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| Chimps partying. via The Guardian |
The boozing starts from 7am. Though large amounts are often drunk, the sessions are orderly, even sociable. A skinful later, and always before nightfall, enough is enough and they rest.
They are the chimpanzees of Bossou, south-eastern Guinea, and their secret is finally out. With 17 years of evidence in hand, scientists have declared the troop the first wild chimpanzees to indulge in regular, habitual drinking.
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| (Photo: pastries71/flickr/cc) |
For the first time in U.S. history, a judge has effectively recognized two chimpanzees as legal persons, in an order Monday which will allow a pair of research primates—Hercules and Leo—to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment.
Since corporations are legal persons, it hardly seems absurd to make animals into legal people. After all, higher animals are certainly closer to human persons than are corporate persons. These animals can think, feel and suffer—things that actual people do but corporate people cannot. So, if it is not absurd for Hobby Lobby to be a legal person, it is not absurd for my husky to be a legal person. Or perhaps I should just incorporate my husky and thus create a person.
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| Fernando Camino/Cover/Getty Images |
Last summer, an international group of scientists signed a declaration stating that all mammals (and some other animals) must be understood as conscious beings. I agree and not because elite scientists (finally) say so, but because the evidence is overwhelming.
Clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a type of anxiety disorder, have been identified in elephants. Gay Bradshaw and colleagues wrote in Nature that young elephants who witness poaching or other "culls" (killing) of their close family members become "high-risk candidates for later disorders, including an inability to regulate stress-reactive aggressive states." Witnessed trauma, as this new article from National Geographic makes clear, can lead to nightmares later on in elephants.
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| ᔥ Gizmodo |
Chimpanzees are interested in social cohesion and have various strategies to guarantee the stability of their group. Anthropologists now reveal that chimpanzees mediate conflicts between other group members, not for their own direct benefit, but rather to preserve the peace within the group. Their impartial intervention in a conflict -- so-called "policing" -- can be regarded as an early evolutionary form of moral behavior.ᔥ Marginal Revolution
Cheetah the chimpanzee, who acted in classic Tarzan movies in the early 1930s, died of kidney failure Saturday at Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, a sanctuary spokeswoman said.
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| Mistake noted. This ape is actually signing "Michelle Bachmann." |
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| CG and human apes via NY Press |
Unlike Tim Burton’s often brilliant 2004 remake, Rise is more poetic than topical.There was nothing brilliant about Burton's Apes. Unless you want to say it was brilliant at sucking. (#1268 out of 1318 on my flickchart.)
... chronicles the twisty true story of Nim, a chimpanzee who's taught sign language as part of a 1970s science experiment, though it's the humans involved who get an education about the true, immutable nature of an animal. If that sounds too high-minded, though, there's also chimp-on-human breast-feeding..
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| Dr. Goodall speaking at Duke (Image via N&O) |
Goodall's 50 years of uninterrupted chimpanzee behavior research is making its new home with Duke University. The collection that Goodall started in 1960 is being curated and digitized by Duke researchers.As our women's basketball teams prepare to face off for a trip to the Final Four, I'd normally be cracking wise about Duke and its shortcomings, but can only praise them this morning. They're digitizing and archiving the work of one of my personal heroes.
On the morning of January 31, 1961, a 5-year-old chimpanzee named 'Ham' ate a breakfast of baby cereal, condensed milk, vitamins, and half an egg. Then the playful 37-pound primate went out into the Cape Canaveral light and made aeronautic history: Aboard a NASA space capsule -- and traveling almost 160 miles above the Earth -- he became the first chimp in space.I almost missed this! 50 years since the first chimp in space. I wonder if any astronauts ate that same breakfast today in tribute to Ham.
Look at this photograph and just try to tell me the answer is no.
Nor do the adult male chimpanzees always sit huddled and passive in the rain. Sometimes when the first drops hit them they begin a display, wildly and rhythmically swaying from foot to foot, rocking saplings to and fro, stamping the ground. This spectacular performance we call a "rain dance."That I'm fascinated by apes and monkeys is no secret. It would be hard to explain why beyond the obvious. We have a cousin, out in the wild, an animal "other" that is very human upon closer inspection. It is very possible that they will be extinct in my lifetime. And it will be humanity's fault. We're killing (and eating) the species, of all the animal kingdom, with which we share the most recent common ancestor. Their greatest champion over the last 40 years has been been Jane Goodall; her descriptions of the family life of Flo, Flint and the other chimps in Gombe will always haunt my memory.
Chimpanzees may also respond in the same way to a high wind and to a particularly stimulating social situation, but it is typically their reaction to a sudden downpour. On two occasions I saw group performances of these rain dances. The first will always haunt my memory.
