Coaching style also had a major influence on factors such as the types of drills used in practice
#Borneos orangutans are coming down from the trees; Behavior may show adaptation to habitat changeorangutans might be the king of the swingers
but primatologists in Borneo have found that the great apes spend a surprising amount of time walking on the ground.
The research published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage
The region's Wehea Forest is known a biodiversity hotspot for primates including the Bornean orangutan subspecies Pongo pygmaeus morio the least studied of orangutan subspecies.
Orangutans are elusive and one reason why recorded evidence of orangutans on the ground is so rare is that the presence of observers inhibits this behaviour said Loken.
However with camera traps we are offered a behind the scenes glimpse at orangutan behaviour. The team positioned ground-based cameras across a 38-square-kilometre region of the forest
and succeeded in capturing the first evidence of orangutans regularly coming down from the trees.
The amount of time orangutans spent on the forest floor was found to be comparable to the ground-dwelling pig-tailed macaque Macaca nemestrina
Over 8-months orangutans were photographed 110 times while the macaques were photographed 113 times. The reason orangutans come down from the trees remains a mystery.
However while the absence of large predators may make it safer to walk on the forest floor a more pressing influence is the rapid and unprecedented loss of Borneo's orangutan habitat.
Borneo is a network of timber plantations agroforestry areas and mines with patches of natural forest said Loken.
The transformation of the landscape could be forcing orangutans to change their habitat and their behaviour.
This research helps to reveal how orangutans can adapt to their changing landscape; however this does not suggest they can just walk to new territory
if their habitat is destroyed. The orangutan subspecies P. p. morio may be adapted to life in more resource scarce forests having evolved larger jaws
which allow them to consume more tree bark and less fruit but they are still dependent on natural forests for their long term survival.
While we're learning that orangutans may be more behaviourally flexible than we thought and that some populations may frequently come to the ground to travel they still need forests to survive said Dr. Spehar.
Wehea Forest is one of the only places in Borneo where ten primates species including five species found only in Borneo overlap in their ranges.
However given that 78%of wild orangutans live outside of protected areas it is critical that all of Borneo's remaining forests are protected
but protecting Wehea Forest and Borneo's remaining forests is vital to the long term survival of the orangutans concluded Loken.
#Borneos orangutans are coming down from the trees; Behavior may show adaptation to habitat changeorangutans might be the king of the swingers
but primatologists in Borneo have found that the great apes spend a surprising amount of time walking on the ground.
The research published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage
The region's Wehea Forest is known a biodiversity hotspot for primates including the Bornean orangutan subspecies Pongo pygmaeus morio the least studied of orangutan subspecies.
Orangutans are elusive and one reason why recorded evidence of orangutans on the ground is so rare is that the presence of observers inhibits this behaviour said Loken.
However with camera traps we are offered a behind the scenes glimpse at orangutan behaviour. The team positioned ground-based cameras across a 38-square-kilometre region of the forest
and succeeded in capturing the first evidence of orangutans regularly coming down from the trees.
The amount of time orangutans spent on the forest floor was found to be comparable to the ground-dwelling pig-tailed macaque Macaca nemestrina
Over 8-months orangutans were photographed 110 times while the macaques were photographed 113 times. The reason orangutans come down from the trees remains a mystery.
However while the absence of large predators may make it safer to walk on the forest floor a more pressing influence is the rapid and unprecedented loss of Borneo's orangutan habitat.
Borneo is a network of timber plantations agroforestry areas and mines with patches of natural forest said Loken.
The transformation of the landscape could be forcing orangutans to change their habitat and their behaviour.
This research helps to reveal how orangutans can adapt to their changing landscape; however this does not suggest they can just walk to new territory
if their habitat is destroyed. The orangutan subspecies P. p. morio may be adapted to life in more resource scarce forests having evolved larger jaws
which allow them to consume more tree bark and less fruit but they are still dependent on natural forests for their long term survival.
While we're learning that orangutans may be more behaviourally flexible than we thought and that some populations may frequently come to the ground to travel they still need forests to survive said Dr. Spehar.
Wehea Forest is one of the only places in Borneo where ten primates species including five species found only in Borneo overlap in their ranges.
However given that 78%of wild orangutans live outside of protected areas it is critical that all of Borneo's remaining forests are protected
but protecting Wehea Forest and Borneo's remaining forests is vital to the long term survival of the orangutans concluded Loken.
