primates
Category archives for primates
Global Warming Negatively Impacts Wild Monkey Diets
Posted by Greg Laden on September 20, 2014 
Yes, yes, we hear it all the time: More CO2 is good because plants love CO2 That is a rather dumb thing to say for a number of reasons; nature is not simple. You don’t change one variable and expect other variables to respond as though we were turning a garden hose up or down.…
Is Curious George an Ape or a Monkey?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 19, 2014 
Curious George is called a “little monkey” in all of the Curious George literature, TV shows, and movies. But Curious George has no tail, and generally, that means you are an ape. But, there is one monkey with no tail, or at least one that is vestigial and not visible: The Barbary Macaque (Macaca sylvanus).…
Amazingly cute new primate species in Borneo
Posted by Greg Laden on December 13, 2012 
The Slow Loris (Genus Nycticebus) is a category of prosimian (primates that are neither monkey or ape) that lives in southeast Asia. Most prosimian species live on the island of Madagascar, but there are several African and Asian forms, all of which are nocturnal. The Slow Loris is special because it is the only primate…
Wild angry baboons on the high cliff
Posted by Greg Laden on May 31, 2011 We three had somehow wound our way down into the canyon without experiencing any really steep slopes, but having walked for several miles in the sandy dry riverbed, Trusted Companion, Young One, and I were now looking rather hopelessly at unsafe-to-climb cliffs on both sides, covered with imposing vegetation of the kind that sports a…
On the Move
Posted by Greg Laden on May 20, 2011 On the Move: How and Why Animals Travel in Groups, edited by Sue Boinski and Paul Garber is a compendium of academic research on … well, on how and why animals travel in groups. Notice of this book is a fitting start to a series of reviews of migration-related books that is part of Migration…
Isabel Behncke: Evolution’s gift of play, from bonobo apes to humans
Posted by Greg Laden on March 22, 2011 With never-before-seen video, primatologist Isabel Behncke Izquierdo (a TED Fellow) shows how bonobo ape society learns from constantly playing — solo, with friends, even as a prelude to sex. Indeed, play appears to be the bonobos’ key to problem-solving and avoiding conflict. If it works for our close cousins, why not for us?
What I know about Marc Hauser, the recently ‘investigated’ Harvard primatologist
Posted by Greg Laden on August 12, 2010 I know Marc Hauser, and I trust him. I worked with him for a few years as a colleague on the faculty in the Anthropology department on various administrative matters (such as graduate admission and undergraduate program development) and we taught together. We are very different kinds of people, and did not always see eye…
New Primate Fossil Informs Us of the Ape-Monkey Split During the Oligocene
Posted by Greg Laden on August 11, 2010 The newly reported Saadanius hijazensis may or may not be a “missing link” but in order for this monkey to climb onto the primate family tree, a new branch had to be sprouted. So, not only is Saadanius hijazensis a new species, but it is a member of a new taxonomic Family, Saadaniidae, which in…
Keep an eye on the prey: You’ll find the predator
Posted by Greg Laden on August 10, 2010 In Robert Gardner’s documentary film Dead Birds, the men of a highland New Guinea village guard the perimeter of the territory, watchful for men of the neighboring group who may be intent on sneaking into the gardens to capture and kill an unwitting child or woman in order to avenge a prior death. But they…
Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as irrational as ours
Posted by Greg Laden on August 6, 2010 Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in “monkeynomics” shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.