deprived of a tail. Yet, our coccyx is what scientists call a “vestigial” organ. It doesn’t serve any purpose but it is there. As Darwin writes in his Origin of Species: “Rudimentary organs may be compared with the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue for its derivation.” In short, the fact we don’t have a tail doesn’t exclude the possibility that one of our distant ancestors had one. So, what is a tail for? For some, it is a built-in fly swatter – like cows in the field; for others a navigation tool like fish; for many a means to keep their balance and for others a way to communicate. When you come home, I am sure your dog greets you by jumping around with vigorous tail wagging – that is, if you are lucky enough to have one. Scientists at the University of Bari, Italy, have been studying tail wagging and its meaning for quite some time. The res...

How we treat great apes (and other animals for that matter) is a question that has been gaining momentum the last few years. Organizations like The Non-Human Rights Project argue that a legal status, other than that of "property" should be granted to great apes in particular. I could not agree more.  Animals are not objects and should not be considered as such by the law, no matter which country they live in. We do know that animals (from mice to apes) have feelings and experience empathy ** (see references below) - so how can we justify trading them as mere junk? The question is even more pertinent when it comes to the ethical treatment of great apes in facilities using them for the greater good - (think medical research).  Progress has been made and it seems that we (humans) are now moving towards a consensus that medical research should move away from animal testing where other solutions apply.  However, some argue that computer simulation, in vitro testing cann...

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. **** 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 . **** 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) a...

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...

I really love finding articles related to the theory of mind and how it applies to great apes. I just found this article about orangutans and how they are able to communicate with gestures with the humans who work with them - modifying their gestures if they assess their message has not been clearly understood. http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/1517/orangutans-communicate-with-charades In a paper published in 2007, Zimmerman et al write about primates able to point distally at objects or places (not necessarily food) they want access to.  Pointing is not a natural behavior seen in the wild, but can come naturally to language-trained great apes.  In experiments, some were able to guide humans to places where an object was hidden, if they saw the human was not able to locate it at first attempt. http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/pdf/Publications_2009_PDF/Zimmermann_et_al_2009.pdf In a paper published in 2008, Call and Tomasello of the Plank Institute assess the studies perfor...

Emotions are not the privilege of human beings.  Animals exhibit a wide array of emotions, but none so much as our "cousins" the great apes. They can be happy... They can be sad... They can enjoy peaceful moments... And according to a recent study, they can also experience midlife crisis. So, I went to the Medicine.net site and looked it up.  A "midlife crisis" is defined as " A period of personal emotional turmoil and coping challenges that some people encounter when they reach middle age, accompanied by a desire for change in their lives, brought on by fears and anxieties about growing older.  " For humans, this phenomenon can happen anytime around the age of 45 until we are  either old enough to have gained wisdom and find a renewed sense of wellbeing or too old to remember what we were feeling unhappy about.  (I started at 12, hoping the rest of my life would be a cruise but I haven't gained enough wisdom to end it yet.) Since...

We use them every day, yet we do not realize how much we rely on them. Hands are a wonderful thing. They help us feel the world, take things, prepare food, create tools, build houses, feed ourselves, communicate and express love or dislike with a slap. Michel de Montaigne expressed it very well when he wrote: “ Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious. ” Many expressions used in common language refer to them - such as: " healing hands ", " he's putty in her hands ", " a show of hands ", " in good hands ", " to give a hand ", " helping hands " to list but a few. They are mentioned in songs, like in this old French one from Charles Trenet: " Place your hand in my hand, your heart against my heart a...

A lot has been written about the 2012 Rio Summit that just ended on June 22, yet not much optimism was expressed.  For many, this is just a repeat of the past summits and not much is expected to come out of it.  So, here are some highlights.   According to an article published in Business Standard , "the world leaders in their declaration said they recognized the crucial importance of enhancing financial support from all sources for sustainable development for all countries, in particular developing nations." ... "We further stress the importance of cooperative action n technology innovation, research and development.  We agree to explore modalities in the relevant forums for enhanced access to environmentally sound technologies by developing countries."   The San Francisco Gate wrote about the Hollywood celebrities who attended and spoke about biodiversity.  The article quotes Greenpeace Executive Director kumi Naidoo who speaking about the ongoing ...

We have all heard that stress can have harmful effects on our health.  The CDC published a paper entitled "The Effects of Childhood Stress on Health Across The Lifespan" which outlines that, although beneficial in small doses, stress can have very detrimental effects on those who have been exposed to it repeatedly from a very young age.  Abused and neglected children are particularly at risk.  Toxic stress can affect brain development, the immune system, learning and memorization.  It also increases a person's risk of depression, substance abuse and suicide into adulthood. Toxic stress includes bullying and there again, the effects on the victims' health are long lasting. According to a study conducted across a sample of 3,000 adults and published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, those who were bullied as children do suffer emotionally and physically as adults.  Symptoms vary and include depression, anxiety, fatigue, pain and frequ...

Are humans smarter than chimpanzees or vice-versa? It has been established for quite some time that great apes have a theory of mind.  They can relate to others, anticipate on their actions or perceived thoughts - like a chimpanzee pretending to be looking for a treat in a part of the enclosure where she knows the treat isn't in order to induce another chimp in error. Pushed by curiosity and a fascination with our fellow primates, we, humans, have dedicated a lot of time and thought to compare ourselves to them.  I recently stumbled upon a serious (yet funny for us in 2012) article in 1902 in Pearsons' Magazine, which dealt with the similarities of human babies compared to primate babies.  The goal was to explain the theory of evolution and the author ( Sydney Savory Buckman - geologist and palaeontologist 1860-1929 ) was trying to prove that humans did descend from an extinct monkey-like ancestor.  He was careful to emphasize:  "A man cannot be descended fro...

Last October, we started exploring how primates were perceived in various cultures and how they were depicted in art.  If for the most part, primates had a bad reputation in the Western world as symbols of the devilish functions in humans; in other cultures they were revered as gods. The Sacred Baboons In Ancient Egypt, hymadryas baboons were associated to Thoth and the Sun God Re. Hamadryas baboons are are not native to Egypt but were imported from Somalia, Ethiopia, Erithrea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen for the pleasure of the wealthy Egyptians. They were considered as vessels who could be inhabited by deities and were treated as such. Illustrations of baboons were found in tombs; baboons were mummified and many artifacts representing Thoth show a god with a baboon head. Even though baboons depicted on papyrii or in sculptures perform human tasks, there is no evidence that baboons were trained. King Sun Goku In Asia, Monkey King Sun Goku is a well known traditional chara...