Scoop on Primates

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...