Chimp Haven Gets an Upgrade

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2012) — With its miles and miles of dense swamp forest, Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo has long been a wildlife haven. It's home to an unusual primate population: so-called "naïve" chimpanzees, who have so little exposure to humans that they investigate the conservationists who study them, instead of running away.

Chimpanzee. (Credit: © Kitch Bain / Fotolia)

These curious chimps got a recent boost when Congo formally expanded Nouabalé-Ndoki to protect them. Known as the Goualougo Triangle, the 100-plus square-mile forest and its unique great ape population was first reported in 1989 by WCS conservationists. .

The Republic of Congo committed to expanding the park and protecting the Goualougo in 2001. The protected area has grown from 1,492 square miles to 1,636 square miles, an increase of more than 8 percent. With the region's apes facing increasing pressure from hunting, habitat loss, and the potential outbreak of devastating diseases such as Ebola, the protection of this area will help guarantee their survival.

Read more:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120216134423.htm

Dogs Understand Us Better Than Chimps Do

Chimpanzees may be our closest living relatives, but they do not understand us as well as dogs do.

The study in the latest issue of PLoS ONE. found that chimpanzees could care less when people pointed to objects, but dogs paid attention and knew precisely what the person wanted.

"We think that we are looking at a special adaptation in dogs to be sensitive to human forms of communication," co-author Juliane Kaminski, a cognitive psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, told Discovery News. "There is multiple evidence suggesting that selection pressures during domestication have changed dogs such that they are perfectly adapted to their new niche, the human environment."

Dogs may even be born with this inherent gift, since 6-week-old puppies with no major training possess it.
For the study, Kaminski and her colleagues compared how well chimpanzees and dogs understood human pointing. The person pointed at a visible object out of reach of the human but within reach of the animal subject. If the chimp or dog retrieved the object, he or she would be rewarded with a tasty food treat. (Chimps received fruit juice or peanuts, while dogs got dry dog food.)

The chimps bombed, ignoring the human gestures, even though they were interested and motivated to get the food rewards. The dogs aced the test.

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/18411-dogs-understand-humans-chimps.html

Cheetah, Tarzan's chimpanzee, dies

'Tarzan's chimpanzee' Cheetah dies aged 80 in Florida



A chimpanzee who apparently starred in Tarzan films in the 1930s has died at the age of 80, according to the sanctuary where he lived.


The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor said he died on Saturday of kidney failure.

He had acted alongside Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan films from 1932-34, it claimed.

The animal loved fingerpainting and watching football, and was "soothed by Christian music".

Sanctuary spokeswoman Debbie Cobb told the Tampa Tribune that Cheetah came to live at Palm Harbor from Johnny Weissmuller's estate in about 1960.

"Cheetah" was in the Tarzan movies alongside Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller, according to the sanctuary where he lived.

Chimpanzees in zoos typically live 35 to 45 years, she said.

It is not clear what lay behind Cheetah's longevity, or what evidence there is for it.

A sanctuary volunteer told the paper that fingerpainting was not Cheetah's only talent.

"When he didn't like somebody or something that was going on, he would pick up some poop and throw it at them," Ron Priest said. "He could get you at 30 feet [9m] with bars in between."

The Florida "Cheetah" is not the only chimpanzee who has been described as Tarzan's companion.

A chimp known as "Cheeta" who lives in California was for a long time claimed to be the chimp in the films, but, following research for a biography, that claim has been withdrawn.

It is possible that several different animals were used while filming the Tarzan movies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16344309

First Guidelines for Lab Chimps Drawn Up

Guidelines now govern the use of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, in federally funded U.S. research, and because of them, some biomedical studies are likely to come to an end.

In fact, nearly all research using chimpanzees to develop drugs or answer other questions with medical applications for humans should end, according to a committee charged with establishing the first set of criteria for research on chimpanzees. The committee released its report Thursday (Dec. 15).

Research into genetic or behavioral questions — such as looking for insight into human behavior by studying how chimpanzees help one another out, or searching for the genetic underpinnings of language — are acceptable, or could become so with only minor modifications, according the committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences.

These types of projects are typically less invasive than biomedical research, which could involve, for instance, infecting chimpanzees with a virus.

For example, in behavioral research, chimpanzees — which, like humans, are social — must live with others, and may not be anesthetized by being shot with a dart. However, chimpanzees can be trained to offer their arms to have blood drawn or accept anesthesia so they can be examined, according to the committee. [Chimps vs. Humans: How Different Are We?]

