Clipmarks | Chimpanzees Clips

Magpie 'can recognise reflection'

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:46:03 GMT

clipped by: valann 47

Self-recognition has never been observed in a non-mammal

Magpies can recognise themselves in a mirror, scientists have found - the first time self-recognition has been observed in a non-mammal.

Until relatively recently, humans were thought to be uniquely self-aware.

Scientists now know that most chimpanzees and orangutans can recognise their own reflections.

Some birds react when shown a mirror, but it is unclear if they know they are looking at their reflection, German experts wrote in Plos Biology journal.

Dr Helmut Prior, from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and his colleagues carried out a series of tests on five hand-reared birds.

In one test, the researchers placed yellow and red stickers on the birds in positions where they could only be seen in a mirror.

On seeing their reflections, the magpies became focused on the stickers as they tried to reach them with their claws and beaks.

Tags: magpies, self recognition

gt

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:54:40 GMT

clipped by: kikomiko

Clip Source: forums.gametrailers.com

Don't just say "everything." I asked for specifics.

As we've come to find out, humans share 98% of their DNA with chimpanzees and 94% with gorillas. This means we're more closely related to chimpanzees than gorillas are. However, that 2% is obviously highly, highly significant. So what components of that remaining 2% makes humans stand out above all other living species?

Some possibilities include (but are not limited to)...

- Language? As far as we know, humans are the only species capable of complex language. Other species may use "codes" to communicate, but humans speak in very structured sentences with different parts of speech.
- Mating patterns? Though humans aren't the only species capable of mating all year round and not just a certain season, they are one of a select few.

- Drugs? No other species, as far as scientists have found out, create substances for the sole purpose of injuring themselves.

There's definitely a lot in that 2%.

Some Parts Of Our Body We Don't Need

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:25:27 GMT

clipped by: tanjazaric
clipper's remarks: full article on the page

Clip Source: www.amazingposts.com

APPENDIX: This narrow, muscular tube attached to the large intestine served as a special area to digest cellulose when the human diet consisted more of plant matter than animal protein. It also produces some white blood cells. Annually, more than 300,000 Americans have an appendectomy.

BODY HAIR: Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and male facial hair may play a role in sexual selection, but apparently most of the hair left on the human body serves no function.

THIRTEENTH RIB: Our closest cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, have an extra set of ribs. Most of us have 12, but 8 percent of adults have the extras.

MALE UTERUS: A remnant of an undeveloped female reproductive organ hangs off the male prostate gland.

FIFTH TOE: Lesser apes use all their toes for grasping or clinging to branches. Humans need mainly the big toe for balance while walking upright, the other four are for holding when you slam them on a coffee table at night!

Tags: body

Scientists map Neanderthal maternal DNA

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:46:14 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: 38,000 years wasn't that long ago. They became extinct shortly afterward (as far as we know) after dwindling around Western Europe. It's easy to wonder what may have happened if they were isolated in an area that was free of Homo sapiens sapiens (So smart that we have to repeat it to ourselves to remove any doubt.)

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Jennifer Viegas

DNA extracted from a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal bone has enabled scientists to sequence the complete mitochondrial genome for the human-like species, say scientists.

The remarkable feat, which appears in the journal Cell, has led to at least three major discoveries about the extinct stocky European individuals, representing a breakthrough for studies on the evolution of the human family.

"This is the first complete mitochondrial genome sequence from an extinct hominid,"says lead author Dr Richard Green.

Green, a researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany

concluded that the Neanderthal mitochondria falls outside the range of variation found in humans today, offering no evidence that interbreeding occurred

Clearer is the fact that Neanderthals and humans split from a common ancestor around 660,000 years ago.

researchers based this initially upon prior research that determined humans and chimpanzees diverged

six to eight million years ago

Can dogs catch human yawn?

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:28:42 GMT

clipped by: fewstingscorpio
clipper's remarks: Fun experiments ahead at my household....
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/117395.php

Clip Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com

Dogs Catch Human Yawns

Observing others' yawning make us yawn. This phenomenon, which is called contagious yawning, has previously been reported only in humans and in other primates such as chimpanzees, and is thought to relate to the capacity for empathy.

The current study is the first to report that human yawns induce yawning in dogs.

Such a contagiousness of yawning between humans and dogs may help coordinate interactions as well as communication between humans and dogs.

Royal Society journal Biology Letters

Biology Letters publishes short, innovative and cutting-edge research articles and opinion pieces accessible to scientists from across the biological sciences. The journal is characterised by stringent peer-review, rapid publication and broad dissemination of succinct high-quality research communications.