The authors maintain that the current rate of unsustainable hunting of forest elephants gorillas and other seed-dispersing species threatens the ability of forest ecosystems to regenerate
In particular mammals such as forest elephants gorillas forest antelopes and others play a major role in seed dispersal for most tree species;
and apes could reduce the ability of forests to sequester carbon. The clock is ticking on the future of large mammals in Central africa's Congo Basin Rainforest
#Monkey nation: Mainland Africas most important nation for primatesa five-year study by the Wildlife Conservation Society gives new hope to some of the world's most endangered primates by establishing a roadmap to protect all 27 species
in Tanzania--the most primate-diverse country in mainland Africa. The study combines Tanzania's first-ever inventory of all primate species
and their habitats with IUCN Red List criteria and other factors such as threats and rarity ranking all 27 species from most vulnerable to least vulnerable.
The authors then identify a network of Priority Primate Areas for conservation. The paper appears in the July 17 issue of the journal Oryx.
Authors are Tim Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society Katarzyna Nowak of the Udzungwa Elephant Project and Andrew Perkin of the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group.
A third of Tanzania's primate species are found nowhere else on earth. The study found that the most vulnerable was the kipunji first discovered by WCS in 2003 on Mt Rungwe
Another extremely vulnerable species is the Zanzibar red colobus a species whose population is currently being counted by WCS.
More common species include the baboons black and white colobus monkeys and vervets. The study assigned a score to pinpoint the most important areas for protection.
The analysis revealed more than 60 important primate areas including national parks game reserves forest reserves conservation areas and currently unprotected landscapes.
's primate species. The authors say that the Priority Primate Areas could be applied in other nations rich in wildlife
In fact Tanzania's Priority Primate Areas were also often rich in bird life underscoring their value to conservation in general.
We believe Priority Primate Areas can be a valuable conservation tool worldwide similar to the successful Important Bird Area concept said the study's lead author Tim Davenport of WCS.
and are more active than the Y chromosomes of other primates according to researchers. This discovery may help biologists better understand how cattle
The researchers identified 1274 genes in the male specific region of the bovine Y chromosome compared to the 31 to 78 genes associated in the Y chromosomes of various primates.
Currently the gene content and transcription pattern of the bovine Y chromosome is the only non-primate Y chromosome that researchers have studied in depth according to Liu.
The samples included elephant tusks and molars hippo tusks and canine teeth oryx horn hair from monkeys and elephant tails and some grasses collected in Kenya in 1962.
In a previous trial which is referenced in the current journal article Kavanagh's team studied monkeys who were allowed to eat as much as they wanted of low-fat food with added fructose for seven years as compared to a control group fed a low-fructose low-fat diet for the same time period.
Ten middle-aged normal weight monkeys who had eaten never fructose were divided into two groups based on comparable body shapes and waist circumference.
Six weeks in monkeys is roughly equivalent to three months in humans. In the high-fructose group the researchers found that the type of intestinal bacteria hadn't changed
#A grassy trend in human ancestors dietsmost apes eat leaves and fruits from trees and shrubs.
In four new studies of carbon isotopes in fossilized tooth enamel from scores of human ancestors and baboons in Africa from 4 million to 10000 years ago a team of two dozen researchers found a surprise
For a long time primates stuck by the old restaurants--leaves and fruits--and by 3. 5 million years ago they started exploring new diet possibilities--tropical grasses
We see an increasing reliance on this new resource by human ancestors that most primates still don't use today.
Why Our Ancestor's Diets Matterthe earliest human ancestor to consume substantial amounts of grassy foods from dry more open savannas may signal a major and ecological and adaptive divergence from the last common ancestor we shared with African great apes
Human brains were larger than those of other primates by the time our Genus homo evolved 2 million years ago.
Hominins are humans their ancestors and extinct relatives that split from the other apes roughly 6 million years ago.
Cerling also wrote a study about baboon diets. Sponheimer wrote a fourth study summarizing the other three.
The Only Surviving Primates with a C4 Grass Dietcerling's second new study shows that
while human ancestors ate more grasses and other apes stuck with trees and shrubs two extinct Kenyan baboons represent the only primate genus that ate primarily grasses and perhaps sedges throughout its history.
when the baboons lived between 4 million and 2. 5 million years ago contradicting previous claims that they ate forest foods.
Modern Theropithecus gelada baboons live in Ethiopia's highlands where they eat only C3 cool-season grasses.
