Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Season 2

Watch all of seasons 1 & 2 here!

Nerd music: GTCA video

MEAT FOR SEX

FROM Geekologie via BBC:

"In a move that proves that chimps have created a much awesomer society than we have, researchers have discovered that males will trade meat to females in return for regular sexy times. And apparently the NOMs for PEWs exchange program is completely legit in their advanced legal system!

This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are.

"What's amazing is that if a male shares with a particular female, he doubles the number of times he copulates with her, which is likely to increase the probability of fertilising that female."

Yow yow! Is all this Animal Planet talk making anyone else in here steamy? I swear, meat for sex, that's even better than a handful of $20's! Now, where can I rent a monkey suit this far from Halloween? Also, hot wings. I'm gonna need hot wings."

Original Paper from Cristina Gomes and Christophe Boesch from the MPI-EVA published in PLoS ONE:Gomes CM, Boesch C (2009) Wild Chimpanzees Exchange Meat for Sex on a Long-Term Basis. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5116. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005116

Update from Northern DRC

Check out Cleve Hicks' report on his work with the chimpanzees from Bili, Aketi and surrounding areas in Northern DRC on the Wasmoeth Wildlife website. There are three e-books (around 50 pages each) of amazing images and heart wrenching details about the bushmeat crisis and mining activities in Northern DRC. Cleve has included information about the chimp surveys he has been conducting and the orphan chimpanzees that he has been confiscating (when he can), as well as many other aspects of his work in the area.
Despite the seemingly large number of chimps in Norther DRC, Wasmoeth Wildlife is the only NGO working there, so I encourage you to support them and Cleve by visiting their site.

Part 2 can be found here
Part 3 can be found here

Zoologic - a FutureShort film

Dir. Nicole Mitchell / USA / 2007
A penguin and gorilla team up to lead the other animals in a comedic revolution against a zoo keeper who just wont leave them alone.

Future Shorts is the largest short film organisation in the world, running mini film festivals in over 25 countries where over 25,000 people attend every month. They are also a distributon label and cinematic events company devoted to putting the excitement back into cinema. Future Shorts believes in the short film medium as a means of furthering cross cultural understanding through film. Their youtube channel channel brings you an eclectic mix of innovative, raw, fresh and inspiring films from here and yonder.

For more information visit their website at: http://www.futureshorts.com

More complex tool use from the Goualougo chimpanzees

from BBCnews:
'Armed' chimps go wild for honey By Rebecca Morelle (Science reporter, BBC News)

Cameras have revealed how "armed" chimpanzees raid beehives to gorge on sweet honey.

Scientists in the Republic of Congo found that the wild primates crafted large clubs from branches to pound the nests until they broke open.

The team said some chimps would also use a "toolkit" of different wooden implements in a bid to access the honey and satisfy their sweet tooth.

The study is published in the International Journal of Primatology.

Crickette Sanz, from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said: "The nutritional returns don't seem to be that great.

"But their excitement when they've succeeded is incredible, you can see how much they are enjoying tasting the honey."

Honey monsters

Chimps' love of honey and their ingenuity at accessing it are well known amongst primatologists - previous studies have revealed how the great apes can fashion sticks to dip into or prise open nests.

But until now, nobody realised how prevalent the beehive-bashing behaviour was amongst chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle in the Congo Basin.

Dr Sanz said: "It seems these chimps in central Africa have developed more sophisticated techniques for getting at the honey than populations in eastern and western Africa - maybe it is some kind of regional feature."

Perhaps for obvious reasons, the chimps avoided bee species that sting, targeting the hives of stingless bees instead.

Dr Sanz told the BBC: "But these nests are tough to get into - they can be at the top of the forest canopy, at the end of a branch - and the chimps will go up there and hang at all sorts of precarious angles to get to the honey, using these clubs in any way that they can to access it."

The video footage, which was filmed by the researchers over four years, revealed the chimps' sheer determination to get at the sweet stuff.

Dr Sanz explained: "Nobody knew they would pound over 1,000 times to get to the honey.

"Sometimes it could take several hours - they would start in the morning at around 1000, then take some rests, and then finish up at about 1400 or 1500 in the afternoon.

"It is quite physically challenging - in the videos you can see how large those pounding clubs are - some weigh over a kilogram."

The primatologists also found that the Congo chimps' tool use was more sophisticated than previously thought.

David Morgan, a co-author on the study from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, said: "One of the most exciting aspects is that they are using multiple tools to access the honey that is in these hives.

"They have a tool kit ready when they go for honey.

"They will have large pounding clubs and they'll use those to hammer the hives.

"And if that doesn't do, if the holes are too small, then they'll access them using smaller, thinner dipping wands. And they are also using smaller sticks for leverage to get better access to the hive."

The researchers also said that once the chimps had spotted and then crafted a suitable club from a branch, by pulling off unwanted twigs and leaves with their teeth or hands, they would set it aside for later use.

Dr Morgan said: "They cache them in the canopy."

Last week, the same team also reported how Goualougo Triangle chimps were crafting fishing rods with a brush-tipped end to fish for termites, and the scientists say there is still much to learn about tool use in these chimps.

However, they told the BBC that the chimps' future was uncertain, as the primates and their habitat were under threat.

Dr Morgan said: "These beehives are found in tree species that are exploited for logging, so this could be a direct affect we have on their behaviour, their feeding and their conservation."

Visit the Goualougo Website here and the Goualougo Youtube page here!

Monkeys learn to floss from mom

by Charles Q. Choi from National Geographic News (Monkeys That Floss With Human Hair Learn From Mom?) -March 12, 2009

Long-tailed macaque monkeys teach their babies to clean their teeth, according to a new study that says females slow down and exaggerate their motions when they notice their young watching them floss.

Macaques living near a Buddhist shrine in Lopburi, Thailand, are known to pull out hair from visitors to use as floss.
Worshipers see the monkeys as divine servants, the researchers said, which helps explain why people let the macaques pull out their hair.
About 50 of these monkeys have been seen jerking strands of hair back and forth between their teeth. Similar behavior has been seen before using coconut fibers or twigs.
To find out how the macaques learn to floss, primatologist Nobuo Masataka at Kyoto University and his colleagues scattered 8-inch-long (20-centimeter-long) hairs from a wig throughout the shrine and videotaped the primates in action.
The researchers focused on seven female adult macaques, each with a one-year-old infant.
When the mothers sat face-to-face with their young, each bout of flossing took roughly twice as long as usual, and the mothers paused and repeated themselves about twice as often.
Markedly similar exaggeration of actions occurs in humans between mothers and children, Masataka said. Scientists have dubbed this teaching behavior motionese.
"These findings suggest education is a very ancient trait in the primate lineage," Masataka said. The last time humans shared an ancestor with macaques, according to genetic analysis, was roughly 25 million years ago.
Further research is needed to confirm if and when the infant monkeys are actually learning to floss from these lessons, Masataka noted.

Findings detailed in the journal PLoS ONE. (Masataka N, Koda H, Urasopon N, Watanabe K, 2009 Free-Ranging Macaque Mothers Exaggerate Tool-Using Behavior when Observed by Offspring. PLoS ONE 4(3): e4768. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004768)