Gorillas' Hidden History Revealed

A Science article about Olaf Thalmann & Linda Vigilant's work on gorilla population genetics presented at the 2007 AAPAs.

Very Important Scientist of the Year - Svante Pääbo

Check out the TIME 100 most influential people of the year and vote for Dr. Pääbo's worthiness now.

Gabonese Gorillas on 60 minutes

CLICK HERE to watch a few clips from an episode of 60 minutes which featured Mike Fay in Gabon discussing logging, gorillas and re-introduction.

Very Important Scientist of the Month - Kevin Langergraber

Original Paper in PNAS can be found here

From NewScientist.com

Chimp cooperation goes beyond family

Nepotism is known to be important in chimpanzee society, but male chimps' ability to cooperate extends beyond family connections, new research reveals.

This extra level of sophistication is yet another way in which the social behaviour of chimps parallels that of humans.

Kevin Langergraber, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, and colleagues recorded alliances, meat-sharing and other cooperative behaviour among 41 male chimps in Kibale National Park, Uganda.

The team also genotyped each animal to measure how closely they were related. Over a period of seven years, and over 5000 hours of observations, they observed 753 aggressive coalitions - where they cooperated to fight enemies – and 421 instances of meat sharing.
Selfish reasons

Chimps who shared a mother were far more likely to cooperate with each other. In contrast, there was no evidence that the same applied to chimps with a shared father. This is probably because fathers do not stay with their offspring, so a chimp has no easy way to recognise his paternal brothers.

However, since maternal brothers were rare in this population, most of the cooperating pairs were unrelated or only distantly related.

Extensive cooperation among non-relatives suggests that chimps do it for selfish reasons, with the expectation that favours will be reciprocated, says Langergraber. Human societies use cooperation with similar motives – another behaviour shared with our primate cousins.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0611449104)

Update:
More pop science articles about Kevin's work:
* National geographic's report
* The Why Files article
* New Scientist article in Italian
* Polit.ru Russian article

Grad students

Gaps in the Mind

Gaps in the Mind pdf version from www.godslasteraar.org

I am reading a really great book called A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins. The above links to one of its chapters titled "Gaps in the Mind' and I think its a great read about great apes and their relationships to us. I don't agree with everything Dawkins has to say in the book, but its all very thought provoking and well argued.

(in case that doesnt work the work can also be found here:
Gaps in the Mind html version from World Of Dawkins)