Cerling notes that primate tropical grass-eaters--Theropithecus baboons and Paranthropus human relatives--went extinct
Species of animals that are more vocal in their expression like macaques parrots or the zebra finch used in the Jove article are unique as they provide a landscape for scientists to study song acquisition storage and regurgitation.
and study in laboratories than other vocal animals like apes. By utilizing a high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging apparatus (fmri) Dr. Van der Linden
#Monkey teeth help reveal Neanderthal weaningmost modern human mothers wean their babies much earlier than our closest primate relatives.
and from monkeys at the California National Primate Research center at the University of California Davis. Using the new technique the researchers concluded that at least one Neanderthal baby was weaned at much the same age as most modern humans.
Just as tree rings record the environment in which a tree grew traces of barium in the layers of a primate tooth can tell the story of
what age it was weaned said Katie Hinde professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard university and an affiliate scientist at the UC Davis Primate Center.
and behavior among rhesus macaques at UC Davis. The team was able to determine exact timing of birth
By studying monkey teeth and comparing them to center records they could show that the technique was accurate almost to the day.
The technique opens up extensive opportunities to further investigate lactation in fossils and museum collections of primate teeth.
Yet recent investigations of wild chimpanzees have shown that the first molar eruption occurs toward the end of weaning.
By applying these new techniques to primate teeth in museum collections we can more precisely assess maternal investment across individuals within species as well as life history evolution among species Hinde said.
Rounding out the list is a new monkey with a blue-colored behind and humanlike eyes a tiny violet and a black staining fungus that threatens rare Paleolithic cave paintings in France.
Lesula Monkey Cercopithecus lomamiensis Country: Democratic Republic of the Congoold World monkey: Discovered in the Lomami Basin of the Democratic republic of the congo the lesula is an Old world monkey well known to locals
but newly known to science. This is only the second species of monkey discovered in Africa in the past 28 years.
Scientists first saw the monkey as a captive juvenile in 2007. Researchers describe the shy lesula as having humanlike eyes.
More easily heard than seen the monkeys perform a booming dawn chorus. Adult males have a large bare patch of skin on the buttocks testicles
and perineum that is colored a brilliant blue. Although the forests where the monkeys live are remote the species is hunted for bush meat
and its status is vulnerable. No to the Mine! Snake Sibon noalamina Country: Panamasnail-eating snake:
A beautiful new species of snail-eating snake has been discovered in the highland rainforests of western Panama.
Monkeys found to conform to social normsthe human tendency to adopt the behaviour of others when on their home territory has been found in nonhuman primates.
Researchers at the University of St andrews observed'striking'fickleness in male monkeys when it comes to copying the behaviour of others in new groups.
The findings could help explain the evolution of our human desire to seek out'local knowledge'when visiting a new place or culture.
when you visit a different culture is shared a disposition with other primates. The research was carried out by observing wild vervet monkeys in South africa.
The researchers originally set out to test how strongly wild vervet monkey infants are influenced by their mothers'habits.
But more interestingly they found that adult males migrating to new groups conformed quickly to the social norms of their new neighbours
In the initial study the researchers provided each of two groups of wild monkeys with a box of maize corn dyed pink and another dyed blue.
and the monkeys soon learned to eat only pink corn. Two other groups were trained in this way to eat only blue corn.
--and the adult monkeys present appeared to remember which colour they had preferred previously. Almost every infant copied the rest of the group eating only the one preferred colour of corn.
The one monkey who did not switch was the top ranking in his new group who appeared unconcerned about adopting local behavior.
Dr van de Waal conducted the field experiments at the Inkawu Vervet Project in the Mawana private game reserve in South africa.
She became familiar with all 109 monkeys making it possible for her to document the behaviour of the males who migrated to new groups.
and importance of social learning in these wild primates extending even to the conformity we know so well in humans.
Commenting on the research leading primatologist Professor Frans de Waal of the Yerkes Primate Center of Emory University said that the study is one of the few successful field experiments on cultural transmission
The study has been hailed by leading primate experts as rare experimental proof of'cultural transmission'in wild primates to date.
because on the one hand humans evolved from apes that moved in three-dimensional space when swinging from branch to branch but on the other hand modern ground-dwelling humans generally navigate in two-dimensional space.
#Self-medication in animals much more widespread than believedit's been known for decades that animals such as chimpanzees seek out medicinal herbs to treat their diseases.
which animals such as baboons and woolly bear caterpillars medicate themselves. One recent study has suggested that house sparrows and finches add high-nicotine cigarette butts to their nests to reduce mite infestations.
#Chimpanzees use botanical skills to discover fruitfruit-eating animals are known to use their spatial memory to relocate fruit yet it is unclear how they manage to find fruit in the first place.
which strategies chimpanzees in the Taã National park in CÃ'te d'Ivoire West Africa use
Chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this botanical knowledge during their daily search for fruit.
