Difficult starlet in first chimp movie: "My agent assured me there'd be no nude scenes."
Courtesy wynner3The first movie shot entirely by chimpanzees will be shown this week on the BBC. The hairy filmmakers shot the film using a special chimp-proof camera provided by a primatologist at the Edinburgh Zoo in the UK. Go here for the full scoop. No word yet on any Oscar buzz.
Tags : This afternoon keepers released video footage of the baby white cheeked gibbon born at the Minnesota Zoo on December 27. The baby -- the 10th one born at the Minnesota Zoo -- is being cared for by people because her mother, "Tia," shows little interest in mothering her. Still, the baby is growing well and keepers are hopeful that Tia will come around eventually.
The baby gibbon won't be on exhibit for a few months, so watch the video.
The Long and Short of Human Toes
in Heredity, Biological Populations Change Over Time, and Human Organism
Are these the toes of royalty, or just a marathon runner?
Courtesy jameiah
Ever look down at your feet and wonder why your toes look and move the way they do? You might even have heard the myth that having a second toe longer than your first (something orthopaedic surgeon Dudley Morton dubbed Morton's Toe) means you are more likely to be a criminal, or part of a royal family.
While having toes of different lengths (some longer or shorter than others) is completely normal, some people are so concerned about the size and shape of their toes that they get them shortened by a cosmetic surgeon. Other people need surgery on their toes and feet because the shape makes walking painful.
We all have toes of slightly different shapes and sizes, but did you know that human beings as a whole have comparatively shorter toes than most primates, including our closest relative, the chimpanzee? Compare us to other animals like cats and dogs, and you'll notice that their toes are REALLY short compared to the rest of their paws. What's going on here?
The researchers behind a new paper about the evolution of human toes think that the answer to why humans evolved such short toes might be related to long-distance running. According to researchers, having shorter toes - along with a number of other adaptations - probably gave our ancestors an edge when it came to endurance running, which was necessary to kill and eat large animals. This article from Wired Science explains:
"...many modern anatomical features make sense in the context of savannah marathons. Achilles tendons act as springs to store energy. Our hind limbs have extra-large joints. Our buttocks muscles are perfect for stabilization, as are regions of the brain uniquely sensitive to the physical pitching generated by the motion of running. Toes may belong to this class of adaptations."
I've never been able to run a marathon, but this is still pretty cool news. Now, you might be asking yourself what will happen over time to the shape of human toes now that we no longer have to run down our dinner? According to toe researcher Campbell Rolian, "that's generally a question you could ask about many features of the human anatomy," said Rolian. Because it isn't required to push off, he said, "There's talk about whether the pinkie toe is eventually going to disappear."
Not the pinkie toe?! That one is my favorite.
Source: Wired Science
Markisa the orangutan and her new baby: Bonding nicely.
Courtesy Mark RyanA baby orangutan born last month at the Como Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota is reported to be doing well, and bonding with its mother. Births of captive animals aren't uncommon - the zoo has had fourteen surviving orangutan births in nearly fifty years - but this one is unusual because its delivery was by caesarian section, the first such delivery in the zoo's history.
The yet-unnamed male orangutan was born December 13, and placed in ICU where he was cared for by a medical team from both the Veterinary Medical Center and University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital, Fairview. At first, things were a little hairy (tee hee) for the new baby, but zookeepers and the medical staff kept a close watch and helped the little guy pull through.
In the meantime, the baby's mother, a twenty year-old orangutan named Markisa, was brought back to the zoo so she could recover from her surgery.
Mother and child orangutan
Courtesy Mark RyanWhen time came for reuniting mother and child, doctors and zoo officials were uncertain if Markisa would take to her new offspring since she hadn’t birthed him in the conventional manner. But after a careful and methodical reintroduction process, Markisa has taken her motherly duties to heart.
Interestingly, the zoo’s dominant female orangutan, an ape named Joy, kept trying to sabotage the relationship by offering every object she had to Markisa in exchange for the new baby. But Markisa just wasn’t in the trading mood, and kept signaling “No deal!” Home-wrecker Joy, and her own eight-year-old son, Willy, have since been moved to Busch Gardens in Florida so Markisa and her baby can bond in peace.
About 200 orangutans (the name means “person of the forest”) are in exhibitions throughout the United States. The great apes are native to Sumatra and Borneo, but their populations have been dwindling in recent years due to deforestation of their environment by human endeavors and wild fires.
Orangutan motherhood: The world's toughest job.
