A Natural History of Peace. Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace? Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not "killer apes" destined for violent conflict, but can make their own history.
posted by semmi
on Dec 22, 2005 -
13 comments
It's official, humans are dumber than chimps.
These guys show (at the NY Times level) that human kids will over-imitate every ritualized nuance modeled for them, whereas chimp kids just wanna get the damn cookie out of the box. Their website also describes
more of their studies.
posted by Eothele
on Dec 13, 2005 -
42 comments
A new species of monkey turned up in India [
NYTimes or
Rediff]. Though the monkeys are new to science, people in the area are quite familiar with them. They call them "mun zala" or deep forest monkeys. It's a stocky, short-tailed, brown-haired creature they have named the Macaca munzala, or Arunachal macaque.
Maybe not that excting for those of us not excited by, uh, mokeys, but did you know this year there have been other new things discovered?
A new species of plec and one of
Neon goby, even more exciting,
a new electric fish was found as well. A quick search turned up dozens of new fish this year.
ABC News says 178 new things found in the oceans this year alone, raising the number of life-forms found in the world's oceans to about 230,000. The big question is, of course, how many of those will
Taste Like Chicken?
The bad news on the little critter front is
1 in 10 bird species could vanish within 100 years, and I bet they all taste like chicken.
posted by Blake
on Dec 16, 2004 -
16 comments
Copito de Nieve, a.k.a.
Floquet de Neu, the only known white gorilla
dies at age 37. It was one of the symbols of my hometown Barcelona. Snowflake was the star of the Barcelona Zoo, he always surrounded by female gorillas (not surprisingly he produced 22 offspring but none of them albino) and was famous because of his bad mood and tendency to throw things around. He was finally put down today as his skin cancer condition was aggravating. There it goes a no small part of my childhood (although I preferred the dolphins, always so cheerful)...
Snowflake no longer lives with Virunga and Coco... (sigh!)
posted by samelborp
on Nov 24, 2003 -
9 comments
Cloning is not monkey business. According to this article there is something fundamentally amiss in the cloning of primates. Do I sense some hot air going out of the balloons of the guys who predicted they'd be cloning humans in the near future?
posted by MAYORBOB
on Dec 12, 2001 -
11 comments
Monkeys are capable of abstract reasoning according to recent research, which may have "
profound implications for the evolution of human intelligence and the stuff that separates homo sapiens from other animals."
Just so long as there are enough bananas to go round, it's OK by me ...
posted by walrus
on Oct 16, 2001 -
30 comments
Make love not war. Amoung humans closest relatives, these monkeys solve conflict by makeing love. A lot. Female dominate society they have no homicide and tensions in the group are non existent.
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 1, 2001 -
17 comments
