Primate Party Time!

It's been a while since the last Primate Party, but then I saw a photo of a bathing monkey on a colleague's desk* and remembered an anecdote from a couple of years ago.

In between my postdoc and industry job, Mr E Man and I went on a week-long camping trip around the interior of BC. It rained every day (but never all day), so we did less hiking than we'd anticipated, and spent our time relaxing in various hot springs instead.

On one such occasion, Mr E Man came swimming over to me with a lovely happy smile on his face. Looking all wistful and romantic, he began to speak.

"I was just looking at you over here", he said, "all wreathed in steam and gazing out over the misty mountains. And I thought to myself,"

(I braced myself for the compliment of the year),

"She looks like one of those red-faced Japanese monkeys".

After hitting him and laughing together for a while, we were joined by some elderly Dutch tourists. Looking at them, wreathed in steam and gazing out over the misty mountains, I saw exactly what he meant.

Photo credit

*I think it was an ad for a Taq polymerase.

Bonus Friday Primate Party

I wasn't going to do one today, but I saw this at MissPrism's place and I just had to post it. It might just have made my day (unless I get any news from my 9 month+1 day pregnant friend later!)



This is much safer for work than yesterday's effort, as long as no-one minds music...

Edited at 10:18 am - sod the monkeys, my good friend Sally has had a wee boy! Welcome to the world baby Jack, future England rugby captain!

Now that made my day.

Thursday's Primate Valentine Party

In honour of Valentine's Day, this week's Primate Party is a day early.



That lovely image was from the fine folks at http://icanhascheezburger.com/, which always makes me smile...

New Scientist's Short Sharp Science blog is also getting in on the action, with posts about gorilla lovin' and a different kind of Valentine's Day card - for people who want to anonymously alert former partners to go to an STD clinic. Lovely. (I really have lowered the tone today, haven't I?)

I hope you all have a lovely Valentine's Day, in whatever way you choose to spend it! Hubby and I are going to a hockey game. Since it's my birthday on the 16th, we've decided to skip the restaurant reservation and flowers panic of Feb 14th and celebrate our two anniversaries instead. The wedding was in August and our first date was in January, so it splits the year up very nicely indeed.

Friday's Primate Party

A good news Friday today!

The Cao Vit Gibbon, which lives along the China-Vietnam border, is the rarest ape in the world. But a recent survey found double the expected number of the animals (around 100, which isn't great, but is better than 50). It also seems that the gibbons' range is expanding, which is critically important to their survival.


King (and Queen) of the swingers

The conservation efforts have been spearheaded by Fauna and Flora International, who said:

"When we realised the gibbon was rare enough to demand urgent action, we immediately began protection measures, even though we lacked the results from an exhaustive census. We didn't want the Cao Vit gibbon to go the way of the Yangtze river dolphin, which was declared extinct last year."

Nice work!

(Story and photo from the Torygraph)

Also this week, National Geographic reports that a 5 year search finally paid off with the discovery of a new species of monkey in the Amazon. The species, known as the Ayres uakari, is already vulnerable. The discoverer, Jean-Phillipe Boubli from the University of Auckland, says:

"We're going to have to create a park or reserve, because [its habitat is] not a protected area."

King of Hide and Seek

Let's hope it works out as well as it did for the gibbons.

p.s. I have a post about the evolution of the avian flu virus in vaccinated populations on my Nature Network blog this week. I also recommend this post on Brian Clegg's blog for anyone who likes geeky science jokes.

p.p.s. Mine was the featured blog on Nature's main website for the last couple of days. It's gone now, but I took screenshots of my 15 minutes of fame!

Friday's Primate Party

Last week's party featured two similar stories that stirred up some very different (and slightly ambivalent) feelings. Luckily, things are much more black and white today (there's enough grey outside my window to be getting on with this morning).

Rescuing monkeys from a laboratory where they were kept separately in terrible conditions and never saw daylight, rehabilitating them, and releasing them into a more natural environment in family groups is A Good Thing*.


The green, green grass of home
Photo from sanctuary's website.

Dressing a monkey up as a cowboy and getting him to ride a dog in a rodeo is A Bad Thing. Even if he is called Whiplash, which is admittedly quite cute.

That was easy!

*The use of primates in research? Damnit, there's that ambivalence again.

Friday's Primate Party

Two related stories from Primate Info Net this week. In Austria, a chimpanzee named Matthew Hiasl Pan (!!) is at risk of becoming homeless if the animal shelter he's lived in for 25 years goes bankrupt. Private donors are willing to pay for his ongoing accommodation costs, but since only humans can receive personal gifts, activists have tried to obtain "personhood" status for Matthew. The supreme court turned them down. Matthew's human friends will now have to set up a foundation in his name to process donations, but they're worried that without personhood there's nothing to stop him being sold to a foreign owner and having to leave the protection of Austria's strict anti-cruelty laws.


Are chimps people too?
Photo credit

Meanwhile, in Texas, a court has dismissed a claim by PETA that chimpanzees and monkeys in a local sanctuary have the right to sue over their conditions.

