Primates

well, if you've been reading the jurassic park topic, you'd know we've been discussing the discovery of foot bones belonging to a primate no bigger than a human thumb. in the modern world, the smallest primate that exists is the tamarin, an endangered species, see link... http://www.si.edu/glt/facts.htm

i've retired the chimps topic but didn't kill it, no entries were posted in there so i've created this topic to encompass the many animals that make up the primate family, where chimps belong. here is the link to the conversation going on in jurassic park: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/SpringArk/29/77

ok, let me try that link again: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/SpringArk/29.77

I think the sketch of the new primate progenitor is so darling with a cute shy smile and all that - btw, anyone know how they knew he was smiling just from his foot bones?! Good idea, this topic!

that's a good question! i believe they found two sets of foot bones. how they figured out it was a primate is beyond me (not to mention, he was smiling from ear to ear)....

Probably because it resembled present day primate foot bones. And, in the fossil record they can probably place it and it developed. (No, the Fossil Record is NOT the record your Mom used to dance to when she was your age!)

Did you see the programmes about chimps learning to read and communicate. it was on a while back here and was really amazing. One chimp is now teaching others, and makes complex sentences. It brought up a discussion at home about chimps and souls.

Fascninating - and I'll bet the soul discussion was just as interesting! Did not see the one about one chimp teaching another, though they have shown the Gorilla who learned sign language.

there was one about pigs too, but the chimps beat them all!!

Probably smarter than some of the kids nowadays...

Which, the chimps or the pigs?

In my neighbourhood - both!

well, chimps do use tools, so it doesn't surprise me that they are clever enough to teach each other complex lessons. *lol* maggie!

Does that make then sentient - what is sentience? Is sentience a prerequisite for a soul?

you know, i'm not sure about that. i've always believed that Heaven is gonna be filled with animals but whether they have a soul is something i've always wondered. does it mean that to have a personality one must have a soul?

I hadn't really thought about it properly until I saw that programme with chimps. it really made me think. Perhaps I need to think more about what the soul is. In one sense it could refer to that deep inner place in ourselves, in another the spiritual heart. So is the soul the spirit? Questions, questions. But I saw something in that chimps eyes!

of course you did, intelligence! a meeting of minds. it's lovely to look directly into the eyes of an animal (but do be careful because some animals take it as a sign of aggression)....

The Eternal Question If my soul is part of me If it really belongs to me, Why, unliike the rest of me, is it not my responsibility? I am one, Or am I one? Am I really two, divided between soul and body? I know that I am me. But who is �me�? Is �me� the body that I take responsibility for? Or is �me� my soul after it has left �me�? I don�t know �who� I am I don�t know who �me� or �I� am I don�t know much abut myself, whoever �myself� is Is there really a �me�, do I really exist? (Jodie Rogers, 14 years)

My first visit to a primate house at a large zoo was my last. When I saw the caged "exhibits" looking back at me with the same light of intellect, I was horrified and never went back.

i don't like concrete zoos. went to one in san antonio and it was awful. i paid $8 for them to keep the concrete washed down once a month.....

I hope enlightenment has struck the San Antonio Zoo. Nowadays they cage the visitors and let the animals wander around. Makes sense to me! (How horrible, Wolfie!)

it was. i was upset. the animals were pacing and kids were poking at the glass of some of the exhibits. i wanted to tell them a thing or two but isn't that what their parents are for?

Parents?! Of course it is what they are for, but no one wants to be a parent anymore. no one is responsible for their actions and it is gonna just get worse. Wait'll these selfish children start having their own children! Makes me want to punch out the "parents"....*arrrrrgh*

tell me about it. maybe i'm not such a hardbutt afterall (my kids think so) but i'm always in their face. i think the other parents are afraid someone will hear and turn them in. (or they don't care at all, which i don't want to think about)

You hang in there, Sweetie! You are being a parent, and it is NOT a popularity contest if you do it right. They will, however, use your strength eventually to shape their own children. I have! And I have also been talked to sternly by a son who really did know better at the time. It really is worth the aggravation because the alternative is unthinkable!

