A new relationship with animals, nature and each other.

Posts tagged ‘great apes’

Who Is the Smartest of Them All?

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.

Me and My Big Bro

Kesho and Alf hadn’t seen each other for three years. And in that time, Kesho had really grown up. Now 13 years old, he weighs almost…

Why Baby Chimp Died at Zoo

Male chimpanzees can be violent with babies who are not their own. That’s natural, but what’s not natural is when it’s brought into the confines of captivity at a zoo, where, in this case, Gracie had nowhere to go with her baby and her friends except to another part of their enclosure.

Do Chimpanzees Hate Us?

By any standard, the story of a young graduate student being torn up by chimpanzees at a South Africa sanctuary that bears the name of Jane Goodall is shocking. But, like the news of a woman in New York City having her face torn off by a “pet” chimpanzee, we are singularly upset to hear of our own kind being treated this way by one of our closest cousins. Why does it get to us more than any other savage interactions with wildlife?

Bonobo Genome Revelation

Scientists have completed the mapping of the bonobo genome. This means that all five great ape species – chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and humans – have now had their genomes mapped.

Farewell to Oliver the ‘Humanzee’

Oliver was captured in Africa as a two-year-old in the 1960s and sold to animal trainers in the U.S. For the next few years he was exploited for the fact that he had a flatter face than most chimpanzees and tended to walk upright like a human. Perhaps, his owners suggested, he was a hybrid or a “missing link.”

Bob Barker Does It Again

Just three weeks after he completed a half-million-dollar donation to Chimp Haven, a Louisiana sanctuary for former laboratory chimpanzees, Bob Barker has sent $250,000 to Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida.

Chimps, Orangutans Have Human-Like Personalities

Do chimpanzees, orangutans and other nonhuman great apes have distinct personalities like us? It’s been a longstanding debate within the scientific community, and those who seek to exploit these animals have long argued that “personality” is a distinctly human attribute, not shared by any other species.

Why Chimpanzees Kill

Chimpanzees don’t pretend to each other that the wars they’re fighting are “good wars” – fought for ethical purposes, in which “we” are on the “good” side. That’s a uniquely human wrinkle on violence.