It turns out that humans aren’t the only animals who pound out beats to express themselves. A new study published in Animal Behavior Tuesday found that male chimpanzees in Uganda’s Budongo Forest use “individual drumming ‘signatures’” when they drum on the buttress roots of trees, so much so that researchers could compare different chimps to […]
Tag: Chimpanzee
Which Mammals Can Best Survive Climate Change?
With the world experiencing more extreme weather due to climate change, landscapes are being altered and ecosystems are having to respond quickly. So which species are going to struggle and which are going to fare relatively well as extended droughts, heavy rains and floods reshape the world’s terrain? In a new study, biologists Christie Le […]
Female monkeys with female friends live longer
Female white-faced capuchin monkeys living in the tropical dry forests of northwestern Costa Rica may have figured out the secret to a longer life—having fellow females as friends. “As humans, we assume there is some benefit to social interactions, but it is really hard to measure the success of our behavioral strategies,” said UCLA anthropology […]
Famous Chimpanzee Actor Tonka Found Alive After Owner Faked His Death
Tonka starred in the 1997 family comedy Buddy with Alan Cummings, which followed the true story of Gertrude Lintz, a socialite who raised monkeys as a part of her family in the 1920s. “During the months we filmed together, baby Tonka and I became good friends, playing and grooming each other and just generally larking […]
How Brazil is working to save the rare lion tamarins of the Atlantic Forest
The Atlantic Forest that hugs the coast of Brazil is home to four small primates found nowhere else on Earth. The most famous of them, the golden lion tamarin, appears on Brazil’s 20-real bill, a part of the day-to-day interactions of people across the country. But not everyone knows the primate’s conservation story, which began […]
Uninhabited Islands Home to 65 Chimps After Years of US-Funded Experiments
On six uninhabited islands near Liberia’s capital live 65 chimpanzees that were used for years in US-funded experiments that exploited these intelligent animals. Over decades of cruel experiments, up to 400 chimps were held in barren cages at a laboratory facility in Liberia. The animals were subject to biopsies and cruelty, reported Euro News. Over […]
Côte d’Ivoire’s chimp habitats are shrinking, but there’s hope in their numbers
Conservationists feared that chimpanzees in Comoé National Park might have been wiped out during a decade of civil conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. But camera-trap footage found a healthy population and has since documented unique behaviors not observed in other chimp populations in West Africa. The western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of Comoé National Park in […]
Monkeys frequently consume alcohol-containing fruit, which sheds light on our taste for alcohol
For 25 years, UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley has been intrigued by humans’ love of alcohol. In 2014, he wrote a book proposing that our attraction to booze arose millions of years ago, when our ape and monkey ancestors discovered that the scent of alcohol led them to ripe, fermenting and nutritious fruit. A new […]