To investigate if chimpanzees know that if a tree is carrying fruit then other trees of the same species are likely to carry fruit as well the researchers conducted observations of their inspections
which they saw chimpanzees inspect empty trees when they made mistakes. By analysing these mistakes the researchers were able to exclude that sensory cues of fruit had triggered the inspection
and were the first to learn that chimpanzees had expectations of finding fruit days before feeding on it.
The researchers conclude that chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this information during their daily search for fruit.
and an ability to categorize fruits into distinct species. Our results provide new insights into the variety of food-finding strategies employed by our close relatives the chimpanzees
Chomsky had inspired the name of another animal the chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky who was a part of an extended study of animal language acquisition at Columbia University.
DNA saysscientists have identified two new species of mouse lemur the saucer-eyed teacup-sized primates native to the African island of Madagascar.
But because these shy nocturnal primates look so much alike it's only possible to tell them apart with genetic sequencing.
You can't really tell them apart just looking at them through binoculars in the rainforest said senior author Peter Kappeler of the German Primate Center in Goettingen who earned his Phd at Duke in 1992.
and slash and burn agriculture have taken their toll on the forests where these tree-dwelling primates live.
The Translational Studies on Early-Life Stress and Vulnerability to Alcohol addiction project is funded an NIH collaborative grant which supports rodent nonhuman primate
#Hunting for meat impacts on rainforest, fruit tree seed dispersalhunting for meat in the African rainforests has halved the number of primates.
The decline in the number of primates causes a reduction in the dispersal of seed by the primates and this leads to a reduction in the numbers of important fruit trees and changes to the rainforest.
The animals that are hunted include almost all mammals including gorillas and chimpanzees and some small species of monkey.
Both apes and small monkeys play an important role in seed dispersal in the rainforest as they feed on a variety of different fruits.
As the number of primates declines as a result of hunting their seed spreading role also declines. If fewer fruit seeds are spread fewer fruit trees will grow in the forests.
Many of the trees which have seeds that are dispersed by primates are also important to people
because primates cannot live in a forest without fruit trees. Ola Olsson would like to see better protection for nature reserves and national parks and better information and education of local people in the villages.
if the carcasses can be sold in the towns where people are prepared to pay high prices for ape meat.
#Monopoly of the male orangutan: Comparative field observations on Sumatra and Borneothe sexual development mating habits and social hierarchy of the orangutans are more heavily dependent on their environment than had previously been assumed:
where the rain forest supplies more food the influence of the dominant male increases. In order to escape his attention many other males remain small.
In Malay the word orangutan means man of the woods. In fact however these rain forest dwellers clad in a reddish-brown coat are our most distant relatives within the great ape family.
The orangutan differs from all of the others because the male can go through two different phases of development.
It is for this reason that there are two types of sexually mature males the smaller appearing externally like the female and the larger developing secondary sexual characteristics such as cheek pads and throat pouches.
which is home to the orangutans. On Sumatra the researchers observed twice as many small males as adults with cheek pads.
which the smaller ones never prevail the advantages of developmental arrest disappear The fact that food supply in the forest has such a strong impact on the mating behaviour of the orangutan came as a surprise to Dunkel.
It goes to show she says that the organisation of these great apes --and perhaps that of our ancestors as well--is more variable than we had assumed hitherto.
) Dian Fossey Gorilla Foundation International the Jane Goodall Institute Lukuru Foundation Zoological Society of London Fauna and Flora International Max Planck Institute San diego
Fossey Gorilla Foundation International Espã ces Phares (European union) Ecosystã mes Forestiers d'Afrique Centrale ECOFAC) Fauna and Flora International Frankfurt Zoological
International Development (USAID CARPE) USFWS Great ape Conservation Fund USFWS African elephant Conservation Fund Wildlife Conservation Society World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society
#when theres nowhere elseecologists have evidence that some endangered primates and large cats faced with relentless human encroachment will seek sanctuary in the sultry thickets of mangrove
when keeping tabs on the distribution of threatened animals such as Sumatran orangutans and Javan leopards according to a recent Princeton university study in the journal Folia Primatologica.
and mangrove swamps as current--and possibly future--wildlife refuges Katarzyna Nowak a former postdoctoral researcher of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton compiled a list of 60 primates
But the presence of endangered cats and primates in swamp forests might be overlooked seriously Nowak found.