Why do I feel so differently about these two cases? I don't think Austrian Matthew should be granted human status, but surely there was some other way to give him added protection and keep him in the country. But giving chimps the right to sue? C'mon. That's not the right way to go about things at all. I wonder whether the money and effort invested in this case could have actually made a difference if spent on lobbying for improved legislation to regulate sanctuaries and zoos instead.

I don't know, maybe I'm just biased against PETA, who I think have their hearts in the right place but are often grossly misguided, and Fox News (linking to their site made me feel dirty).

Seeing as it's Friday and I'm already in the habit, I've also posted about primates at my other blog (well, I wrote the text yesterday and posted it today - I can't figure out how to fix the date and time stamp like I can here). But there's nothing there that regular readers of this blog won't have already seen, so skip that and read about transposable elements instead! It's full of geeky science goodness.

Friday's Primate Party

While past Friday's Primate Parties have included the occasional scientific article, I tend to find most of my stories via Google Alerts. This approach does bring up some good stuff, as well as an awful lot of quotes from athletes who want to get the monkey off their backs. For example, this week I'd already decided to mention SpongeBob, the Bolivian spider monkey who just can't get a date (but he's so cute!) and some Chinese escape artists who are now living free on the zoo's grounds.

Must... find... my square pants before my big date...

But future parties might be a bit geekier now that I've discovered this resource at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's National Primate Research Center. It's a veritable treasure trove of bloggable delights - they must have a much better search system than me.

The Mid West is also home to this online primate behaviour course that I'd love to take, but don't have the time or money for. Sigh. Maybe one day. There's still time for me to be the next David Attenborough, right?

By the way, I've just switched to using Firefox (yes, I know, I'm kinda behind the curve here) and I'm loving the spell-check-as-you-type feature. I'm an excellent speller but a sloppy typist, especially in the morning, so it's saving me a lot of backtracking!

Friday's Primate Party

ROFL. Good one, dude.

I do hope that last week's casualty was honoured like this anonymous monkey in India. (It seems cruel to stop the other monkeys from taking the body away though).

On a much lighter note, the BBC reports that orangs show an involuntary behaviour that resembles contagious laughter.

Dr Marina Davila Ross from the University of Portsmouth commented,

"What is clear now is the building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy that refer to rapid involuntary facial mimicry in humans evolved prior to humankind."

I've definitely seen dogs laugh before, but apparently they were thinking more along the lines of an ancestral primate rather than an ancestral mammal.

Speaking of which, kudos to the BBC for the following:

"an ancient primate ancestral to both humans and modern apes".

There is much confusion amongst our creationist friends over whether we are or ain't descended from no monkeys. The question of "if evolution is true, how come there are still monkeys?" still raises its ugly head on a regular basis (who the hell is teaching these people biology?). So it's good to see a mass media outlet specify the nature of this relationship.

BBC, you are forgiven for your recent transgressions. I still love you.

Friday's Primate Non-Party

Oh no!

Some sad news to end the year. The cheeky little chappy featured in my first proper Friday Primate Party has died in quarantine, just before he was due to be rehoused.

Another excellent reason not to smuggle wildlife, no matter how cute they are.

Hopefully we can start 2008 with a cheerful monkey story. But if any more of my featured primates die, the Friday parties might have to come to a close...

Friday's Primate Christmas Birthday Party

I wanted to write a Primate Party post that would sum up all that is good about the holiday season. Instead, I found a story about a tourist who has filed a formal complaint against an Indian monkey that stole his reading glasses.

Dude, these things happen. Bah Humbug to you and your insurance company.


But all is not lost! Female Science Professor blogged about Christmas time birthdays (CTBs) yesterday, and lo and behold, two stories today about British zoo primates with CTBs of their own!

First, a rare Colombian black spider monkey was born in Colchester.





And second, a baby gorilla celebrated his first birthday in Bristol (make sure you check out the video - he looks sooo adorable clinging to Mum's leg as she walks around!)





Happy birthday, baby primates! Happy birthday, Female Science Professor and anyone else with a CTB! And a happy Winterval to all the primates out there, whatever species you happen to belong to!

Friday's Primate Party

Two related stories from India today.

Our first monkey has adopted a kitten, and everything is peachy... so far!

I can has monkeh milk?

Our second primate buddy adopted a puppy, which went down well, and then tried to adopt someone's child, which did not. He's now been removed to a zoo, where he will hopefully have the opportunity to look after all the other orphans.

Funnily enough, both articles mention the Hindu monkey god Hanuman. I can't help but wonder whether monkeys who display the aggressive side of their nature, as well as their caring side, are considered to be incarnations of this deity.

I added some links to my blogroll today - go check 'em out!

Friday's Primate Party

Are we nearly there yet?

I've been very negligent and haven't invited any gorillas to Friday's primate party so far. It's a shame, I bet they'd make excellent house guests. So what better excuse to welcome them than a gorilla home-coming party?

The BBC reports on 4 Western lowland gorillas' long journey home. Captured in the wild and smuggled into Malaysia, they were recently returned to a zoo in South Africa, and from there they have been taken to a wildlife sanctuary in Cameroon.

I love happy endings.

