This is Archicebus achilles, or "beginning long-tailed monkey." One of the very earliest of our primate ancestors, she weighed about an ounce, could fit in the palm of your hand, and lived in the trees when most of the Earth was a tropical paradise about 55 million years ago.
Next time someone catches you telling a small fib, just explain that, as one of the great apes, it's just part of your cooperative nature.
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 lemurs to chimpanzees.
They concluded that the animals had developed the ability to lie and deceive in order to form coalitions, get food and find a mate:
This orangutan was rescued as she clung to the last remaining tree in her forest. Bulldozers were clearing another huge swath of Indonesian rain forest for yet another palm plantation.
The rescue was one of a series of rescue missions by International Animal Rescue (IAR) as they race to save as many as possible of the last remaining orangs. Soon there will be no forest – and none of these wonderful great apes.
According to the Daily Mail:
The frightened animals were desperately searching for food and had even resorted to eating bark from the trees they were trying to hide in.
One female orangutan was heavily pregnant, while another, who was still lactating, is thought to have had her baby snatched to be sold as a pet or killed before the rescue team arrived.
The final female was found with her scared baby clinging to her back and both were very thin from malnutrition.
The orangutans are darted with tranquilizer guns, caught in a net as they fall, and then hurried to the IAR rescue center.
Here's a 12-minute video of some of the rescue operations. (Note: Some of the footage is obviously troubling.)
One thing you can do: Always check the label on food products and cosmetics. If it says "palm oil", skip it.
P.S. I was wondering about other products that may be related to the palm oil industry, so I called the So Delicious company to check if their dairy free, coconut-based milks, creamers and frozen desserts come from those same palms. They assured me that they don't, and referred me to their sustainability page.
Check out the moment when a group of chimpanzees who have lived their lives at the New Iberia laboratory in Louisiana step out into the sun at Chimp Haven for the first time.
KCET interviews great ape researcher Craig Stanford about the demise of our closest cousins in the wild.
Stanford explains why all the great apes will be extinct within a few decades unless action is taken right now. He says that such action is entirely practical, but there's no sign, right now, that it's about to be taken.
This is the most you're going to see of Camillo the chimpanzee – at least for the moment. When the San Antonio Express-News asked the Texas Biomedical Research Institute for an interview, along with a photo of the 22-year-old veteran of vivisection, Texas Biomed simply told them: "No interviews, no photos."
A delightful video from the Gut Aiderbichl sanctuary for traumatized chimpanzees and other primates in Austria.
We first met these guys, who came from laboratories where most of them had never even set foot out of doors, when they ventured into the sunlight for the first time in their lives. Nice to see them checking out the snow now!
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has taken another big step toward bringing an end to the use of chimpanzees in research. But there’s still a long way to go – and it’s still quite uncertain where the retired chimpanzees can go and who’s going to pay for them.
In a change of plan from what was announced four months ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided to release all 110 of its “research-ineligible” chimpanzees to sanctuary care – most likely at Chimp Haven in Louisiana.
Here’s a weird one: A group of researchers sets out to study empathy in monkeys. They want to understand altruism better. So they cook up a vivisection experiment that involves implanting electrodes deep into the brains of monkeys and then watching to see whether the monkeys will treat each other with kindness and what happens in their brains at the same time.
I can't help wondering what this tells us about empathy and altruism in humans.
It's not quite Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but it seems like orangutans in the Borneo rain forest are not up for being driven from their homes any longer. Read more
Wildlife park owner Damian Aspinall says it’s time to shut down zoos – especially city zoos. And to make his point, he’s preparing to release an entire family of 11 western lowland gorillas from his wildlife park in England to the wild in Africa as part of his charity’s Back to the Wild project.
Two thirds of the chimpanzees who died at vivisection laboratories over the past ten years were so sick from chronic illness or multi-organ diseases that they should, by law, have been retired from experimentation. Instead, they were simply held for further research.
That’s the conclusion of a new study from the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) to be published in October 2012 edition of the journal Alternatives to Laboratory Animals.
Shortly before a giant asteroid smacked into the what is now Mexico’s Yucatan, 65 million years ago, setting off a firestorm, a nuclear winter and the demise of the dinosaurs, a tiny mammal, weighing just over an ounce, was racing up and down trees and staying out of the way. Today, one of her descendants is you.
The National Institutes of Health has taken another step toward ending medical and scientific research on chimpanzees. All of the government’s 110 chimpanzees at the infamous New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana are being made “permanently ineligible” for research. But it’s only a small step. Just 10 of the chimps are being moved to a sanctuary – Chimp Haven. The other 100 are going to a research center in Texas. Why is that?
When his daughter, Tansy, was just 18 months old, Damian Aspinall put her in one of the gorilla enclosures at his wildlife park in the U.K. That was 22 years ago. This week, he released the video. It's certainly cute ... but was what he did a good idea?
Aspinall, a businessman and conservationist, says he's releasing the video to bring awareness to the fact that gorillas face extinction. And through his foundation, he runs conservation programs in Africa as well as two wild animal parks in the U.K.
Aspinall says he wants people to know that these are gentle creatures who need our protection. He says he was afraid to release the video before now because of the possible negative reaction to putting a baby in with a gorilla. (It didn't go down very well with most people when Steve Irwin, the self-described "crocodile hunter", held his baby in one hand while dropping treats into a crocodile's mouth with the other.)
The daughter, Tansy, is now 23 years old – and none the worse for her early induction into the world of gorillas. But any wild animal expert knows that it's a really bad idea to put human babies with wildlife. Sure, gorillas are gentle creatures, and this gorilla mother was extraordinarily careful with Tansy. But apart from the danger to the child, the last thing we need in the animal protection world is another story of people being hurt by other kinds of animals. It always ends up with the animals getting hurt even more.
A treat awaits you at the bottom of a plastic tube – well out of reach of your fingers. No long spoons etc. are available. How do you get to it? Could you figure out the puzzle faster than this chimpanzee?
Just gaze at this remarkable face. Although the Lesula is known to the people of Africa's remote Lomami forest, she's new to Western scientists. And her future is uncertain.
At the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda, everyone knows that Natasha is the smartest of them all. Now a series of scientific tests have confirmed her intelligence.
You’ve probably heard enough about rape for this week – what with Rep. Paul Ryan’s concept of “forcible rape” and Rep. Todd Akin’s notions about “legitimate rape.”
Whatever your definition of rape, it derives from the Latin word to “seize” and has always included the violent seizure of land, property and other living beings, too.
Which brings us to the rape of the rain forest in Indonesia – and the rape (yes, by every definition) of our close cousins, the orangutans.
The horsemeat scandal that's eating away at Europe isn't about bad food or labeling or criminal black markets. It's about the violation of - More - →
Zoos love baby elephants. When baby Packy was born at the Portland Zoo in 1962, people lined up for half a mile to see him. Life magazine - More - →
In Kenya, Christian, Muslim and Hindu leaders stand around a pile of ivory captured from elephant poachers and pray that religion will help - More - →
The captivity industry's assault on the world's cutest whales The Georgia Aquarium has applied for a permit to import 18 beluga whales from - More - →
For thousands of years, we humans have sought to separate ourselves from the rest of nature, to see ourselves as superior and - More - →
Most climate scientists and environmental organizations continue to skip over the one critical thing that any and all of us can do to save - More - →
Linen Theme by The Theme Foundry
Copyright © 2013 . All rights reserved.