New principles
The criteria for both types of research are based upon three general guidelines: The knowledge gained by the research must be necessary to advance public health; the research cannot ethically be done on a human being, or is not possible on another animal or in something that is not a living organism; and the chimpanzees used in the research must be given appropriate places to live.

In practice, this means the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will not award any new grants for research until an assessment process is in place, and a project-by-project review will be conducted to determine if ongoing research fits the criteria, said NIH Director Francis Collins, who accepted the committee's recommendations.

"Chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, providing exceptional insights into human biology, and the need for special consideration and respect," Collins said in a statement on Thursday.

He estimated that about 37 research projects might be affected, and that, of these, about half may not be continued.

These criteria will only apply to research projects that receive some kind of NIH support, including animals used by private groups but housed using federal money, according to committee member Warner Greene, a virologist at the University of California, San Francisco.

Read more here ...

Savanna Chimps Exhibit Human-Like Sharing Behavior, Anthropologists Say

ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2011) — Sharing food has widely been considered by scholars as a defining characteristic of human behavior. But a new study by Iowa State University anthropology professor Jill Pruetz now reports that chimpanzees from her Fongoli research site in Senegal also frequently share food and hunting tools with other chimps.

Co-authored by ISU anthropology graduate student Stacy Lindshield, their study is posted online in Primates and will be published in a future issue of the journal.

The researchers witnessed 41 cases of Fongoli chimpanzees willingly transferring either wild plant foods or hunting tools to other chimpanzees. While previous research by primatologists had documented chimps transferring meat among other non-relatives, this is the first study to document non-meat sharing behavior.

"They're [the Fongoli chimps] not the only chimps that share, but in terms of the resources that we cover here, that is unique," said Pruetz (left), who was named a 2008 National Geographic Emerging Explorer for her research on savanna chimpanzees in Senegal. "I guess all chimps share meat, but they don't share plants or tools. Yet they do here, in addition to meat. It was intriguing when we first started seeing these events."

Read more here ...

Stop wasting tax dollars on chimp abuse

The National Institutes of Health wants you to believe that chimpanzee experimentation is necessary. It so badly wants you to believe this that the agency just two months ago began to use your tax dollars to fund a propaganda campaign for "educating the public" regarding the "importance of chimpanzees in biomedical research."

Why is the NIH seemingly so desperate? Perhaps because the concept of ending this morally and scientifically bankrupt practice has become so mainstream, on so many fronts - scientific, political, ethical, financial - that on Sept. 28, Scientific American, the most prestigious general interest science magazine in the world, called for a ban, explaining, "Why it is time to end invasive biomedical research on chimpanzees."

One of the major reasons for its call for the ban was the groundbreaking McClatchy Newspapers special report "Chimps: Life in the Lab," published last April. This special report was based on McClatchy's independent review of thousands of pages of chimpanzee medical records.

Scientific American noted that the special report's review of these records and the details of experiments "painted a grim picture of life in the lab, noting disturbing psychological responses in the chimps."

The NIH's use of tax dollars to fund the abuse of chimpanzees, as documented in McClatchy's special report, is especially timely. Congress has created a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to produce a plan by November 23 to reduce our debt by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The NIH spends more than $30 million annually on chimpanzee experimentation; ending it would save more than $300 million. It would also be completely consistent with the emerging scientific, political and ethical consensus elucidated by Scientific American: "The time has come to end biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees."

But the NIH seems stuck in a different time - circa 1970s, when the current chief of hepatitis research at the NIH, Dr. Robert Purcell, began experimenting on chimpanzees, as did his counterpart at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Stephen Feinstone. On Aug. 11, a public workshop was convened by the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine Chimpanzee Committee, which was commissioned by the NIH to determine if chimpanzees are "necessary" for biomedical research.


Read more here ...

Potential Endangered Status for Captive Chimps Threatens Biomedical Industry

Resurrecting a heated debate that began in 1987, a petition has led the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to announce that it has initiated a review of whether it should “uplist” the status of captive chimpanzees from “threatened” to “endangered.” The 144-page petition, spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and endorsed by seven other groups, contends that endangered status will grant protections under the Endangered Species Act that do not currently exist for the estimated 2150 captive chimpanzees that now live in the United States. “The current status does not help conservation,” says Kathleen Conlee of HSUS.

