Archive for the ‘Chimpanzee’ Category

Chimpanzee Builds Fire and Roasts Marshmallows – Casually Signals End of Human Dominance

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

With Dawn of the Planet of the Apes just around the corner, this couldn’t be a more timely reminder of how things can change.

Remember how dramatic of a moment it was when Caesar from Rise of the Planet of the Apes stands up and yells “NO!” to the treatment of his kind and then mankind gets whipped into submission by their primal cousins?

That moment has already happened in a much more relaxed and quiet way.

Kanzi, a famous Bonobo who’s met Oprah and communicates very comfortably with humans via sign language, has quietly signaled the clock is ticking not by tossing us out by windows or spearing us with broken broom handles. Nope.

He’s roasting marshmallows…

And flipping burgers.

No. Really. He flips burgers too.

[Gawker]

Posted in Alternate Reality, Apes, Chimp, Chimpanzee, Gorillas, Monkey | Comments Off on Chimpanzee Builds Fire and Roasts Marshmallows – Casually Signals End of Human Dominance

African Tick Smuggles Itself Into US Inside Scientist’s Nose!

Saturday, October 12th, 2013

Shel Silverstein once had a poem about a snail that lived in your nose and would bite your finger off.

Maybe he was inspired by something that’s been going on in Africa that nobody’s ever paid much attention to…until now…

A US pathobiological science professor returned home from an excursion to Africa. Three days later he discovered he’d picked up a small hitchhiker. That small hitchhiker was a tick. It had hitched a ride inside his nose!

After removing the tick using forceps, a mirror and a small torch, the tick was hustled off to Georgia where its DNA was sequenced revealing that this little world traveler might possibly be an entirely new species.

Tony Goldberg, the professor harboring this tiny nightmare in his nose, is now rethinking his theories about how chimps and humans exchange pathogens. Upon further research, reports and high resolution photos turned up these same ticks hiding in chimps’ noses as well.

In a statement we can all relate to, Goldberg says, “”When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes a lot of willpower not to claw your face off.”

We couldn’t agree more…and we don’t even have ticks in our noses.

[Web Pro News]

Posted in Africa, Bug, Chimpanzee, Insects, Monkeys, Parasite, Ticks, Weird Animals | Comments Off on African Tick Smuggles Itself Into US Inside Scientist’s Nose!

Chimp Gets Cable – Prefers Sexier Premium Channels

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

While we all wait for the scenes in Planet of the Apes to play out in real-life, a female chimp named Gina will give us all a glimmer of hope that at least a small percentage of our future primate overlords will need us for a little sumthin’ sumthin’…

Even if that something’s acting out her favorite love scenes from high-quality fare like ‘Slappin’ Bumpies 2′.

For those still catching up…

Gina is a female chimp at the Seville Zoo in Spain. As part of the zoo’s enrichment program, Gina was given her very own remote control for a television mounted to a wall near her cage.

Not long after Gina began figuring out how to work the remote, she also found that she preferred certain channels over others.

Those ‘certain channels’ were the ones that featured the people that kept her in cages riding one another like pack animals (obviously we’re skirting the ‘P’ word because that tosses red flags).

Pablo Herreros, the zoo’s primatologist wrote in his paper on Gina and her viewing preferences:

“The surprise was when they found that within a few days, Gina was not only using the remote control perfectly well, but that she also used to choose the p**n channel for entertainment, as many of us would have done.”

At least we know there’ll be a few sympathizers we can count on when we end up in cages with bad day-time television blaring at us.

Even if they just want us for our bodies.

We went there.

[New York Daily News]

Posted in Animal, Apes, Chimp, Chimpanzee, Monkey, Monkeys, Nature | 1 Comment »

Female Chimps Have Sex With Males That Bring The Meat

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

skitched-20101223-133209.jpg

New evidence suggests that female chimps in the wild copulate more often with males who share their meat with them on a regular basis. This validates a long held belief that the “meat-for-sex” trade is a key building block in both chimpanzee and early human hunter-gatherer societies.

We are sure there is a Christmas parable in here somewhere. Thanks to WT reader Dan Wheeler for sending this along.

[Science Daily]

Posted in Chimpanzee, Sex | 1 Comment »