Photo credit

Friday's Primate Party

I'm not the monkey they think I am at home, oh no no no, I'm the Rocket Monkey....


Photo credit




Let's move away from the recent beverage theme this week.

CNN has a really cool article* about famous primates in science. Everything from space pioneers and famous linguists to the first known non-human tool user. It's a great reminder of the contributions that primate research can make to human knowledge - but never let us forget that this comes at a cost.

In other news, Mongabay.com reports that the International Journal of Primatology is offering open access to its peer reviewed research articles until the end of the year. Go and check it out!

*It's not often that you'll see that combination of words on this blog

Friday's Primate Party

How did you get so heavy, boy?

We had monkey-spit coffee at last week's party. This week: would you like some macaque milk with that?

A study published in this week's Current Biology looked at the quality of the milk produced by first-time macaque mothers. Male monkey babies received milk with a higher fat content than did female babies, who were presumably conforming to peer pressure to be skinny.

Actually, the sole author (there's a rarity) hypothesises that this discrepancy is the best reproductive strategy for the mother. While daughters will inherit their mother's social status, the status and therefore the reproductive success of males depends on their size and weight. So producing a happy, fat little monkey boy increases the chances that the monkey momma will pass on her genes to lots and lots of cute little monkey grandchildren.

The study didn't mention how the sex of the baby influences the quality of the milk - I wonder whether this is determined during pregnancy, or afterwards? Hormones, pheromones, the alleged male sense of entitlement? Who knows?

Friday's Primate Party

Dude, I am so totally wired right now








D'you want some monkey spit with that latte?

Hey, it's better than cat poo.

Yup, following on from the success of gourmet civet cat dropping coffee, coffee growers in Taiwan are now collecting the beans that the local monkeys spit out after eating the surrounding berry. Apparently the beans "yield a sweeter coffee with a vanilla-like scent", and it's less work for the farmers too.

It sounds like a win-win situation - there's an incentive for the farmers to maintain the monkeys' habitat, and their coffee commands higher prices. And it is definitely better than cat poo.

p.s. I was going to cover this story, but I'll hold off until there's photo or video evidence.

Photo credit

Friday's Primate Party

What's more fun than a barrel full of monkeys?

A whole truck full of monkeys!

Unless you run into it on the highway of course. Luckily no-one was hurt in the accident near Columbus, Ohio.

I spent 3 months in Columbus one summer and nothing this interesting happened the whole time I was there.

I reckon the monkeys were on their way to help clear up these Dutch bananas.

Photo credit

p.s. Scary Duck's condensed films are the funniest things on the internet. Ever. This has absolutely nothing to do with monkeys but I just wanted to share.

Friday's Primate Party

The bad news: one third of the world's primate species are critically endangered.

The good news: a new population of De Brazza's monkey (pictured) has been found in an unexpected area of Kenya, a country in which the species is rare.

The mixed news: the monkeys have colonised new habitats due to rapid climate change. Good news for this one species, but the wider effects are almost guaranteed to negatively impact other species and ecosystems.

Friday's Piggy Primate Party

Various blogs have picked up on the story about a man being killed by monkeys in India. (Hey guys, primates in the news are my thing. Mine.) So I'm going to tell a different Indian monkey story instead.


newindpress.com reports that a monkey is attacking a herd of piglets. Maybe not so unusual, except that until recently the monkey was in charge of the herd and apparently took excellent care of them. He guarded them from dogs, chaperoned them across roads - not quite a sheep-pig, but a pig-monkey.

So why has the shepherd (erm, pigherd?) started to attack his flock? Is he just living up to the stereotype of rebel Indian monkeys?

There's mileage in this story. He'll be on Oprah before we know it.

Bonus Friday Primate

C'mon Jonny and the boys! You can do it! Just don't leave it 'til the last minute this time, I don't know if my heart can stand it.

_____________________

Update: I'm too excited to focus properly on what I'm doing. The BBC's Rugby World Cup Final Countdown is just too gripping. The excitement builds... 22 hours to go!

_____________________

Further update: hubby just called with report of having obtained Canucks tickets for tonight. That should keep me occupied and out of trouble until the rugby starts. 20 hours to go!

__________________________

Final update: ah, crap. Maybe next time. Well played lads, and well done South Africa, you were the better team. Thanks for not completely humiliating us this time.

p.s. Jonny, if you need a hug, you can contact me via my Profile page.

Friday's Primate (Blog) Party

Today's Primate Party features a gem of a blog that I came across earlier this week. Bonobo Handshake describes the current field research of Vanessa Woods and her colleagues at a bonobo sanctuary in Congo. It's full of amazing stories and photos, including the two I've borrowed for this post. I read the entire thing from start to finish on Wednesday morning and missed my workout... again. My childhood dreams of field research are reawakened!

If you're not familiar with bonobos, the stereotype is that they're a less violent, hornier relative of the more familiar chimpanzee. Social co-operation through lots of sex. (If you work with a bunch of prudes you might prefer to read her blog at home.) Unfortunately, I started reading the blog just as the research team left the bonobo sanctuary, but the good news is that they're moving on to study chimps (the cute little dudes in the second photo.) Less sex, more fights?