Much of the petition focuses on the “sanctioned exploitation” of captive chimpanzees by the entertainment industry, as well as on the existing U.S. laws and regulations that allow people to keep the primates as pets. But these categories only account for about 260 animals; nearly half the captive chimp population consists of animals in biomedical research laboratories, which the petition claims are “often inhumanely treated.” The petition does not address current U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations that monitor these laboratories, but insists that an uplisting by FWS will improve their lot. “It is clear that exploitation of this species for biomedical purposes has not positively benefitted chimpanzees in captivity or in the wild; in addition to resulting in mistreatment of individual chimpanzees, such use actively undermines chimpanzee conservation,” the petition states.
read the rest of the article: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/08/us-agency-to-consider-again.html

Lab Chimps Laugh And Hug At Taste Of Freedom

The emotional moment a group of chimpanzees saw daylight for the first time after being kept in a laboratory for their whole lives has been caught on film.

This video has no audio.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/video#video=26544785

The video shows the animals edging out of the door hesitantly at first and looking curiously up at the sky.
But they then appear to celebrate their new found freedom by hugging each other and laughing.

The 38 chimps were taken from their mothers shortly after they were born and kept in a research facility in Austria.

They were used for tests based on diseases such as HIV and hepatitis and kept in isolation.

They were rescued in 1997 after the pharmaceutical company behind the research was sold and taken to a farm where keepers have since tried to reintroduce them to the outside world.

It is only now that experts felt the time was right and the chimps were ready to experience fresh air.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/lab-chimps-laugh-hug-taste-freedom-162813744.html

Like Humans, Chimps Are Born With Immature Forebrains

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2011) — In both chimpanzees and humans, portions of the brain that are critical for complex cognitive functions, including decision-making, self-awareness and creativity, are immature at birth. But there are important differences, too. Baby chimpanzees don't show the same dramatic increase in the volume of prefrontal white matter in the brain that human infants do.
Those are the conclusions of a study reported in the August 11th Current Biology that is the first to track the development of the chimpanzee brain over time and to make the comparison to humans.
"One of the most marked evolutionary changes underlying human-specific cognitive traits is a greatly enlarged prefrontal cortex," said Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University in Japan. "It is also one of the latest-developing brain regions of the cerebrum."

That built-in developmental delay, now shown to be shared with chimps, may provide an extended period of plasticity, allowing both humans and our closest evolutionary cousins to develop complex social interactions, knowledge and skills that are shaped by life experiences, the researchers say.
"Both humans and chimpanzees need to render their neural network and brain function more susceptible to the influence of postnatal experience," Matsuzawa said.

For instance, he added, both chimps and humans enjoy close relationships between infants and adults, as indicated by smiles and mutual gazes. On the other hand, the greater prefrontal expansion in the human brain may contribute to the development of language, complex social interaction and other abilities that are unique to us.

Matsuzawa's team made their discoveries by studying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of three growing chimpanzees from the age of six months to six years, when chimps reach pre-puberty.
The findings suggest that a less mature and more protracted elaboration of neuronal connections in the prefrontal portion of the developing brain existed in the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. That commonality is in contrast to what has been observed in studies of our more distant ancestors, the macaques.

Matsuzawa says his group is interested in exploring when over the course of evolutionary time this feature of brain development evolved. His team also hopes to explore the comparison between human and chimpanzee brains into young adulthood, noting that the chimpanzees they studied have entered late puberty at 11-years-old.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110811121326.htm

Chimps like to help others, study finds

Female chimpanzees like to spontaneously help others rather than act selfishly, suggesting altruism may not be a uniquely human trait, US researchers said on Monday.

Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in the southeastern state of Georgia tested seven female chimpanzees to see if observations of the species' generous behavior in the field matched their decisions in a lab.

Given a choice of two colored tokens, one which guaranteed a banana treat for two and the other which gave a reward for the chooser only, the chimps tended to pick the social option, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Previous studies have suggested that chimps tend to act selfishly in so-called pro-social tests.

The researchers also found that chimps most often acted generously when the waiting partner reminded the chooser gently of her presence but did not act up or bully her into picking a treat for two.

"We were excited to find female after female chose the option that gave both her and her partner food," said lead author Victoria Horner.

"It was also interesting to me that being overly persistent did not go down well with the choosers. It was far more productive for partners to be calm and remind the choosers they were there from time to time," she said.

Researchers said they believe this study was more appropriately designed to judge chimps' behavior than previous studies because it placed the waiting partner in view of the chooser and included a treat that was wrapped in a noisy package.

"I have always been skeptical of the previous negative findings and their over-interpretation," said co-author Frans de Waal.

"This study confirms the pro-social nature of chimpanzees with a different test, better adapted to the species," he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/chimps-like-to-help-others-study-finds-2337662.html

Chimpanzees' 66 gestures revealed

Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists.


A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland filmed a group of the animals in order to decipher this "gestural repertoire".

