Dancing all over the world

or click HERE to go to the youtube page and then click WATCH IN HIGH QUALITY

For more info on Matt (who likes traveling and dancing and has been doing this since 2005) go to: www.whereintheworldismatt.com

Happy Earth Day!!!

Manifesto for Apes and Nature

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SIGNATORIES PAGE

Tropical forests are disappearing at an excessive speed and with them the last populations of great apes. All specialists are unanimous: if we do nothing gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos will have disappeared by the middle of the 21st century. The situation of orangoutans is even more dramatic; in 20 years time, they might only exist in zoos. Today, it is important to become active in order to stop this Ecocide! We, citizens of the Earth, ask our governments and international authorities to accept as their superior duty to save and protect primates.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE SIGNATORIES PAGE. Bre

Very Important Scientist of the Month - Angelique Todd

Angelique Todd has a little video out on the german beer, Krombacher's, website. In it she talks about the process of habituating gorillas at Bai Hokou in the Dzangha-Sangha National park, central Africa.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE CLIP

Club P.A.N. update

Here are three videos from three of the Club P.A.N.s that are operating around the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast. Julia Riedel recorded these clips when she was in Ivory Coast in February of this year to observe how the project has been running so far.

Visit the club P.A.N. site here

Club P.A.N. Sakré:


Club P.A.N. Petit Tiemé:


Club P.A.N. Ziriglo:


Club P.A.N. is part of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation's (WCF) conservation education program currently operating around the Tai National Park in Ivory Coast.

Club P.A.N. was conceived by the Conservation Group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Primatology. The Conservation Group is made up entirely of graduate students from the department who want to participate in conservation activities in addition to their doctoral studies.

The Conservation Group approached the WCF with the club P.A.N. concept, in order to use their framework, solid infrastructure and strong ties with the Ivorian school system (Ministère de l’éducation National: Inspection de l’enseignement Primaire de Soubré1 (CPE)) to plan and organize the activities of the education program.

see original post about club P.A.N. here

Flying Penguins!!!

(Happy slightly belated April Fools!)

Chimps Eat Dirt, Leaves to Fend Off Malaria

From National Geographic News
by Scott Norris

Chimpanzees in Uganda swallow mouthfuls of dirt to "self medicate" against malaria, according to a new study.

Clay soils consumed by both chimps and humans in Uganda's Kibale National Park contain high concentrations of the mineral kaolinite, a main ingredient in some anti-diarrheal medications.

Experts had previously suggested that chimps ate the fine-grained clay to help ward off intestinal ailments or to obtain added minerals in their diet.

But a French team recently observed that the chimps eat dirt before or after consuming leaves from the Trichilia rubescens plant, which contains potent medicinal chemicals.

Eating the bitter vegetation alone gives the chimps no health benefit, researchers say.

Instead the plant's malaria medicine is activated when fine soil particles bind with chemicals in the leaves.

Chimps often select dirt that has been exposed on the roots of newly fallen trees, added study co-author Sabrina Krief, of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

"This may be to avoid worms, bacteria, and stones," she said.

Krief and colleagues described the research online in the January issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

In humans, soil consumption—or geophagy—has often been viewed as a sign of metabolic disorder or even mental illness.

But the practice is relatively common among animals and is now understood to yield important health benefits.

In parrots and macaws, for example, clay particles are thought to help neutralize toxins present in some favored food sources.

Soil-eating may also provide a soothing coating to the animals' digestive tracts.

In Uganda, however, Krief and colleagues suspected that the chimps were eating soil for other reasons than simply to combat indigestion.

Like humans, chimps can suffer the potentially fatal effects of malaria, although the types of Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease in chimps are different from the four known to infect people. (See a close-up image of malaria parasites attacking a human's red blood cells.)

In previous laboratory studies, Krief's team had found that extracts of the Trichilia plant were effective in fighting the parasite that causes malaria in chimps.

"I noticed that the chimps often eat soil just before or after eating Trichilia leaves," Krief said. "I wondered what might be the effect of mixing the two substances."

To investigate, Krief and colleagues constructed a laboratory model that duplicated chimpanzees' chewing and digestion.

The researchers ground up leaves and soaked them in an acid solution similar to the chimps' digestive fluids. The mixture was then tested for its ability to kill the malarial parasite.

Solutions of artificially digested leaves without soil showed no anti-malarial activity.

But when samples of the soil consumed by the chimps were added to the mix, the researchers found a strong disease-fighting effect.

Chimps and other apes may treat themselves for a variety of ailments by consuming plants, earth, and other materials, experts say.

In another part of Africa, chimps are known to swallow certain leaves to help rid themselves of intestinal parasites.

Previous work by Krief and others had shown that of the 163 plant species Kibale chimps are known to eat, at least 35 are used in humans' traditional medicine.

"The shared use of plants by humans and apes shows how the tropical forest is a unique resource for wildlife, local communities, and western medicine," Krief said.

Jim Moore is an anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the new study.

"It's been known for a long time that chimpanzees selectively eat certain plants in ways and at times that only really make sense if they are self-medicating," Moore said.

"This paper is the first I'm aware of to suggest synergistic action of soil and a putatively medicinal plant, and that's important."

But Moore noted that the anti-malaria effect has only been shown in the researchers' model and not yet in living chimps.

"It isn't clear that chimpanzees are seeking the synergy [between leaves and soil]," Moore said. "The paper isn't persuasive in eliminating other hypotheses for geophagy."