Courtesy Mark RyanWhen I read an update about mom and the baby, I went over to the Como Zoo to catch a glimpse of the little fellow. It wasn’t an easy task, as the exhibit lighting is kept low, and Markisa seems very protective of her new son, keeping him cradled closely to her breast. I managed to get a couple shots where you can at least tell he’s there.
On the other hand, Markisa’s recovery from the c-section is apparently coming along just fine. She moved around the exhibit rather effortlessly, and without any show of pain – as far as I could tell – holding her little one in her arms.
If you want further information about Markisa and her baby, check out the news page on the Como Zoo’s website. And if you want to do more than just read about the new baby, you can learn about sponsoring him here, or visit the Como Zoo to see him.
I am chimp; hear me roar: Photo courtesy wordman1, Flickr Creative CommonsChimpanzees, mankind’s closest living relatives, have been observed in the wild fashioning spears out of sticks to hunt for smaller primates.
Jill Pruetz, a primatologist at Iowa State University, and her team have witnessed several chimpanzees (Pan troglodyte verus) breaking off tree branches, removing the leaves, twigs and bark, and sharpening the ends with their teeth. The tools were then used to forcibly stab at bushbabies (Galago senegalensis), small nocturnal prosimians, sleeping inside hollow branches or tree trunks.
The chimpanzees in the study live in a savannah habitat in southeastern Senegal, an environment similar to that from which human ancestors evolved.
Tool use by chimps isn’t unprecedented. Our ape cousins have been observed using tools to catch delicious termites, soak up water to drink, or to break open nuts to eat. But this is the first time tool-assisted hunting has been observed.
The chimps were seen using the sharpened sticks to stab inside the bush babies’ nests, and then would withdraw the sticks and taste the ends, presumably to see if blood had been drawn. The chimps were also observed removing the injured or dead bushbabies they had successfully hunted, and eating them.
But what’s equally interesting is who’s doing the actual hunting.
"It is not adult males, but young chimpanzees, including adolescent females, who are exhibiting this behavior,” Pruetz said.
"This has important implications for how we think about the evolution of tool use in our own species. We have tended to emphasize the role of adult males in hunting, and this research supports the assertion that we should not ignore females and other individuals."
The results of Pruetz’s research can be found in the February 22, 2007 online version of Current Biology.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Chimpanzee-Human Connection: Courtesy The National Human Genome Research Center
New genetic studies theorize that humans and chimpanzees may have split genetically much later in their evolution than previously thought - as recent as 6.3 million years ago - and that the initial split was followed by phases of interbreeding and hybridization before the two species headed off on their own evolutionary paths.
The results come out of a long and arduous examination of genetic codes of humans, chimps, gorillas and other apes.
“We found that the population structure that existed around the time of human-chimpanzee speciation was unlike any modern ape population,” said David Reich, of the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Something very unusual happened at the time of speciation.”
If the theory is correct, it would mean that present-day humans descended from a chimp-human hybrid, an idea that goes against the current view that hybrid branches tend to lead to dead ends.
The findings, which appeared in the journal Nature, also suggest that some of the oldest “proto-human” fossils may not be human ancestors at all, but may have come from the branch of non-hybrids that died out.
By tracing the history of the X chromosome, scientists determined that after the initial split, females of each species could have bred successfully with males of the other, thereby creating hybrids. Male offspring of this union would probably been sterile, but female offspring would be fertile and could have continued to breed with fertile males of either species, thus creating further hybridization.
Scientists were able to trace the evolutionary history of the X chromosome by comparing human and chimpanzee genes. The genetic evolutionary clock indicated that the male X chromosome found in present day humans wasn’t as old as it should have been had it been passed down from ancestors that came before the initial human-chimpanzee split.
Stories of chimp-human hybrids have been around for centuries, but never confirmed. One recent example from the 1970’s was a performing chimp named Oliver, who was long-rumored to be the product of human and chimpanzee interbreeding. However, DNA studies done at the University of Chicago proved him to be pure chimpanzee.
Graphic source: www.genome.gov
Please contact us if you have questions about the rights on this image.
Gorilla: A gorilla chewing some food.
Biologists working in the rainforest of Africa have documented gorillas using simple tools, such as using a branch to dig for food.
For a long time, scientists thought only humans used tools. In 1960, Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees using tools in the wild—the first non-human species known to use tools. In 1993, Caral van Schaik of Duke University found tool use among orangutans on Borneo. Now, we can add gorillas to the list of tool-using primates.
Humans and gorillas last shared a common ancestor some 5 to 8 million years ago. Apparently, tool-use evolved sometime before then, and has been inherited by both species. Researchers say this discovery will help us understand the evolution of the human species, and the human brain.
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