The team then studied 120 hours of footage of the chimps interacting, looking for signs that the animals were intentionally signalling to each other.

The findings are published in the journal Animal Cognition.

Previous studies on captive chimps have suggested the animals have about 30 different gestures.

"So this [result] shows quite a large repertoire," lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter told BBC News.

"We think people previously were only seeing fractions of this, because when you study the animals in captivity you don't see all their behaviour.

"You wouldn't see them hunting for monkeys, taking females away on 'courtships', or encountering neighbouring groups of chimpanzees."

Dr Hobaiter spent 266 days observing and filming a group of chimpanzees in Budongo Conservation Field Station, Uganda.

"I've spent two years studying these animals, so they know me," she said. "I follow them through the forest and they just ignore me completely and get on with their daily lives."


She and her colleague, Professor Richard Byrne, scrutinised the footage and categorised each distinct gesture.

They looked for clear signs that the animals were making deliberate movements that were intended to generate a response from another animal.

"We looked to see if the gesturer was looking at their audience," explained Professor Byrne.

"And we looked for persistence; if their action did not produce a result, they would repeat it."

The team is still studying the footage for the next stage of their project - to figure out what each gesture means.

For some of these gestures, the meaning seems obvious to us, perhaps because - as great apes- we make similar movements. A chimp will often beckon to another group member, or a youngster will hand shake at another juvenile to entice it to play.

In one piece of footage captured by Dr Hobaiter, a mother reaches with her left arm towards her daughter.


"The mother wants to move away and is gesturing to request that her daughter 'climbs on' her," Dr Hobaiter explained.

"She could just grab her daughter, but she doesn't. She reaches and holds the gesture while waiting for a response."

When the youngster starts to approach, the mother repeats the gesture and adds a facial expression - a "bare-teeth grin", at which point the daughter climbs on and they move away.

"But actions often have effects that their maker did not intend," said Professor Byrne.

"So to understand the intended meaning, it's no good just discovering a gesture's typical effect. We have to look for what effect makes the signaller stop gesturing and appear satisfied and content with the outcome, to be sure that that was what they intended."

The results have provided clues about the origins of chimps' gestures, suggesting that they are a common system of communication across the species, rather than each movement being a learned custom or ritual within one social group.

In fact, by comparing these observations with those of gestures made by gorillas and orangutans, the researchers showed there was significant overlap in the signals used throughout the family of great apes.

Dr Hobaiter said: This supports our belief that the gestures that apes use (and maybe some human gestures too) are derived from ancient shared ancestry of all the great ape species alive today."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9475000/9475408.stm






By Victoria Gill

Science and nature reporter, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9475000/9475408.stm

Hope for world’s most endangered chimp

New plan will increase long term survival of Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee

July 2011: The world's most endangered subspecies of chimpanzee has had a much needed shot in the arm, with a newly released action plan to bolster numbers of this critically endangered great ape.

Known as the as the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, the subspecies, first identified in 1997, is restricted to pockets of forested habitat in both nations. Between 3,500 and 9,000 remain in the wild clinging to a region of high human population density and subject to habitat destruction, fragmentation, and poaching. These factors have led to the extinction of the chimp across much of its former range.


A living part of countries' natural heritage
The plan, endorsed by the governments of both nations, is co-authored by 20 primate experts and conservationists representing 17 organisations. It calls for region-wide actions including: improving transboundary collaboration and law enforcement, conservation research, participation and support of local people, recruitment and training of rangers, and improving community livelihoods.

‘This plan is a roadmap to the future of the critically endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee,' said James Deutsch, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) director for Africa programmes. ‘We commend the governments of Nigeria and Cameroon for their leadership in pledging to save this living example of their natural heritage.'

Implementation of the priority conservation actions proposed in the plan would protect more than 95 per cent of the remaining Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees over the next five years. The estimated cost of implementing the plan is $14.6 million.

Protecting the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee would also safeguard other primate species including the critically endangered Cross River gorilla, drill, Preuss's monkey, and Preuss's red colobus, which share the same habitat.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/chimp-endangered.html#cr

