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The ancestors of humans may have begun moving on two legs to forage for food among the treetops in open habitat, researchers have suggested, contradicting the idea that the behaviour arose as an adaptation to spending more time on the ground.The origins of bipedalism in hominins around 7m years ago has long been thought to be linked to a shift in environment, when dense forests began to give way to more open woodland and grassland habitats. In such conditions, it has been argued, our ancestors would have spent more time on the ground than in the trees, and been able...

A Swedish zoo said Thursday it had to shoot dead three chimpanzees after they escaped from their enclosure, with the situation still not under control. A fourth primate was injured by gunshot, according to the company that runs the Furuvik Zoo around 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Stockholm. "A chimpanzee is considered a high-risk animal. If this kind of animal gets out into the zoo, it can pose a threat to people's lives", Annika Troselius, a spokeswoman for Parks and Resorts, told AFP. Five of the zoo's seven chimps managed to escape from their enclosure on Wednesday shortly after...

Surveillance video captures the moment a Manhattan bodega worker allegedly stabbed a customer to death after the enraged man came around the counter and attacked him over a bag of chips. The worker is first seen on the shocking video tending to customers from behind the counter at the Hamilton Heights Grocery store on Broadway — when he is suddenly confronted by a younger man. The customer appears to yell at the store clerk, before shoving him into a shelf, the clip shows. After several moments, the worker reaches to the right, toward shelves displaying candy. He pulls out a...

To make up for lack of interaction under Covid-19 restrictions, apes at zoos 150km apart can now watch each others’ daily lives on big screens Humans might be tiring of video calls, Zoom birthdays and streamed performances, but the chimps at two Czech zoos are just starting to enjoy their new live online link-up. To make up for the lack of interaction with visitors since the attractions closed in December under Covid-19 restrictions, the chimpanzees at Safari Park Dvur Kralove and the troop at a zoo 150km away in in Brno, can now watch one another’s daily lives on giant...

Scientists in the United Kingdom have discovered a rare bone, called the os cordis, in chimpanzees with a common heart condition. The implications of this finding could extend to humans, who share a close genetic relationship to chimps. Cattle, buffalo, and sheep have it. So do otters, camels, and dogs. Primates, not so much—at least that’s what scientists thought. The os cordis, a small bone found in the hearts of certain animals, is also present in some chimpanzees, according to research published today in Scientific Reports. It’s the first time os cordis has been detected in a great ape species....

Zoo animals have been unable to kick their tobacco habit as the killer pandemic sweeps the globeStressed-out primates have taken to chain smoking cigarettes as the coronavirus crisis rages across the globe. Monkeys and chimps have failed to kick the habit as entertained visitors are seen to laugh as the animals spark up amid the pandemic. In Cambodia, one man took to social media to share a video, titled ‘By 2020 even monkeys can smoke’, which shows a tiny macaque in a pen smoking a cig as another looks on. The animal is seen to take repeated drags while...

Leading Darwinist Advocates Breeding Humans with Chimps New Attempts to Interbreed Humans and Chimps to Prove Evolution April 22, 2019 | David F. Coppedge by Jerry Bergman, PhD A new movement headed by Professor David Barash to prove evolution by breeding humans with our claimed closest relative, the chimpanzee has gained credence. A core teaching of Neo-Darwinism is that humans are simply another animal produced by evolution. Researchers have produced many hybrids, even between two animals once classified as different species. Some of the thousands of examples include tigons (the offspring of a male tiger bred with a female lion),...

Zookeepers say a group of chimpanzees used branches weakened by a storm to make a ladder and escape from their enclosure at the Belfast Zoo. Video filmed Saturday by visitors to the Northern Ireland zoo showed several primates scaling a wall and perching atop it, with one walking down a path outside the enclosure. Zookeeper Alyn Cairns said trees in the chimps’ enclosure had been weakened by recent storms, allowing the animals to break them and fashion a ladder to escape.

THIS is the secret African island inhabited by super aggressive "monster'" chimps all freed from a US testing laboratory. The apes -who are infected with contagious diseases- were abandoned on the Liberian river island after being released by their captors. The jungle wilderness - known to locals as ‘Monkey Island’ - is now home to more than 60 chimps who are notoriously protective of its shores. Many of the animals are said to be "super aggressive"and those living nearby are terrified to go there for fear of being attacked. Only a select few locals - who regularly take the apes...