About 55 percent of Old world monkeys--primates such as baboons and macaques that are native to Africa
In 2008 the Wildlife Conservation Society reported that the inaccessible Lake T l swamp forest in the Republic of the Congo was home to 125000 lowland gorillas--more than were thought to exist in the wild.
Species such as the crab-eating macaque and fishing cat can adapt somewhat readily to a life of swimming
Meanwhile Zanzibar's red colobus monkey--driven to coastal mangroves by deforestation--can struggle to find the freshwater it needs as Nowak reported in the American Journal of Primatology in 2008.
Such a trend could result in local extinction of the red colobus nonetheless she said.
Nowak concludes that swamp forests beg further exploration as places where endangered species such as lowland gorillas
Refuge Habitats for Primates and Felids was published in the journal Folia Primatologica. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Princeton university.
Additional results from recent surveys show that other wildlife in the reserve fared much better including the highly important eastern chimpanzee population (approximately 6000 individuals) okapi and duikers (small forest antelopes) with almost no change in their estimated
--whereas the communicative waggles of bees or the short audible messages of primates are more like the lexical layer.
other primates can make a range of sounds comprising warnings about predators and other messages.
or primates--but like birds we also have a melodic capacity and an ability to recombine parts of our uttered language.
and other primates could all be sources of further research insight. MIT-based research in linguistics has largely been characterized by the search for universal aspects of all human languages.
and fossil primates including lemurs monkeys and humans as well as their closest living relatives flying lemurs and tree shrews.
and one fossil species from the clade Euarchonta which includes primates tree shrews and flying lemurs. I think this database is amazing
It has been suggested that primates diverged from other mammals well before the extinction of the dinosaurs
Dogs caring for orphaned kittens chimps sharing food or dolphins nudging injured mates to the surface.
I. Eglinton of the Eidgenã ssische Technische Hochschule and Raymonde Bonnefille of the Universit d'Aix-Marseille. The role that the environment played in the evolution of hominins--the tribe of human and ape ancestors
whose family tree split from the ancestors of chimpanzees and bonobos about 6 million years ago--has been the subject of a century-long debate.
Among other things one theory dating back to 1925 posits that early human ancestors developed bipedalism as a response to savannas encroaching on shrinking forests in northeast Africa.
#Monkeys stressed from longer foraging timesendangered Mexican howler monkeys are consuming more leaves and less fruit as a result of habitat disturbance by humans
It shows that increases in howler monkey'travel time'--the amount of time needed to find requisite nourishment--are leading to increases in levels of stress hormones called glucocorticoids.
and resulting health implications more generally in primates living in habitats disturbed by human activities such as deforestation.
Howlers are arboreal primates that is to say they spend their wholes lives in the trees said Dr Jacob Dunn from Cambridge's Department of Biological Anthropology who carried out the research.
As forests are fragmented the howlers become cut off isolated on forest'islands'that increasingly lack the fruit
This has led to the monkeys expending ever more time and effort foraging for food often increasing leaf consumption
and the monkeys will naturally revert to'fallback'foods including leaves when fruit is scarce.
But as habitats shrink and fruit is harder to find leaves from second-choice plants such as lianas have increased in the Mexican howlers'diet.
and plants--so the monkeys are forced actually to spend more time seeking out the right foliage to eat such as new shoots
The traditional view was that the leaves exploited by howler monkeys were an abundant food source
The monkeys rely much more heavily on fruit than previously believed and when turning to foliage for food--as they are forced increasingly to do--they have to be highly selective in the leaves they consume visiting lots of different trees.
This leads to the increased'travel time'and consequent high levels of stress we are seeing in these primates as their habitats disintegrate.
As trying to catch the howlers to examine them would in itself be highly stressful for the animal the best way of evaluating stress levels in wild primates is by analysing their faeces for glucocorticoid stress hormones which are general to all vertebrates.
Monkeys in disturbed habitats suffering high levels of stress is in itself unsurprising perhaps but now we think we know why the root cause from the primates perspective.
Our results also highlight the importance of preserving and planting fruit trees--particularly those species such as figs that can produce fruit during periods of general fruit scarcity--for the conservation of howler monkeys said Dr Jurgi Cristã bal-Azkarate also from Cambridge who led the research
in collaboration with Dr Joaquim Vea from the University of Barcelona. The authors say that further studies are required to fully understand the significance of increases in stress in howler monkeys living in disturbed habitats.
Determining the full relevance of our results for the conservation of primates living in forest fragments will require long-term studies of stress hormones
and survival said Dunn. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Cambridge.
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