The BBC has also thought that chimpanzees were entering the Stone Age. And now: Eminent anthropologist Frans de Waal explains that politicians have a lot to learn from how chimpanzees show empathy. “How chimpanzees reveal the roots of human behaviour” at BBC Reality: Chimpanzees don’t seek humans out the way dogs do. In many ways, […]
Tag: chimpanzees
News: Anthropologist does not see chimpanzees as fuzzy humans
It’s great to see concern for primate apes taking a rational turn that can actually be in their interests: In recent years, wildlife sanctuaries, conservation organizations, and animal rights groups have told the public to stop touching chimpanzees and other wild animals. National Geographic, PETA, and even Instagram draw explicit links between human touch and […]
Move over Mother Theresa! Wild chimps sometimes share food with others
From ScienceDaily: Sharing meat after hunting and exchanging other valued food items is considered key in the evolution of cooperation in human societies. One prominent idea is that humans share valuable foods to gain future favors, such that those we chose to share with are more likely to cooperate with us in the future. Despite […]
Michael Egnor: Apes can be generous. Are they just like humans then?
Reading the claims for ape generosity in The New York Times, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offers a clarification: There is a fallacy about the human mind that regularly appears in research on animal behavior, and this fallacy is related to the pervasive misunderstanding about machine “intelligence.” It is a misunderstanding about the most basic characteristic of […]
Astonishing conclusion: Chimpanzees can’t speak because they don’t have the mental status
Can you believe a typical science site coming to a conclusion that is so evidence-based? We all know that parrots can talk. Some people may have even seen elephants, seals, or whales mimicking speech sounds. So why can’t our closest primate relatives speak like us? Our new research suggests they have the right vocal anatomy […]
Guess what? It’s NOT humans’ fault that chimps kill each other
Some articles in science journals leave one wondering, that’s for sure. At Nature: Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts Abstract: Observations of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) provide valuable comparative data for understanding the significance of conspecific killing. Two kinds of hypothesis have been proposed. Lethal […]