Summaries | Headlines

Spread Of Endogenous Retrovirus K Is Similar In The DNA Of Humans And Rhesus Monkeys (October 12, 2007) -- The population dynamics of complete copies of primate endogenous retrovirus family K in the genomes of humans, chimpanzee and rhesus monkey have revealed a surprising pattern. Human ERV-K had a ... > full story

Chimpanzees, Unlike Humans, Apply Economic Principles To Ultimatum Game (October 7, 2007) -- When given the ultimatum game, chimpanzees, unlike humans, conform to traditional economic models. Unlike humans, chimpanzees do not show a willingness to make fair offers and reject unfair ones. In ... > full story

Primate Sperm Competition: Speed Matters (September 27, 2007) -- Sperm cells from the more promiscuous chimpanzee and rhesus macaque species swim much faster and with much greater force than those of humans and gorillas, species where individual females mate ... > full story

New Light Shed On The 'Hobbit' (September 25, 2007) -- Researchers have completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the "hobbit," a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island ... > full story

Wild Male Chimpanzees Use Stolen Food To Win Over The Opposite Sex (September 14, 2007) -- They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach and the same could be said for female chimpanzees. Researchers studying wild chimps in West Africa have discovered that males pinch ... > full story

Extinction Crisis Escalates: Red List Shows Apes, Corals, Vultures, Dolphins All In Danger (September 13, 2007) -- Life on Earth is disappearing fast and will continue to do so unless urgent action is taken, according to the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. There are now 41,415 species on the IUCN Red ... > full story

Was Ability To Run Early Man's Achilles Heel? (September 12, 2007) -- The earliest humans almost certainly walked upright on two legs but may have struggled to run at even half the speed of modern man, new research suggests. They proposes that if early humans lacked an ... > full story

Color Night Vision In The Aye-Aye, A Most Unusual Primate (September 12, 2007) -- A quest to gain a more complete picture of color vision evolution has led scientists to an up-close, genetic encounter with one of the world's most rare and bizarre-looking primates. They have ... > full story

Marburg Virus Identified In A Species Of Fruit Bat (September 11, 2007) -- The Marburg virus, like its fearsome cousin Ebola, belongs to the Filoviridae family. It carries the name of the German town where it was first detected in 1967, after a mysterious epidemic had hit ... > full story

Primates Expect Others To Act Rationally (September 10, 2007) -- Researchers have found that when understanding behavior, primates assume rationality and make inferences based on environmental restraints. The researchers studied over 120 primates from the three ... > full story

Higher Social Skills Are Distinctly Human, Toddler And Ape Study Reveals (September 7, 2007) -- Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter's example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize, showing that even before preschool, ... > full story

Bonobo Handshake: What Makes Our Chimp-like Cousins So Cooperative? (September 4, 2007) -- What's it like to work with relatives who think sex is like a handshake, who organize orgies with the neighbors, and firmly believe females should be in charge of everything? On September 11, a group ... > full story

< more recent summaries | earlier summaries >

Hominidae -- The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. The exact criteria for membership in the Homininae are ... > full article

Orangutan -- Orangutans (also spelled orang utan, orang-utan, sometimes incorrectly orangutang) are two species of great apes with long arms and reddish, sometimes brown, hair. Orangutans are highly endangered in ... > full article

Great Ape language -- Research into non-human Great Ape language has generated a great deal of evidence suggesting that apes are capable of using sophisticated communication with humans and other apes. Gorillas and ... > full article

Chimpanzee -- Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. The better known chimpanzee is Pan troglodytes, the Common Chimpanzee, living primarily in West, ... > full article

Mirror test -- The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness developed by Gordon Gallup Jr in 1970. The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as ... > full article

Common Chimpanzee -- The Common Chimpanzee, also known as the Robust Chimpanzee, is a great ape. Colloquially, it is often called the chimpanzee (or simply "chimp"), though technically this term refers to both species in ... > full article

Gibbon -- Gibbons are the small apes that are grouped in the family Hylobatidae. Also called the lesser apes, gibbons differ from great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans) in being smaller, ... > full article

Primate -- A primate is any member of the biological order Primates, the group that contains all the species commonly related to the lemurs, monkeys, and apes, with the latter category including humans. ... > full article

Pigeon intelligence -- Pigeons have featured in numerous experiments in comparative psychology, including experiments concerned with animal cognition, and as a result we have considerable knowledge of pigeon intelligence. ... > full article

Monkey -- A monkey is any member of two of the three groupings of simian primates. These two groupings are the New World and Old World monkeys of which together there are nearly 200 species. A group of monkeys ... > full article

Bonobo -- The Bonobo (Pan paniscus), until recently usually called the Pygmy Chimpanzee and less often the Dwarf or Gracile Chimpanzee, is one of the two species comprising the chimpanzee genus, Pan. The other ... > full article

Gorilla -- The gorilla, the largest of the living primates, is a ground-dwelling herbivore that inhabits the forests of Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies. Its DNA ... > full article

Jane Goodall -- Dame Jane Goodall DBE Ph.D., (born April 3, 1934) is an English primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist, probably best-known for conducting a forty-five year study of chimpanzee social and ... > full article

Neoteny -- Neoteny is the retention, by adults in a species, of traits previously seen only in juveniles (pedomorphosis/paedomorphosis), and is a subject studied in the field of developmental biology. In ... > full article

Animal cognition -- Animal cognition, or cognitive ethology, is the title given to a modern approach to the mental capacities of non human animals. It has developed out of comparative psychology, but has also been ... > full article

Lar Gibbon -- The Lar Gibbon (Hylobates lar), also known as the White-handed Gibbon, is a primate in the Hylobatidae or gibbon family. It is one of the more well-known gibbons and is often seen in ... > full article

Lemur -- Lemurs are part of a class of primates known as prosimians, and make up the infraorder Lemuriformes. This type of primate was the evolutionary predecessor of monkeys and apes (simians). Lemurs are ... > full article

Dian Fossey -- Dian Fossey (January 16, 1932 - December 26, 1985) was an American ethologist interested in gorillas. She completed an extended study of several gorilla groups, observing them daily for years in the ... > full article

Capuchin monkey -- The capuchins are the group of New World monkeys classified as genus Cebus. Like most New World monkeys, capuchins are diurnal and arboreal. With the exception of a midday nap, they spend their ... > full article

Timeline of evolution -- This timeline of the evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on the planet Earth. Dates given are estimates based on scientific evidence. In biology, evolution is the ... > full article