Why You Lie Like an Ape
Next time someone catches you telling a small fib, you can explain that it’s just part of your cooperative nature as one of the great apes . After all, you can truthfully add, that’s the conclusion of a team of researchers who studied the development of co-operative behavior in 24 different kinds of primates, from [...]
How Elephants Communicate While Playing
Check out this great video of how elephants communicate. It was put together by Dr. Joyce Poole, co-founder of Elephant Voices and one of the world’s leading experts on elephant social behavior and communication.
Chimpanzees, like Humans, Have Asymmetric Brains
A new study points toward the structural asymmetries, or lopsidedness, in human and chimpanzee brains, an evolutionary trait that allows for a high degree of flexibility and adaptability.
New Iberia Chimpanzees Update
The remaining 61 “government-owned” chimpanzees slated to be retired from the New Iberia Research Center are going to have to wait until September before they are finally moved to their new home at Chimp Haven in Keithville, LA.
Culture in Vervet Monkeys
It’s not just humans who bow to peer pressure or use habitat change to alter tradition. A new study of wild vervet monkeys in South Africa showed the nonhuman animals adopting traditions from their elders.
‘Can’t You See What I’m Saying?’
We humans aren’t the only ones who gesture wildly with our arms when we “talk,” or use a wide combination of ways to get the attention of someone else.
Chimpan-see
Two recent studies from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany are allowing scientists to gain further insight into how chimpanzees view the world.
Parrots Bartering with Nuts
Polly want a better cracker? Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffini) were recently shown to maintain self-control and forethought while “bartering” for a more desirable nut. Alice Auersperg, of the University of Vienna’s Department of Cognitive Biology and her colleagues, replicated studies from the 1970s in which children were given a marshmallow and then told they could [...]
More on Post-Captivity Depression in Chimpanzees
As we previously reported, Dr. Martin Brüne, a psychiatrist at the University Hospital in Bochum, Germany, successfully prescribed “human” anti-depressants to chimpanzees overcoming captivity-induced depression and trauma at AAP, a Dutch rescue center for chimpanzees and mammals used in laboratories. In an interview with Scientific American, Dr. Brüne, who specializes in detecting early signs of [...]
How Chimpanzees Cooperate
In an effort to determine the origins of teamwork, a new study shows chimpanzees using tools and cooperating – consciously and deliberately – to solve problems. Scientists observed 12 chimpanzees at Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya to better understand the origins of human teamwork and whether or not it’s a uniquely human ability. They found [...]
Intelligence among Humans and Other Animals
Scientific thought is evolving to recognize that the difference between human and nonhuman animal intelligence is not as wide as once thought. This shift in ideology is gaining momentum, and scientists are beginning to erase their historically held anthropocentric prejudices about the meaning of intelligence. Primatologist Frans de Waal, Professor at Emory University and director [...]
Chimpanzee Conducts 3-Year Study on Primates
Reprinted with courtesy SEATTLE—In what the scientific community has hailed as a breakthrough achievement, zoologists have succeeded for the first time ever in training a chimpanzee to carry out a rigorous three-year study of primate behavior. Researchers at the University of Washington reported Thursday that Mokoko, a 7-year-old chimpanzee in the school’s animal cognition laboratory, [...]
Chimpanzees Respond Like Humans to Facial Expressions
In a study that seems to replicate common sense, Japanese scientists have shown that chimpanzees can read the facial expressions of other chimpanzees. However, this is the first time that scientists have been able to create an experiment showing an empathetic response in a nonhuman animal’s brainwaves. According to researchers at the University of Tokyo [...]
Exploring how Nonhuman Animals Think
In her new book, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, Virginia Morell investigates what is going on in the minds of nonhuman animals. A subject that was once taboo among researchers is now a vibrant area of study. Ms. Morell was first struck by the concept of nonhuman animal cognition when, [...]
Signature Whistles in Bottlenose Dolphins
New findings published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggest that bottlenose dolphins use “signature whistles” to identify themselves and are able to learn and recognize the “names” of other dolphins. This cognitive ability, known as “referential communication with learned signals,” was always thought to be unique to humans.
Chimpanzees Doing Puzzles Just for Fun
Adult chimpanzees at the Whipsnade Zoo in England have been working out complicated brainteaser puzzles just for the fun of doing them. In a new study published in the American Journal of Primatology, a family of six chimpanzees living at the zoo were given, as part of their normal daily enrichment program, a complex system [...]
Anti-Depressants for Retired Chimpanzees with PTSD
A new study at the AAP Foundation, a Dutch rescue center for chimpanzees and other mammals from laboratories, has shown that anti-depressants used by humans can help chimpanzees in overcoming captivity-induced depression and trauma. Despite having ample psychological stimulation, large spaces to roam, and a high-quality diet, scientists at AAP continued to note a steady [...]
Goodall: ‘How Like Us Chimpanzees Are.’
NhRP board member Jane Goodall isn’t letting her recent role as Grand Marshall of the 2013 Tournament of Roses slow her non-stop, worldwide effort to educate people about the plight of chimpanzees and the environment. Ms. Goodall’s most recent travels have taken her back to Africa, where she spoke about, among other things, the revelations [...]
Jays Know The Inner Desires of Their Mates
It’s Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air…even for monogamous Eurasian Jays (Garrulus glandarius). New studies at Cambridge University show a male jay can figure out the special love needs of his individual partner and then seeks to fulfill her inner desires. The male jays (a member of the corvid, or crow family) watched [...]
Social Learning in Chimpanzees
A new study has shown that chimpanzees can learn to use tools more efficiently by watching others, and this is helping scientists to understand more about how culture develops in chimpanzees – and in humans, too.
The Nature of Dolphins
In the last week, we’ve seen a group of dolphins helping a confused seal pup find her way back out to the ocean. Last week, we saw a tangled dolphin ask human divers to free her, as well as whales adopting an orphan dolphin, and dolphins nursing a sick family member. How many more such things happen on any given day? Hundreds? Thousands?
And what does this tell us about the nature of dolphins?
What’s Next for the Government’s Chimpanzees?
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has taken another big step toward bringing an end to the use of chimpanzees in vivisection experiments. The NIH’s Council of Councils has approved a plan to retire most of the 451 government-”owned” chimpanzees still in research labs and send them to sanctuaries. The chimpanzees are not quite home [...]
The Ultimatum Game
Scientists once thought the sense of “fairness” was unique to humans, but now, for the first time, it has been observed in captive chimpanzees.
‘Blackfish’ Orca Movie Is Talk of Sundance
Is the new movie “Blackfish” – a powerful damning indictment of SeaWorld, screened at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend – this year’s answer to the 2009 Oscar-winning “The Cove”?
The critics are giving it rave reviews, calling it “a damning indictment of SeaWorld” and even suggesting that “it stands a good chance of putting the “$2-billion theme park out of business.”