*grin* hope you didn't mind the ape card Wolfie - just kidding!

no i loved it!

It does not look the way I pictured Tony...I am disappointed.

*LOL*

(he was dressed up for the occasion! *grin*) A word in your ear, it's bananas for tea From David Dillon in Uganda A LITTLE over a year ago teenager Laura O'Reilly was fighting for her life. As the 16-year-old battled a rare form of cancer, she prepared for the worst. But Laura made a pledge that if she beat the disease she would fulfil her dream of meeting the orphaned baby chimpanzee she had lovingly adopted and now longed to hold in her arms. That wish came true last week when Laura, after overcoming her illness, flew 8,000 miles to the heart of Africa where the two-year-old chimp named Yiki was preparing for a return to the wild. "I just cannot believe I am here," said Laura. When the time came for them to meet, tiny Yiki ambled through the dust towards her. First he shot up a nearby tree and cheekily stole her sun hat. Then in a moment that will stay with Laura for the rest of her life he flung his arms around her neck and hugged her like a baby. Laura said: "He is so beautiful. I never thought I would ever get the chance to meet him and now here he is in my arms. He is so lovely. I am just happy he is going to be all right and be well cared for." Yiki's new home is a chimpanzee sanctuary on the beautiful rain forested Ngamba Island in the middle of Lake Victoria, Uganda. He is the latest addition to a colony of 27 orphaned chimps rescued by the Born Free Foundation and five other charities. Last year the Sunday Express told how Only Fools and Horses star Nicholas Lyndhurst helped introduce the first 15 animals to the �115,000 project. Yiki was left alone and hungry when his mother was shot for food by a soldier fighting in the civil war in the Congo. The soldier then tried to smuggle Yiki out of the country to sell him into the illegal pet trade. Luckily the chimp was confiscated by a border guard and eventually found his way to Ngamba Island. He was weak, barely able to walk and traumatised by his ordeal, but careful nursing by a dedicated volunteer has brought Yiki back from the brink of death. Now he is slowly being introduced to the other chimps and will eventually become part of their group. His contact with humans is carefully monitored but Laura was allowed a few precious hours to get to know him. She said: "I have always loved chimpanzees. I read about the terrible things that happen to them and how endangered they have become. I adopted Yiki through the Born Free Foundation so that he would have a better chance of surviving but it is scary how many more chimps are out there suffering and dying. "Now that I have seen this place I know Yiki is going to be OK. When I was very ill I believed I would die. It was very scary but I tried not to give up hope. Thinking that one day I could see Yiki and the other chimps helped me a lot." Laura, from St Helens, near Liverpool, was struck by cancer when she was 14. After complaining of pains in her chest doctors discovered a rare malignant tumour, known as PNET, that eventually grew to the size of a melon. Months of chemotherapy were ineffective and Laura reached rock bottom, losing five stones in weight and all her hair. Her schoolteacher mother, Linda, 40, said: "She was very low and refused to let her friends see her in hospital. She asked me if she was going to die and a couple of times she asked me to just let her go. It was the hardest thing in the world for a mum to hear." In February last year doctors decided to operate and Laura underwent 11 hours of surgery to remove the tumour. The operation was successful and after a further period of chemotherapy Laura has been told the cancer is in remission. Linda said: "She has been so brave and I am very proud of her. I think that she is only just coming to believe she has a future and this trip has helped her realise that." The childrens' charity Make A Wish Foundation teamed up with Born Free to fly Laura, her mother and step-father Alan to the sanctuary just a few miles south of the equator. The 100-acre island is also home to deadly bugs, hippos, biting soldier ants and millions of lake flies. It is an extreme environment where the searing heat of the sun is interrupted daily by deafening tropical storms that lash the island with torrential rain. For the chimps it is paradise. By day they rampage through the jungle swinging from tree to tree, stuffing their feet and hands with as much fruit as they can find. At night they return to a spacious pen for a supper of porridge and corn on the cob. Because they have been through so much suffering the chimps cannot fend for themselves completely, but there are plans to introduce the strongest back into the wild. Many have been subjected to savage cruelty. Trapped and snared they are abused to within an inch of their lives. Sadly the numbers of orphaned chimps is on the increase and soon the sanctuary will reluctantly have to turn some of them away. VIRTUALLY all the chimps on the island started their troubled lives in the Congo. The conflict has as sparked a surge in the numbers confiscated by the authorities from one a year to almost one every month. The costs of rescuing just one chimp are enormous. A specially-trained vet flies to the stricken animal to administer emergency treatment. Many die but those that survive then undergo a period of quarantine, rehabilitation and intensive care before making the three-hour boat journey to Ngamba Island. Debbie Cox, the project director who has spent 15 years caring for chimps, said: "We are confiscating nearly one chimp every month these days. Their condition varies. Some are very close to death with appaling injuries. They are never well cared for, often they have been fed on beer and tea by the poachers. One chimp we recently picked up had gashes in its side right down to the bone. Amazingly she survived." "Many of them come from the Congo. The market for bush meat has exploded and the adults are killed to feed that trade while the babies stolen to be sold as pets abroad. In America a chimpanzee can fetch up to $40,000, so there is little wonder why the trade is booming. If things carry on the way they are the chimp population will be close to zero within five years. "Ngamba Island just cannot cope with numbers that are coming and we will need to set up more sanctuaries if we are to save these poor animals." WildCrew is Born Free's club for children aged four to 16 who love wildlife. Membership costs �12.50 a year and each age group has a pack including stickers, poster, folder, membership card, activity sheets, magazines and mailings throughout the year. To join, fill in the coupon on the right. � Express Newspapers, 2000