Biology Letters

Tags: canine, dogs, reasearch, science, biology, veterinary, behavior

Dogs are not just yawning- they are empathizing

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:40:10 GMT

clipped by: thekay
clipper's remarks: accompanying this "news" story was a link to the ABC news report that Dogs may be as lazy as humans.... have they met my dog???

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Fido's not just yawning -- he's empathizing

LONDON (Reuters) - Dogs find human yawns contagious, suggesting they have a rudimentary capacity for empathy, British scientists said on Wednesday.

Although yawning is widespread in many animals, contagious yawning -- a yawn triggered by seeing others yawning -- has previously only been shown to occur in humans and chimpanzees.

It turns out, however, that man's best friend is highly sensitive to catching human yawns, with 72 percent of 29 dogs tested yawning after observing a person doing so.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, Atsushi Senju and colleagues at London's Birkbeck College said this behavior showed dogs were skilled at reading human social cues and "may relate to their capacity for empathy."

Dogs catch the yawns from people

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:34:42 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: I love dogs!

Clip Source: www.msnbc.msn.com

A Hugarian Pointer yawns during the fitting of a fleece jumper by Ulrike Schubert at Germany's first custom tailor shop for dogs in Leipzig, Germany. New research demonstrates that dogs can catch the yawns from humans.

LONDON - Dogs find human yawns contagious, suggesting they have a rudimentary capacity for empathy, British scientists said on Wednesday.

Although yawning is widespread in many animals, contagious yawning — a yawn triggered by seeing others yawning — has previously only been shown to occur in humans and chimpanzees.

It turns out, however, that man's best friend is highly sensitive to catching human yawns, with 72 percent of 29 dogs tested yawning after observing a person doing so.

Tags: dogs, animals, empathy, science

Scientists say dogs can "catch" human yawns

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:08:31 GMT

clipped by: William Hung
clipper's remarks: Tried yawning at my dog. He must not be tired.

"Other studies also demonstrated that dogs follow human pointing, more likely to tell humans the location of hidden objects when they didn't see the object being hidden, and tend to steal food when the humans are looking away or closing their eyes."

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Scientists have known for decades that yawns are infectious among people, so much so that simply reading or thinking about them can trigger a chain reaction of gaping mouths in what they call "contagious yawning".

Yawns can spread in a similar way among chimpanzees and macaques too, though not among people with autism, and is thought to be linked with empathy and the ability to read the thoughts of another individual.

They presented 29 dogs with yawning humans and also with a control movement, where people just opened their mouths.

Even though a wide variety of breed was represented, such as Dobermans, Yorkshire Terriers, Dachshund, Spaniels, Labradors and more besides, they found that 21 of the dogs yawned in response, showing that "dogs possess the capacity for a rudimentary form of empathy."

Contagious yawning 'shows more empathy with other people's feelings'

Yawning gap filled by scientists

Yawn and the monkey world yawns with you

Tags: dogs

Gorilla 'mother lode' found in Congo

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:52:21 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: I can't help thinking that they are there, because we didn't know about them, but there are other species that have been downgraded from critically endangered to endangered due to conservation efforts.
However the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that 48% of the 634 known species and sub-species of primates, humankind's closest relatives such as chimpanzees, orangutans, gibbons and lemurs, are at risk of extinction.
Primates are suffering most in Asia, with 71% of all species at risk, against 37% in Africa.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Researchers have found 125,000 western lowland gorillas living in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, almost doubling the known number of the endangered species.

A report released today at the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland says a new census tallied more than 125,000 critically endangered gorillas in a 47,000-square-kilometre area.

Estimates from the 1980s had suggested fewer than 100,000

had survived and many experts believed these numbers had been cut nearly in half by disease and hunting

The Wildlife Conservation Society report shows

that conservation in the Republic of Congo is working. This discovery should be a rallying cry for the world that we can protect other vulnerable and endangered species

says society president Steven Sanderson

Habitat destruction, led by burning and clearing of tropical forests for farmland,

the hunting of monkeys and apes for their meat are the main threats

Some species are "literally being eaten into extinction

Australopithecus afarensis

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:49:29 GMT

clipped by: aquafresh

Clip Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Meaning: 'Southern Ape of Afar' after the Afar region of Ethiopia.

Lived: 3.9 - 3.0 million years ago.

Range: East Africa.

Diet: Soft fruit, nuts, seeds, tubers and bird eggs.