10 Weapons That Animals Use We've come a long way from thinking that what separates us from the animals is, say, using a rock to bash in the skull of our competitors. It turns out that there are a lot of creatures out that that re-purpose tools to make their personal world better and someone else's world a lot worse. Take a look at the world's craziest and most intimidating weapons wielded by animals. 10. The Herring Gull's Bread This bird has learned how to use bread to construct a trap. Herring gulls live in large colonies in the urban...

Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology. Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks. The report's authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, said the finding could have implications for human evolution. Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools. Pruetz and Bertolani made the discovery at their research site in Fongoli, Senegal, between March 2005 and July 2006. "There were hints that this behavior might...

Cultured Cousins? January 31, 2007 by Kirsten Vala Looking at apes, tools, and human evolution Many animals have been observed using tools: Dolphins use sponges when fishing, crows use sticks to forage for insects in dead wood, capuchin monkeys use stones to break open nuts. A wild chimpanzee in a nest (or bed or sleeping platform), essentially a simple shelter. This is a constructed artifact, a simple example of elementary technology, which happens to be a great ape universal. (© W.C. McGrew) Apes use tools. So what? What does that tell us about human evolution? As it turns out, observing...

Young chimpanzees learn how to use tools to open nuts from their mothers. Photo: Christophe Boesch Researchers have discovered a band of chimpanzees in West Africa which use crude stone hammers to crack open nuts, a sophisticated use of tools the monkeys have been teaching to each new generation for more than a century. Using carefully selected stones weighing up to 15kg, the chimps pound the tough shell of the panda nut to extract a high-energy kernel that is an important part of the animal's diet, researchers report Friday in the journal Science. "It is a very skillful behavior...

Here is some of what is posted on the page: Jan. 17 — The chimpanzee version of the AIDS virus appears to be extremely rare in wild chimps, which suggests the apes evolved a way to deal with the killer virus generations ago, researchers said on Thursday. The study also confirmed earlier theories that AIDS passed to humans from chimps in Central Africa, they said SCIENTISTS HAVE long known nonhuman primates carry their own version of the AIDS virus. But so far, it has been found only in captive chimpanzees. No one knows how prevalent or geographically or genetically diverse ...

Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their working DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. The new estimate is based on the comparison of mouse chromosome 16 with human DNA. Previous estimates had suggested mouse-human differences as high as 15 per cent. The new work suggests that neither genome has changed much since we shared a common ancestor 100 million years ago. "The differences are going to be few rather than many," says Richard Mural of Celera Genomics, the Maryland company that compared the mouse chromosome with human DNA. "Perhaps 100 million years separating...

Though a New York judge ruled Thursday that the law still considers chimpanzees property, not people, a prominent thinker in the pro-life movement warned that attempts to raise animals to human status will continue.  Wesley J. Smith, co-director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, said Friday, "We are gratified that a court refused to declare two chimpanzees 'persons.' That is right and proper. Chimps are animals, and the 'species barrier' separating the value of humans and animals, as some animal rights advocates put it, must never be breached."   "But make no mistake," Smith said. "Attempts to...

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...

A New York judge has granted two research chimps the writ of habeas corpus — a move that allows them to challenge their detention.The decision, says Science magazine, effectively recognizes chimps as legal persons, marking the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been given that right.The order, dated April 20, requires Stony Brook University to appear in court and provide a legally sufficient reason for keeping the two chimps, Hercules and Leo. A hearing is scheduled for May 6.The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), the group that filed the case on behalf of the chimps, said in a...

(Phys.org)—Members of a troop of chimpanzees living at a site called Fongoli in southeastern Senegal have been observed by scientists fashioning tree branches into spears and using them to hunt and kill bushbabies. The researchers, a combined team with members from the U.S. the U.K. and Germany have published their observations and findings in Royal Society Open Science. In their seven year study of the chimps living at the site, the researchers spotted chimpanzees breaking off tree branches, tearing off smaller branches and leaves, removing the weak tips and sometimes gnawing on the ends to sharpen them. The spears (which...

Click here for video. King Kong's got nothing on her. A chimp being filmed by a drone for a television show based out of a zoo in the Netherlands decided she wasn't too keen on the invasion of privacy and swatted the drone from the sky, but the finished film was "special" nonetheless, according to the zoo. When a drone hovered over the chimpanzee exhibit at Burger's Zoo, while filming "Burgers' Zoo Natuurlijk" Friday, "the intelligent primates immediately discovered the spying little plane and right away armed themselves with long sticks against this inquisitive electronic intruder," the zoo's website said....