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A detailed examination of the wrist bones of several primate species challenges the notion that humans evolved their two-legged upright walking style from a knuckle-walking ancestor. The same lines of evidence also suggest that knuckle-walking evolved at least two different times, making gorillas distinct from chimpanzees and bonobos. "We have the most robust data I've ever seen on this topic," said Daniel Schmitt, a Duke University associate professor of evolutionary anthropology. "This model should cause everyone to re-evaluate what they've said before." A report on the findings will appear online during the week of Aug. 10 in the research journal...

A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may not be all about peace, love, and understanding after all. A new study reveals that some bonobos—one of humankind's closest genetic relatives—hunt and eat other primates. Groups of the endangered chimpanzee subspecies were observed stalking, chasing, and killing monkeys they later consumed. /* snip */ "The second I read this, I thought: Oh good, finally!" said primatologist Elizabeth Lonsdorf of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. "Bonobos being so peaceful never sat well with me," said Lonsdorf, who was not involved with the study. "We see...

A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may not be all about peace, love, and understanding after all. A new study reveals that some bonobos—one of humankind's closest genetic relatives—hunt and eat other primates. Groups of the endangered chimpanzee subspecies were observed stalking, chasing, and killing monkeys they later consumed. Scientists have long known from stool samples that some bonobos eat rodents and small antelopes in their natural forest habitats in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but many researchers thought this was the extent of their hunting activities. Gottfried Hohmann and Martin Surbeck,...

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male. Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from...

MBIHE-MOKELE, Congo - Even as Congolese villagers devise novel ways to snare the fast-disappearing bonobo, scientists are racing to save the gentle "hippie chimp" from extinction. The bonobo, or pan paniscus, is closely related to man and known for resolving squabbles through sex rather than violence. It's also prized by some Congolese for its tasty meat. The wiry, wizened-faced chimps are being killed in treetop nests in Congo's vast rain forest, their only natural habitat in the world, by villagers who do not seem to know how fast their prey is disappearing. "Bonobos are an icon for peace and love,...

Pygmy chimpanzees known as "jungle hippies" for resolving conflict through sex rather than fighting are hurtling towards extinction faster than any other primate, experts said yesterday. Bonobos, gentle creatures found only in the remote war-torn forests of Congo, live in strictly matriarchal families and neither kill nor fight over territory. Bonobos chimpanzee is a close relative of man They also pair off for sex at the slightest hint of danger, stress or friction, earning them their hippy nicknames for "making love not war". They are among man's closest relatives and face the prospect of being the first great ape to...

Congo's "hippies of the forest" apes dying out fast By David Lewis KINSHASA, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Pygmy chimpanzees dubbed "hippies of the forest" for resolving conflicts through sex rather than violence are dying out faster than ever in post-war Democratic Republic of Congo, a conservationist said on Tuesday. Bonobos, the rarest of all the great apes, are being killed in large numbers by bands of gunmen two years after the vast central African country's most recent war officially ended. "In 1980, there were about 100,000 bonobos in Congo. In 1990 there were thought to be 10,000," Claudine Andre, founder...

LOOK at the world's worst trouble spots and you can't fail to notice they have one thing in common: tit-for-tat attacks between warring parties. Escalation of violence is incredibly destructive, yet we humans find it very difficult to break the vicious cycle. It seems we are not good at conflict resolution. Perhaps we could learn a lesson or two from the spotted hyena. Spotted hyenas are highly sociable. Like other animals that live in close-knit groups, they don't always get along. But spotted hyenas don't hold a grudge. Within about 5 minutes of a fight, the erstwhile combatants can often...

An elusive new species of great ape, known to locals as the "lion killer", may have been discovered in remote forests of the Congo. The creatures are far larger and more aggressive than normal chimpanzees and have provoked much debate among experts. Some believe that the lion killers are a previously unknown species and should join the other great apes: the chimp, bonobo, gorilla and orang utan. But others say they are unusually aggressive chimps with odd gorilla-like characteristics. Legends of lost apes of the Congo basin go back more than a century and inspired the 1980 novel Congo by...

I am not making this up.  A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project to grant personhood to two chimpanzees, named Hercules and Leo. This isn't the first attempt to grant "human" status to chimps: last year a judge threw out a similar request for a chimp named Tommy.  But the worst part isn't the fact that self-hating humans keep trying to elevate soulless primates and give them equal status with lawyers--it's the judge's reaction.  State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe wrote this: "Efforts to extend legal rights to chimpanzees are thus understandable; some day they may even...

