Chimps like listening to music with a different beat, research finds. Related images(click to enlarge) Photo courtesy of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University While preferring silence to music from the West, chimpanzees apparently like to listen to the different rhythms of music from Africa and India, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
"Our objective was not to find a preference for different cultures' music. We used cultural music from Africa, India and Japan to pinpoint specific acoustic properties," said study coauthor Frans de Waal, PhD, of Emory University. "Past research has focused only on Western music and has not addressed the very different acoustic features of non-Western music. Previous research has found that some nonhuman primates prefer slower tempos, but the current findings may be the first to show that they display a preference for particular rhythmic patterns, according to the study. Source: American Psychological Association (APA) Planning of the Apes: Zoo Chimp Plots Rock Attacks. Think people are the only ones who can plan for the future?
You may change your mind when you hear the story of Santino the chimpanzee, whose premeditated attacks on zoo visitors are described today in Current Biology. When Santino was first transferred to Sweden's Furuvik Zoo in 1983 at the age of five, he was relatively calm and passive, lead study author Mathias Osvath, a postdoctoral student in cognitive sciences at Lund University in Sweden, tells ScientificAmerican.com. But by the time the primate reached sexual maturity at age 17, he had become so aggressive that he killed the only other male chimp at the zoo. (Oddly, Santino had saved the life of his comrade just five years earlier by untangling a play rope that had wrapped around his neck.) It was shortly after this fatal attack that zookeepers began to notice that Santino had developed a habit of throwing stones at zoo visitors, who were safely situated behind a five-foot- (1.5-meter-) high fence.
Young Chimpanzee. For The First Time, Chimpanzees Are Making A Fashion Statement. It’s a trend that’s taken a troop of chimpanzees by storm: a blade of grass dangling from an ear.
The "grass-in-ear behavior," as scientists have termed it, seems to be one of the first times that chimpanzees have created a tradition with no discernible purpose -- a primate fashion statement, in other words. There’s no doubt that chimpanzees have culture, as different chimp groups will use unique tools: to groom, to crack open nuts, to fish for termites. [YouTube] But, according to a study in the journal Animal Cognition, chimpanzee culture now includes something that seems altogether arbitrary: ear accoutrements. “Our observation is quite unique in the sense that nothing seems to be communicated by it,” says study author Edwin van Leeuwen, a primate expert at the Max Planck Institute in The Netherlands.
Lydia Luncz, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved with the research, agrees. [Images courtesy of van Leeuwen, et al.] Researchers observe chimp mother and sister caring for disabled infant. A Japanese study of a chimpanzee mother caring for her disabled infant in the wild has shed light on how humans developed their social behavior.
The first-of-its-kind study by a team of Kyoto University researchers was published Monday in the online edition of Primates, an international journal of primatology. Born in January 2011 in a chimpanzee group in Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park, the female infant was “severely disabled,” exhibiting “symptoms resembling Down syndrome,” according to a summary of the team’s findings. The researchers said there have been only a few case studies of congenitally disabled chimpanzee infants and no reports examining how a chimpanzee mother in the wild copes with a disabled infant.
Michio Nakamura, an associate professor at Kyoto University’s Wildlife Research Center who was involved in the study, told The Japan Times on Tuesday that the research could help solve the riddle of how humans evolved into social animals. Chimp Abandoned On Island Holds Hands With The Woman Trying To Save Him. Everyone had forgotten about the loneliest chimp on the planet — but that's changing fast.
The only survivor of 20 chimps abandoned on an island in 1983, Ponso recently met a woman who is determined to rescue him. When Estelle Raballand, founder of the Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC) in Guinea, first arrived on Ponso's island in the Ivory Coast in February, Ponso welcomed her with open arms. Raballand returned again this April to test the 40-year-old chimp's health. Raballand holding Ponso's handMartin Broomfield People all over the world following Ponso's story are hoping that, if he's shown to be healthy, he might be able to be liberated from his solitude.
Martin Broomfield Ponso's banishment is the result of a decades-old decision made by the New York Blood Center (NYBC). After fulfilling his role as a lab subject for medical tests, Ponso was dropped off over 30 years ago, along with 20 other discarded chimps, on an island near Grand Lahou. Jamal and Ponso embracingMartin Broomfield. Peanut Trick.