Chimp recognises synthetic speech

A talented chimpanzee called Panzee can recognise distorted and incomplete words spoken by a computer, scientists have discovered. That suggests that apes may be more capable of perceiving spoken sounds than previously thought, and that the common ancestor of humans and chimps may also have had this ability.It also refutes the idea that humans have brains uniquely adapted to process speech, say the scientists who have published their findings in the journal Current Biology. Panzee was raised from 8 days old, by humans, and was spoken to and treated as if she were human. At the same time, she was taught to use symbols called lexigrams to communicate."This has resulted in Panzee showing proficiency in understanding approximately 130 English words," researcher Lisa Heimbauer told BBC Nature.That made her an ideal subject to test hypotheses about how well other species, rather than humans, might be able to understand speech."There is a view about the human ability to produce and perceive speech that is called 'Speech is Special'," said Ms Heimbauer, who is studying for her PhD. "This argument proposes that, besides humans being the only species able to produce speech, due to their anatomy, they also have a specialised, cognitive module to process speech."Evidence for that comes from studies showing that humans can understand speech even when it is incomplete or highly distorted. "However, an alternative view is that auditory processing is fundamentally similar across most mammals, and that animals therefore have latent abilities for speech perception," said Ms Heimbauer.So she and her colleagues Michael Beran and Michael Owren, all from Georgia State University in Atlanta, US, tested Panzee to find out if she too could recognise incomplete or distorted spoken words. They played Panzee noise-vocoded speech, which alters the frequencies of the spoken words. This produces a sound similar to what people with cochlear implants hear. They also played Panzee so-called sine-wave speech, which is synthesised from just three pure tones. Both types of degraded speech have been shown to be understandable by people."She is only one of a few animals who could be tested in this way, to reveal what the speech perception abilities of a common chimp/human ancestor may have been," said Ms Heimbauer.The researchers discovered that Panzee recognised these degraded spoken words far more often than she should by chance. Her upbringing, say the scientists, appears to have given her enough experience of hearing and understanding spoken words to allow her to recognise them when they are distorted. That "highlights the importance of early experience in shaping speech perception," said Ms Heimbauer.It also provides evidence that a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees would have had the ability to perceive speech, she says. "If humans do possess a specialised, cognitive, speech-processing brain module, it would be something that evolved later in humans, making us more efficient at what we do."By Matt WalkerEditor, BBC Naturehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/14045206

Spitting and urinating chimps 'replay Aesop's fable'

9 June 2011
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News

Chimps have "replayed" an ancient fable, a team says in Plos One journal.

In Aesop's 2,000-year-old tale, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher to reach the liquid so as to quench its thirst.

But when given a similar set up, chimps were able to attain an out-of-reach, floating peanut by spitting water taken from a dispenser into a vertical tube.

One hungry chimp went even further by urinating into the vessel to get hold of the prized snack.

"He was spitting water into the tube, then got frustrated," explained lead researcher Daniel Hanus from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.

"So he started peeing and then he realised: 'Wait a minute, if I move in that direction, that fills up the tube'."

The chimp's unusual method proved successful, the scientist said. The fact that the peanut was urine-sodden did not deter the animal from eating it, he added.

The study was carried out with gorillas and chimpanzees.

The primates were presented with a vertical glass tube, which was secured to a cage so it could not be moved or broken. At the bottom was a peanut, floating on a small amount of water.

They were also given access to a water dispenser.

The idea was that the animals would take water from the dispenser in their mouths, and then spit it into the tube to raise the water level.

It would take several visits back and forth between the dispenser and tube to gather enough water to get to the peanut.

The team found that none of the five gorillas was able to complete the task.

Chimps however were more successful. Out of 43 chimps, based in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in Uganda, and Germany's Leipzig Zoo, 14 worked out that they needed to take the water in their mouths and spit it into the tube, and seven did this enough times to successfully obtain a peanut.

Dr Hanus said the study highlighted the chimps' ability to solve problems.

He explained: "You cannot explain it by trial-and-error learning. They weren't just spitting water around the room and some fell in by accident.

"Instead, they were standing in front of the problem, trying to work out the solution - at first by trying to use their fingers, or trying to break it.

"But some, then went to the drinker and got the mouthful of water and came back and spat it directly into the tube, and a few did it enough times to get the peanut."

He added: "I think it is quite impressive - I call it insightful behaviour."

The urinating chimp, he said, was an interesting case.

The animal had initially solved the problem using the standard spitting technique, but when tested again, he was struggling to direct the water into the tube.

The urine did the trick, said Dr Hanus.

He said: "He seemed like he understood. He was like: 'That's cool, this helps me'."

Child's play

The team also repeated the study with children of varying ages.

Dr Hanus said: "Whenever we talked to people about this task, they'd say: 'Well, this is a demanding task, it is tricky - I don't know if I could solve that'.

"So we decided to test four, six and eight-year-olds."

This time, the subjects were given a watering can to fill up the tube rather than rely on a water dispenser and a refined spitting technique.