They're not likely to start barbecuing in the rainforest, but chimpanzees can understand the concept of cooking and are willing to postpone eating raw food, even carrying food some distance to cook it rather than eat immediately, scientists reported on Tuesday. The findings, based on nine experiments conducted at the Tchimpounga Sanctuary in Republic of Congo and published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that chimps have all the brainpower needed to cook, including planning, causal understanding, and ability to postpone gratification. They do lack the ability to produce fire. But if they were given a source of...

New evidence underscores the theory of human origin that suggests humans most likely share a common ancestor with orangutans, according to research from the University of Pittsburgh and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Reporting in the June 18 edition of the Journal of Biogeography, the researchers reject as "problematic" the popular suggestion, based on DNA analysis, that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, which they maintain is not supported by fossil evidence.

Activist challenges judges to redefine chimpanzees’ legal status: Animal rights lawyer Steven Wise courts controversy by Warren Nunn Published: 15 April 2014 (GMT+10) If Steven Wise has his way, chimps will have quasi-human rights. Lawsuits on behalf of captive chimpanzees in America could be a turning point in how the judiciary adjudicates on animal rights. A group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project filed lawsuits on behalf of the chimps claiming they were ‘nonhuman animals’ that had a right to live free from confinement and not be regarded as property but as ‘legal persons’.1 The organisation’s website summarized the move:...

The man who tried to make human-ape hybrids Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a gifted scientist, a dedicated conservationist, and a practical, grounded man who expanded everyone's understanding of animal husbandry. He also, for years, tried to make human-ape hybrids. The post-revolution USSR was a nation that wanted to wholly embrace new technology and progressive science while reinforcing traditional nationalistic pride. It's no wonder that Ilya Ivanovic Ivanov fit right in. He was a biologist who wanted to split his talents evenly between innovation and preservation. Ivanov got a lot of Soviet and international support because he'd been doing useful work...

A great ape escape caused panic in Germany when five clever chimpanzees broke out of their zoo compound, using a ladder they had fashioned together out of tree branches. After scaling the wall on Wednesday, the primates were able to walk among the 2,500 visitors to Hanover's Experience Zoo. While the chimps were content to taste life on the other side of the fence, a five year old girl and an an elderly man were hurt in the panic as staff hurriedly evacuated the park. Four of the five chimps - seven in total live in the enclosure - tasted...

Adult Chimpanzee Fatally Mauls Baby Chimp at LA Zoo The unnamed infant was born March 6 to Gracie, who is being allowed to keep the infant overnight to grieve, zoo officials said. The first chimpanzee baby born at the LA Zoo in 13 years was mauled to death Tuesday by an adult chimp in front of a crowd of visitors, including children, zoo officials said. The unnamed infant was born March 6 to Gracie, who is being allowed to keep the infant overnight to grieve, zoo officials said. When the adult male chimp began attacking the infant, zoo staff were...

<p>LOS ANGELES — A Southern California Republican Party official was under fire yesterday after allegations she sent an email that included an altered photo depicting President Barack Obama as an ape.</p> <p>An email reportedly sent by party central committee member Marilyn Davenport shows an image, posed like a family portrait, of chimpanzee parents and child, with Obama's face artificially superimposed on the child. Text beneath the photo reads, "Now you know why no birth certificate."</p>

Maturen, 22, had been a volunteer at the sanctuary for more than three years. She recalls the events of Feb. 12 [2010] in great detail. [snip -- she relates the horror in detail next] No one from the sanctuary called 911...Just before 11:30 a.m., someone else did call. A man told the dispatcher..."Something's happening over there," he said. "I don't know if one of those apes got loose, but we had to run out of there real fast, and there were women screaming over there." Deputy Gregory Mason arrived at 11:37 a.m. and found the gates locked.... [snip -- she...

This photo from the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto, Japan, shows a chimpanzee named Ayumu performing a memory test with nine numerals placed in various positions on a touch sensitive monitor. His performance (tapping the numbers in order) bested that of college-age adults. (AP) Never mind that TV show that asks if you're smarter than a fifth-grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp's? Maybe not. Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won. That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are...

home | about spiked | issues | support spiked Friday 26 June 2009Restating the case for human uniquenessA brilliant new book cuts through all the media-oriented research about ‘clever chimps’ using tools, doing maths and feeling emotions, and reminds us that, in truth, there is nothing remotely human about primates.Helene Guldberg Not a Chimp: The Hunt to Find the Genes That Make Us Human is a refreshing defence of human uniqueness. ‘We are a truly exceptional primate with minds that are genuinely discontinuous to other animals’, Jeremy Taylor writes. The first half of Not a Chimp challenges ‘the basis...