Latest Primate Stories
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. -- A private sanctuary on the edge of this Lowcountry town is home to 26 gibbons rescued from poor zoo situations, medical experimental facilities or private pet collections.The sanctuary, off limits to the public, can never release its rescued primates into the wild because they have spent their lives in captivity. However, the International Primate Protection League, based here, does support international charities that preserve primates in their natural environments.The...
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Wah, wow, hoo! Turns out humans aren't the only primates using songs to warn of life's dangers and travails. White-handed gibbons in Thailand's forests have been found to communicate threats from predators by singing - the first time the behavior has been discovered among non-human primates, researchers said Wednesday.While other animals have been shown to use song to attract mates or signal danger, researchers writing in this month's science journal PLoS One said their...
A new study suggests that prehistoric birds of prey made meals out of some of our earliest human ancestors. Researchers drew this conclusion after studying more than 600 bones from modern-day monkeys. They had collected the bones from beneath the nests of African crowned eagles in the Ivory Coast's Tai rainforest. A full-grown African crowned eagle is roughly the size of an American bald eagle, which typically weighs about 10 to 12 pounds.Punctures and scratches on many of the monkey skulls...
The ability to spot venomous snakes may have played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC Davis. The work is published in the July issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. Primates have good vision, enlarged brains, and grasping hands and feet, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. Scientists have thought that these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their...
WASHINGTON -- Language centers in the brains of rhesus macaques light up when the monkeys hear calls and screams from fellow monkeys, researchers said in a study that suggests language skills evolved early in primates.Researchers who scanned the brains of monkeys while playing them various sounds found the animals used the same areas of the brain when they heard monkey calls as humans do when listening to speech.Writing in this week's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, the...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Snakes may make people jump for a good reason -- human close-up vision may have evolved specifically to spot the reptiles, researchers reported on Thursday. Humans, monkeys and other primates have good color vision, large brains, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. But while some scientists believe these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their hands and eyes to pick fruit and other foods, Lynne Isbell, a professor of...
ENTEBBE, Uganda -- Better living standards for poor local communities helps to avoid human-animal conflicts and is the best way to protect Africa's endangered Great Apes, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said on Monday.Opening the Congress of the International Primatological Society -- the first to be held in a country hosting Great Apes -- Museveni said conservation efforts would never work if local communities were not developed at the same time."The biggest threat to the ecosystems...
ATLANTA -- Primate expert Jane Goodall and 18 other researchers sent a letter to federal officials urging them to oppose an Atlanta research center's proposal to do AIDS-related research on sooty mangabey monkeys.The letter urges the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to reject a request by the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, according to a copy filed with the government.Scientists at the research center have nurtured a group of the primates, which are natural carriers of a form of the...
New findings reported this week reveal that at least some primates can use their stored knowledge of recent weather as a tool for guiding their foraging behavior when searching for ripening fruit. The work, which potentially informs our understanding of how cognitive skills developed in humans and other primates, is reported by Karline Janmaat, Richard Byrne, and Klaus Zuberbühler of the University of St. Andrews in the June 20th issue of Current Biology. The question of why primates, and...
By Antoine Lawson LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Elephant trunks and smoked gorilla limbs hang from Emile Ndong's stall, "ripening" in the tropical heat. "A good ceremony, a marriage or an initiation is worthless unless you serve game at the table," said Ndong, a hawker at the bustling Oloumi market in Gabon's capital of Libreville. Ndong is one of many profiting from Africa's booming trade in bushmeat -- a blood-soaked business that has serious consequences for the continent's wildlife....
Latest Primate Reference Libraries
Geoffroy’s tamarin (Saguinus geoffroyi) is a small primate that is native to Colombia and Panama. Its other common names include the rufous-naped tamarin, the red-crested tamarin, and the Panamanian tamarin. It can be found in many different habitats including dry, moist, tropical, and secondary forests. In Panama, it occurs in the central and eastern regions, but is found less on the Atlantic coast. It can be found in Metropolitan Natural Park as well as an urban park with its Panama...
The white-headed Capuchin (Cebus capucinus) is a New World monkey that is native to Central America, as well as the far northwestern area of South America. It is also known as the white-faced capuchin and the white-throated capuchin. Its Central American range includes Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. Reports have shown that it may occur in southern Belize and eastern Guatemala, but these reports have not been confirmed. Its South American range is limited to the northwestern area...
Campbell’s mona monkey (Cercopithecus campbelli) is a primate that can be found in many areas including the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Senegal, and Liberia. Its other common names include Campbell’s monkey and Campbell’s guenon. In 2009, studies revealed that this monkey might have advanced communication skills. It previously held Lowe’s mona monkey as a subspecies. Campbell’s mona monkey appears on the IUCN Red List with a conservation status of “Least Concern”. Image Caption:...
The Ugandan red colobus (Procolobus tephrosceles) is a primate native to Africa. It is an Old World monkey that was not classified as its own species until 2001. Its range includes five areas of Uganda and Tanzania that equal 621.3 miles. These areas include the edge of Lake Victoria in Tanzania and Kibale National Park in Uganda, where the largest population is thought to be located. The preferred habitat of this monkey depends on its location, and it some areas, sustainable habitat is...
The collared mangabey (Cercocebus torquatus) is a species of primate in the Old World monkey family. Its other common names include the red-capped mangabey and the white-collared mangabey, which allows for some confusion with the sooty mangabey. The collared mangabey is native to Africa, with a range including western Nigeria extending into south and east Cameroon. It can also be found through Equatorial Guinea and from Gabon to the Gabon-Congo border near the Atlantic shore. The collared...