The researchers found that the four-year-olds were outperformed by the chimps: only two out 24 younger children could solve the problem.

Six-year-olds did better, with 10 out of the 24 managing to work out they needed to use the water. And eight-years-olds did the best, 14 children - 58% - completed the task.

Dr Hanus said: "Even the older children found it hard. It was interesting and impressive to see how difficult it was for them."

This research follows a similar study carried out with orangutans in 2007. They were very good at solving this problem: five out of the five primates tested could successfully complete the task.

The team said the difference between the three primate species was striking - although they plan to test the gorillas again using a slightly different set-up.

Birds too have been able to carry out this task.

A paper published in 2009 revealed that rooks were highly successful at working out a solution to this problem.

With a slightly different experiment design, where the birds had to drop stones into the water, and a peanut exchanged for a floating maggot, the team found that all four of the rooks tested could complete the task.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13560247

Why are chimps hunting red colubus monkeys to death?

Alasdair Wilkins — Time is running out for the red colubus monkey, which lives in Uganda's Kibale National Park. Chimpanzees appear to be huntings these poor guys to death. It's the first time that one primate species has overhunted another, without humans being involved.

According to census data collected between 1975 and 2007, the Ugandan red colubus monkey has seen an 89% population drop, and the hunting habits of common chimpanzees are almost entirely to blame. Disease and competition with similar monkey species have also been cited as factors, but the researchers say these still just pale in significance when compared to the effects of chimp hunting.

Indeed, these chimps seem to be actively trying to wipe out their primate brethren. The chimps generally target younger monkeys that haven't yet reached reproductive age, which means there are far fewer red colubus monkeys around who can help bring the population back. Chimpanzees have been doing very well during all this, as their population has increased by 53% over the same time period that the monkeys have nearly disappeared.

It's a good reminder that overhunting is not a strictly human practice, although we tend to be particularly adept at wiping out other species through excessive hunting. The researchers aren't sure what is driving the chimps to kill so many colubus monkeys - it's possible that other food sources decreased or that environmental shifts could have made increased hunting the most effective option.

There is a bit of good news, though - the chimpanzees seem to have seriously cut back on their hunting in recent years, which might mean the red colubus monkeys can survive after all. This means that fewer adult chimps are passing on their hunting skills to their young, which is creating generations of poor hunters, which can only help the colubus monkeys. No one is quite sure why the chimps changed their hunting patterns, but I'd like to think this is our first evidence of chimp conservationism.

American Journal of Primatology via Scientific American. Image via.

http://io9.com/monkeynews/

Chimpanzees' 66 gestures revealed

Thursday, 5 May 2011
By Victoria Gill
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Wild chimpanzees use at least 66 distinct gestures to communicate with each other, according to scientists.

A team of researchers from the University of St Andrews in Scotland filmed a group of the animals in order to decipher this "gestural repertoire".

The team then studied 120 hours of footage of the chimps interacting, looking for signs that the animals were intentionally signalling to each other.

The findings are published in the journal Animal Cognition.

Previous studies on captive chimps have suggested the animals have about 30 different gestures.

"So this [result] shows quite a large repertoire," lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter told BBC News.

"We think people previously were only seeing fractions of this, because when you study the animals in captivity you don't see all their behaviour.

"You wouldn't see them hunting for monkeys, taking females away on 'courtships', or encountering neighbouring groups of chimpanzees."

Dr Hobaiter spent 266 days observing and filming a group of chimpanzees in Budongo Conservation Field Station, Uganda.

"I've spent two years studying these animals, so they know me," she said. "I follow them through the forest and they just ignore me completely and get on with their daily lives."

She and her colleague, Professor Richard Byrne, scrutinised the footage and categorised each distinct gesture.

They looked for clear signs that the animals were making deliberate movements that were intended to generate a response from another animal.

"We looked to see if the gesturer was looking at their audience," explained Professor Byrne.

"And we looked for persistence; if their action did not produce a result, they would repeat it."

The team is still studying the footage for the next stage of their project - to figure out what each gesture means.

For some of these gestures, the meaning seems obvious to us, perhaps because - as great apes- we make similar movements. A chimp will often beckon to another group member, or a youngster will hand shake at another juvenile to entice it to play.

Gesture dictionary

In one piece of footage captured by Dr Hobaiter, a mother reaches with her left arm towards her daughter.

"The mother wants to move away and is gesturing to request that her daughter 'climbs on' her," Dr Hobaiter explained.

"She could just grab her daughter, but she doesn't. She reaches and holds the gesture while waiting for a response."

