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New Resident at the SF Zoo

A new gorilla was born at the SF Zoo this week, as reported on one of my new favorite blogs, Zooborns.com:

The Zoo’s veterinary staff report that there were no complications during the birth and that first-time mother, Monifa, initially showed text book signs of motherhood. Monifa cleaned-up her elevated nest after the birth.  However, as the day progressed, Monifa left the nest and has not climbed back into it since, leaving the infant by himself. The veterinary and primate teams monitored the infant overnight and at approximately 4:30 a.m. they decided to pull the infant from the nest to ensure he had the needed supportive care.

“It’s a critical time for the infant and we are having to make hard decisions,” said Jacqueline Jencek, DVM, chief of veterinary services at the San Francisco Zoo. “Mom was moving as far away as possible from the nest and was avoiding any eye contact, so it was clear that she wasn’t up for motherhood and that we were going to need to step in and help her along.”

125,000 Gorillas, You Say

The NYT reports that a "trove of 125,000 lowland gorillas has been discovered in the Congo Republic." The article is excerpted here:

As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world’s largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations — estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s — had been devastated by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola virus. The three other subspecies are either critically endangered or endangered.The survey was conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society and local researchers in largely unstudied terrain, including a swampy region nicknamed the “green abyss” by the first biologists to cross it. Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, the president of the society, marveled at the scope of what the survey revealed. “The message from our community is so often one of despair,” he said. “While we don’t want to relax our concern, it’s just great to discover that these animals are doing well.”

The society is to release its findings on Tuesday at a meeting of the International Primatological Society in Edinburgh. Conservation society scientists said the continuing threat of Ebola precluded a change in the gorilla’s status. But the discovery was mainly stirring excitement.

Who Knew that Wellingtons Fit Pigs?

Or that pigs could be afraid of mud? These are important things to know, and  Cinders, a small pig in England, offers proof of both. According to an article in the UK's Daily Mail:

While her six brothers and sisters messed around in the mire, she stayed on the edge shaking. It is thought she might have mysophobia - a fear of dirt. Owners Debbie and Andrew Keeble were at a loss, until they remembered the four miniature wellies used as pen and pencil holders in their office. They slipped them on the piglet's feet - and into the mud she happily ploughed.

(This post gets filed under "Monkey-ville" for thematic reasons, even if it's not quite biologically correct. I mean, this pig seems like she would pal around with monkeys and great apes, right? Like maybe that chimp at the St. Louis Zoo who is afraid of grass and walks around with her arms raised in the air to avoid having the grass brush against her. HT to KW).

I, Monkey

Just the other day, a friend commented that I hadn't posted anything about monkeys in awhile. Well this just about takes the cake for today's primate news: monkeys controlling robots with their brains. No joke. Beyond primate life, though, this research has interesting applications in rehab from spinal cord injuries. The NYT reports on the research, which was just published in Nature, here, with an excerpt below:

Two monkeys with tiny sensors in their brains have learned to control a prosthetic arm with only their thoughts, using it to reach for and grab food and even to adjust for the size and stickiness of morsels when necessary, scientists reported Wednesday.

Memory, Chimp Style

Chimps outperform humans in short term memory tests, a new study shows. This story, up on CNN.com, takes us further into the question of the capacities of chimps. According to the scientist who conducted this study, "No one can imagine that chimpanzees -- young chimpanzees at the age of 5 -- have a better performance in a memory task than humans." And yet . . . the research results point to just this conclusion, under the constraints of the study.

Great Ape Trust

The NYT has a piece on bonobos and ape research at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines today.

Des Moines is the most ape-literate city in the United States,” said Robert Shumaker proudly. “People come up to me on the street and start talking about bonobos.

The Chimps of Missouri

We spent last Sunday watching the chimps at the St. Louis Zoo. It was, for me, a breathtaking afternoon (I'd never seen that many chimps, that close), though there's always something complicated about watching animals in captivity. They romped around an outdoor enclosure, carrying burlap sacks that they would then nap on, munching on hunks of cabbage, grooming themselves and each other, and swinging from branch to branch of a network/playground of trees.

Today's MSN carries a story about new research about chimps teaching each other how to use tools and gadgets.

Trumpet of the Swans

Breaking news from the Great Ape Trust:

Two trumpeter swans have a new home at Great Ape Trust of Iowa and after they’ve had a chance to settle in, they’ll soon have new names, thanks to their bonobo neighbors.

Spelunking Chimps

Breaking news from the Great Ape Trust of Iowa:

"Chimpanzees in Senegal apparently have much in common with our earliest human ancestors. A month after Iowa State University Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jill Pruetz reported chimpanzees at her Fongoli research site are using spear-shaped tools to hunt, her new study indicates those same chimps are also seeking shelter in caves to get out of the extreme African heat. The National Geographic Society-funded research is the first to document regular chimpanzee cave use."

Read the full article here.

Chimp Charms

This article in today's NYT details the many charms and abilities of chimps:

Other experiments at Kyoto’s primate center demonstrated the ability of chimps to recognize themselves and focus attention on others. Masaki Tomonaga, who conducted the tests, said that an infant made eye with its mother at about 2 months and that sometime after the first year was able to maintain a gaze as the mother moved about.

Dr. Tomonaga said such “gaze following” developed in humans about the same age, “though infant humans generally have more complex interactions.”

Misato Hayashi, also from Kyoto, described experiments with infant chimps’ manipulating nesting cups and square and cylindrical blocks. They were slower to learn than humans, but the manual dexterity was there. A human starts stacking blocks shortly after age 1, he said; chimps are almost 3 before getting the hang of it.