Chimps take cooking tips By BBC News Online's Anne Lavery Apes have taken another step closer to human behaviour. A group of captive chimps in Spain have started to pur�e their food. This is the first known case of chimps preparing food purely to please their palettes. Chimps are very creative when it comes to obtaining food. They can spend hours fishing termites out of mounds using a thin stick or cracking open nuts with exactly the right shaped stones. However, primatologist Dr Samuel Fern�ndez Carriba at Autonoma University, Madrid, who has been observing the chimps, says there is a difference between getting hold of food and "transforming it the human way". The chimp behaviour is reported in New Scientist. Gourmet chefs The master chef of the chimp group is Linda, whose teeth were removed by a previous owner to avoid being bitten. Chimps at the university zoo are fed whole fruits and vegetables so Linda worked out that she could eat apples by rubbing them over a sharp corner and licking the pulp off the wall. Carrot, lemon and orange pur�es soon followed. Other chimps began to imitate her technique and now nearly the whole group indulges in this culinary pursuit. Unlike Linda, the other chimps have no practical need to prepare their food. Dr Carriba believes that since they choose to take the time to do it, they are enjoying the new tastes and textures produced. New tricks Renowned chimp expert Dr Jane Goodall said: "This is totally fascinating. It's one more example of the ingenuity of chimps. Young chimps can pass on their tricks to new groups "They've started this behaviour in this case because they're captive and have more time and are bored. In the wild, only the young are inventive because they have more time to play around. The reason we don't see this kind of adult behaviour in the wild is probably because they simply don't have time. Instead, chimps spend lots of time on complex food acquisition." Dr Goodall said that chimps could often be observed learning new tricks from each other. Experiments in zoos around the world have shown that when young chimps are moved from one group to another, the new group picks up the young's useful behaviour patterns. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_884000/884070.stm

i sure hope they don't give them blenders! i think it's a prime example of adapting and overcoming to ensure survival. thanks, maggie

Maybe the chimps will want food processors.

http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/primates.html Try this site for some great pix and sound clips....

I once dated an animal from Indiana U. Not all that sure he was a primate, though...