When the youngster starts to approach, the mother repeats the gesture and adds a facial expression - a "bare-teeth grin", at which point the daughter climbs on and they move away.

"But actions often have effects that their maker did not intend," said Professor Byrne.

"So to understand the intended meaning, it's no good just discovering a gesture's typical effect. We have to look for what effect makes the signaller stop gesturing and appear satisfied and content with the outcome, to be sure that that was what they intended."

The results have provided clues about the origins of chimps' gestures, suggesting that they are a common system of communication across the species, rather than each movement being a learned custom or ritual within one social group.

In fact, by comparing these observations with those of gestures made by gorillas and orangutans, the researchers showed there was significant overlap in the signals used throughout the family of great apes.

Dr Hobaiter said: This supports our belief that the gestures that apes use (and maybe some human gestures too) are derived from ancient shared ancestry of all the great ape species alive today."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9475000/9475408.stm

How 'Chimpus Commercialus' Went From Ad Star to Endangered Species

Pressure From Animal-Rights Groups Has Agencies Pledging Not to Use Great Apes for Ad Entertainment

By Brian Steinberg
Published: February 06, 2011

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- They were once stars. After a rough start in life -- taken from their mothers during infancy -- they found themselves on the national stage, making millions laugh during the Super Bowl. Their careers were short, two or three years at most, and now they've been shunted aside. But they're the lucky ones. Sent to finish out their lives in Florida, the four chimpanzees from the original CareerBuilder Super Bowl ads share a home with Michael Jackson's former pet, Bubbles, at the Center for Great Apes in Wauchula. They could have ended up in cages in roadside attractions, or on the nightly news, put down after going on a rampage.

Before this year's Super Bowl, it had likely been years since most Americans had seen a national TV spot featuring an ape. That's because chimpus commercialus and its kin, thanks to pressure put on marketers and ad agencies by animal-rights groups, are on the verge of extinction.


But there are still reminders. After moving away from the use of chimpanzees in its Big Game commercials, CareerBuilder has sparked a minor controversy by reviving interest in the animals that have long been a staple of big-budget TV advertising. CareerBuilder ads in last night's game returned to the theme from the company's memorable efforts in 2005 and 2006: chimpanzees as obstinate, time-wasting cubicle-mates who demonstrate the need for CareerBuilder's online job listings.

Last night's spot could mark the last for this close relative of the monkey that has ridden on Madison Avenue's back for decades.

Eighteen different ad agencies have agreed in the last few years to stop using great apes in the commercials they produce, the result of an ongoing effort started in 2008 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Among the big firms involved are Omnicom Group's BBDO, GSD&M and Merkley & Partners; Interpublic Group of Cos.' McCann Erickson, DraftFCB and RPA; Havas' Arnold and Euro RSCG; WPP's Grey Group, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam and JWT; and Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett.

"The list is only going to grow," said Julia Galluci, a primatologist with PETA who studies the use of apes in commercials.

Indeed, Omnicom's DDB and TBWA/Chiat/Day, two agencies that work for marketers that have made memorable ads with chimps in the past -- Anheuser-Busch InBev and PepsiCo -- are not yet on the list.

PETA also successfully lobbied several major advertisers to modify or pull ads in 2010 when apes were featured. Pfizer edited out an orangutan used in a commercial crafted by Grey Group for its Robitussin, and decided instead to incorporate a digital image of a chimp. Dodge, AT&T and Travelers Insurance made similar moves after PETA's approach.

For its part, CareerBuilder, which created its ad in-house, said it has treated the animals involved in this year's Super Bowl plans well. "During the production of our ad, we followed the strictest guidelines to ensure our chimpanzee stars were treated well and not harmed in any way. We hired top trainers known to provide the highest standard of care for their animals. We also had a member of an animal rights group, the American Humane Association, on set during the entire filming to ensure the chimpanzees were treated with respect," the company said in a statement. "This was very important to us."

But it's not the treatment of the animals on set that is the main concern from animal-rights groups. Rather, it's the procurement and disposal of apes for acting.

Apes in the wild stay with their mothers for nearly the first decade of life, and typically nurse for the first five or six years, said Patti Ragan, founder and director of the Center for Great Apes, the private sanctuary that hosts those four CareerBuilder chimps as well as Bubbles. But to work on an ad, movie or TV program, a chimp or orangutan needs to be under the age of 8. When they pass that age, she said, "they are too dangerous and strong to work around humans" and are therefore retired. Caring for the animals after they can no longer work on shoots can require something in the neighborhood of $20,000 a year, she estimated.