Size: M: 152cm / 45kg F: 107cm / 28 kg.

Brain Size: 35% the size of a modern brain.

Australopithecus afarensis walked upright like a human, but its body proportions were like those of a chimpanzee. Like chimps, afarensis had a small brain, long, dangly arms, short legs and a cone-shaped torso with a large belly.

Description

This hominid seems to have lived in social groups of between 20 and 30. These groups were probably like those of chimpanzees, with dominance hierarchies in which each individual knows their place. Male afarensis probably cooperated to drive away predators. Once mature, females may have joined other troops of afarensis.

Australopithecus afarensis probably climbed into trees to avoid sabre-toothed cats like Dinofelis and to sleep in safety at night.

Cousins

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:57:18 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: primatology.net

a primate is defined as an order of living organisms that belong to the mammalian class. These animals are commonly referred to chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, etc. and include humans in the taxonomical order.

These animals all share a common set of characteristics that helps organize them into one category. Some of these characteristics are a large brain to body size ratio in comparison to other animals, five fingers and five toes, and forward facing eyes. For more information on what a primate is, check out Wikipedia’s entry on it.

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Clip Source: www.primates.com

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Clip Source: www.primates.com

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Saving Cameroon’s gorillas

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:35:53 GMT

clipped by: bloowell

Clip Source: www.radionetherlands.nl

Ofir Drori is a man with a calling: to save the gorillas and chimpanzees of Cameroon from extinction. Ever since the Israeli arrived in Cameroon in 2002, he and a team of volunteers have been making impressive strides in helping to stamp out the illegal trade in endangered wildlife. When he arrived in Cameroon, not a single person had ever been prosecuted for the crime. Now, a major dealer is prosecuted and imprisoned every week.

Trapped like a rat
One of the first cases he heard about was in a village about four hours' drive from the capital, Yaoundé. Poachers there had captured two baby apes. One of them had already died, but the poachers still had the other one and they wanted to sell him. Mr Drori went to meet them and posed as a potential buyer. Mr Drori says:

Hidden camera picture of a baby chimpanzee with a dealer
Photo: LAGA

He also believes that LAGA is helping to tackle one of the most serious problems facing Africa: corruption.

Tags: africa, corruption

Aging may be a mistake, and not a given

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:10:50 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: "I don't think there are any theories that account for the vast differences in life spans between animals. Nobody knows why we age in 80 years and chimpanzees age in 40," he said.

Kim said he thinks the worm results may one day answer questions such as why the human kidney ages faster than the liver or why some clams live for 400 years and whales can live for 200 years.

"Why can't I live as long as a whale? How hard would it be?" he asked.

it is a very good question...

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Study shows aging may be caused by renegade genes

Countering the prevailing theory that aging is the accumulation of wear and tear in cells, scientists studying worms have found that aging may be hard-wired, a sort of unintentional sabotage by genes gone wild.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Cell, found that metabolic processes important during development may shift later in life in ways that unintentionally sabotage the worms, causing them to age and die.

The scientists studied a tiny worm called Caenorhabditis elegans, which is popular in aging studies because it only lives for two weeks.

The researchers also found that the age-related molecular switches weren't affected by stresses such as radiation, heat, infection and oxidation, which are currently thought to cause aging through gradual accumulation of damage, a process akin to rusting away molecule by molecule.

Great Apes gain Rights in Spain, Homo Sapiens lose them in Austria

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:28:39 GMT

clipped by: Gul Agha

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

In a historic vote last month the Spanish parliament's commission for the environment, agriculture, and fisheries declared its support for The Great Ape Project - a proposal to grant rights to life, liberty, and protection from torture to our closest nonhuman relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans. Other countries, such as New Zealand and the UK, have taken steps to protect great apes, but no national parliament has declared that any animal could be a person with rights.

While Spanish parliamentarians were sympathetically considering the rights of animals, in Austria 10 leaders of lawful animal welfare organisations were beginning their fifth week in prison. Police had roused people from their beds, put guns to their heads and seized computers

One, Martin Balluch, has been given a 1,500-page police file to justify his arrest. In the file his name is mentioned only three times, all in connection with media interviews or articles

Tags: spain, austria, animal rights, human rights, animals

When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 01:20:56 GMT

clipped by: seaj11

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans

The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.

how much kinship humans feel for which animals, and just which “human rights” each human deserves

We like to think of these as absolutes: that there are distinct lines between humans and animals, and that certain “human” rights are unalienable. But we’re kidding ourselves.

Tags: animals, human, rights, spain