Heartstring-plucking details such as these are likely not immediately clear to the consumers who thrill to monkeyshines in TV pitches. And even those who protect the chimps admit that there has been no consumer outrage. If it did, the animals wouldn't show up year after year in the Super Bowl, the nation's broadest advertising showcase.

Great apes have appeared in 10 different ads tailored for the Big Game since 2000, according to research from students of Chuck Tomkovick, a professor of marketing at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, who has studied Super Bowl ads for years. There's good reason: Mr. Tomkovick's recent research suggests that placing any sort of an animal in an ad increases its likability.

The ad industry's eagerness to distance itself from chimps and their cousins comes even though capturing consumer attention with TV ads has become increasingly difficult. And it arrives despite the fact consumers are more likely to stop and notice chimps and apes when spotted on the TV screen. Chimps and apes have particular appeal, said Barbara J. King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, who has studied apes and monkeys in the wild and in U.S. zoos for 30 years.

"They are like us, but they're not like us," she said. "It's exactly that strange paradox that grabs people."

Further, when it comes to convincing consumers that apes need protecting, there is a perception problem. "It looks to me like these commercials are making these animals seem cute and perfectly well-cared for," said Ms. King, the anthropology professor. "It's not clear to me from the surface of it why consumers would necessarily be concerned unless someone tells them the back story."

And PETA has been relaying that story to ad-agency executives to some effect. "The cruelty of separating baby apes from their mothers, the brutal training, and the tragic 'retirement' provide a real incentive not to use them," said Andrew Robertson, president-CEO of BBDO Worldwide.

"They are cute. They behave like humans. They are cuddly," said Tony Granger, global chief creative officer at Young & Rubicam. "But what really does it for me is understanding that the apes are taken away from their mothers. We honestly didn't know any of this."

PETA expects to press its case, Ms. Galluci said. The organization is in early talks with BBDO to create an ad campaign aimed at ad-industry employees and make them aware of the problems with using live apes in ad shoots. "It's the agencies that are writing the stories, writing the scripts for these ads," she said. Once agency executives hear the details about the simians, she added, "they are really quick to agree" not to use them any longer. Whether the entire industry apes the move remains to be seen.

http://adage.com/superbowl/article?article_id=148714

Smoking south Lebanon chimpanzee evacuated to sanctuary in Brazil

BEIRUT — A 12-year-old chimpanzee is heading to a sanctuary in Brazil on Monday after animal rights workers discovered him smoking cigarettes to entertain visitors at a Lebanese zoo.

Omega, who weighs around 132 pounds (60 kilograms), has never climbed a tree or seen other chimpanzees and has a troubling smoking habit he maintained from picking up cigarettes that visitors threw into his cage.

"The chimp still regularly smokes ... if someone will throw him a cigarette he'd pick it up and go for it straight away," said Jason Meier, executive director for animal rights group Animals Lebanon.

Organizers of Omega's evacuation say it marks the first time a chimpanzee has been rescued in Lebanon, a country with virtually no animal rights protection laws.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jPQbs9YtfgPL3TZRJWJnRsb63Njg?docId=5070572

http://www.animalconcerns.org/

Smoking south Lebanon chimpanzee evacuated to sanctuary in Brazil

BEIRUT — A 12-year-old chimpanzee is heading to a sanctuary in Brazil on Monday after animal rights workers discovered him smoking cigarettes to entertain visitors at a Lebanese zoo.

Omega, who weighs around 132 pounds (60 kilograms), has never climbed a tree or seen other chimpanzees and has a troubling smoking habit he maintained from picking up cigarettes that visitors threw into his cage.

"The chimp still regularly smokes ... if someone will throw him a cigarette he'd pick it up and go for it straight away," said Jason Meier, executive director for animal rights group Animals Lebanon.

Organizers of Omega's evacuation say it marks the first time a chimpanzee has been rescued in Lebanon, a country with virtually no animal rights protection laws.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jPQbs9YtfgPL3TZRJWJnRsb63Njg?docId=5070572

http://www.animalconcerns.org/

Chimpanzee persecutes police in brief taste of freedom

A chimpanzee broke free from its chains and smashed up a police car in a short-lived city rampage before it was recaptured.


The primate broke loose a few miles from the Kansas City Zoo shortly after noon yesterday.


The ape was actually a pet called Sueko that escaped from its chains.

Efforts to tranquillise the chimp failed, meaning Sueko was able to climb on a patrol and strike the passenger window with his fist.

Eventually the owner managed to coax it into a cage,

The owner was cited for having a dangerous animal in an urban area.

.http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/844582-chimpanzee-persecutes-police-in-brief-taste-of-freedom