Today, Friday 8th, between 2-3pm, Tom Holder will appear live on Capital Public Radio (90.9 KXJC), to be interviewed by Jeffrey Callison on the program “Insight“. The interview will last 20 minutes at some point during the hour of 2-3pm.

Also, earlier in the day, at 12:00 noon, Holder will be speaking to students and scientists at the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) Seminar Hall (part of UC Davis). Any students of members of the public willing to attend should RSVP to reception@ucdavis.edu. Some more details can be found here.

The talk will be recorded and hopefully will appear in some form on the website or youtube.Keep an eye on the Calendar page for updates.

Cheers

Tom

An island in South Carolina is home to thousands of monkeys.The exact location cannot be disclosed because the animals on the island are federally protected. It took years to find the place called Monkey Island.

Finding an island that few people believe exists is nearly impossible.

Vince Loper thought it was an urban legend, and his family has owned a home directly across from Monkey Island for decades.

"Like you said, a lot of people don't believe it," he said.

Vince and his son, Devin, helped a North Carolina television news crew from WCNC find what so many say is a myth.

After several hours of snaking through South Carolina estuaries, the years-long search paid off.

Slowly, one at a time, they came towards the boat.

They're called Rhesus monkeys and they're native to India, but 3,500 of them live in the wild in South Carolina.

Rhesus monkeys were first brought there in 1979 and they were left on the island to live and breed almost 750 newborns a year.

Every monkey is tagged or tattooed, and each year 500 monkeys are taken to labs.

Over the decades, they've been used to test vaccines for everything from AIDS to bio-terrorism agents.

Few people, even those who live there, have ever seen them.

"Just in amazement that there's monkeys running around on that island right there," said Lopez. "Ha ha ha."

Seeing them first hand in the Carolinas is a bit mind boggling.

If you wash yourself with raw onion, you might expect some aggression from your friends. Now it seems the same holds true of some primates – but for rather different reasons.

For capuchin monkeys, rubbing themselves with pungent-smelling plants is normally a communal and perhaps even a therapeutic activity.

Wild capuchins are known to get together and rub their fur with plants like citrus and peppers that have antifungal or antiseptic properties.

Some biologists think that the behavior is medicinal, and that the monkeys are ridding themselves of parasites with their plant rubs. But until now no-one had looked to see what happens after the communal rubs.

Annika Paukner and Stephen Suomi at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Poolesville, Maryland, observed 15 captive capuchins who liked to rub themselves with yellow onions – which also contain high levels of antifungal or antiseptic compounds.

They watched what happened after giving the monkeys either onion or apple as a control, five times a week for five months.

The researchers found that while the capuchins were very social with one another during the onion washing, this polite behavior vanished afterwards, and levels of aggression increased.

Capuchins are thought to signal their relative ranking in the colony by urinating on their hands and feet, so the smell of the onion might be overpowering that signal, says Paukner.

"We think the scent of onions may make detecting the scent of urine difficult or even impossible, which may cross wires in the capuchin social circles and explain the increased aggression," she says.

Lesson for today: Don't wash with onions around Capuchins. They'll tear you apart!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="230" caption="Hand gestures & language"][/caption]

About language and hand gestures:

Talk to the Hand: Researchers speculate about how prehuman species developed the capacity for complex language.

Well it seems my highly entertaining and remarkably astute Antipodean friend, Archie, has chosen me to be a recipient of the Golden Primate Award For Blog Excellence. Apparently, in my hands words are lethal weapons -- one of the best compliments I've ever been given. It rates up there with the time someone told me I had really nice teeth. That's how good it is. It makes me want to brush all the more rigorously, so that I can be even more shiny, golden and generally excellent ;)

Cheers, Archie!

The award was created by Dorid -- who I've only just discovered, thanks to Archie, and who is actually rather cool. Upon receiving the award, it is apparently customary to link back to its creator and choose more people to receive the award. The criteria are:

"It's issued by bloggers to bloggers who show excellence and thoughtfulness in blogging, especially those who are not afraid to be related to a monkey."

With this in mind, I'd like to share this privilege with...

Mike -- a keen mind, a genuine guy and someone who even occasionally laughs at my jokes!

Will -- okay, so he's abandoned Yorkshire for the Canadian wilderness. That doesn't make him a bad political commentator.

kallioppe -- a fellow Idiosyncratican and a great writer on... well, what it's like to be a writer trying to get a foothold!

Lottie -- she's a huge George Carlin fan. Do I really need to say more?

I say, boycott Space Chimps! Don't let this be the first step of humankind's demise.

At this rate a monkey might prove the Riemann hypothesis. Rhesus macaques have been shown to possess yet another numerical talent once thought unique to humans – they can simultaneously count audible beeps and dots on a computer screen.

Their ability to comprehend numbers not as just discrete images or sounds, but as abstract representations that can be combined suggests that such math skills aren't unique to humans, says Kerry Jordan, a psychologist at Utah State University, Logan, US, who led the new study.

This sort of evidence "shows that [animals] have these precursors to math very early on in the evolutionary line and early on in development," she says.

I think many of these monkeys were involved with mortgages. I bet one runs FannieMae or FannieMac. In fact, I beleive Enron hired a bunch in their Accounting Dept.

Jordan and colleague Elizabeth Brannon, of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, US, trained two eight-year-old female macaques to equate beeps to dots on a computer screen. So if a monkey heard seven beeps, it knew to tap a square on the screen displaying seven dots.

Next, the researchers tested the monkeys' training in adding dots and beeps together.

The animals were presented dots of different sizes flash onto a screen. At the same time they heard a series of short tones.

To determine if the monkeys could combine the two, Jordan and Brannon showed the animals a screen with two numerical choices, represented as dots – one the correct sum, one incorrect.

Both monkeys did better than 50:50 – one added the sights and sounds correctly 72% of the time, the other 66% of the time.

This may qualify them for "Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?".

Both monkeys tended to make mistakes when the right and wrong answers were numerically similar. For instance, if the choices were one and eight, the animals rarely got it wrong. But they found it harder to choose between, say, five and six.

People make the same kind of errors when making snap numerical judgments, such counting the number of people in a crowd, says Jordan, which is further evidence that our abstract math skills aren't unique.

The monkey's ability to add numbers seen and heard together makes sense in the wild, says Jordan.

"If you have an animal trying to make a decision to defend its territory, it's going to want know how many other animals it has to deal with," she says. It would do this by combining information on how many animals it could see with how many it could hear.

Irene Pepperberg, a psychologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who trained a parrot named Alex to add small sums, says the paper confirms observations in the wild.

Flycatchers, for instance, seem to communicate their mood to other birds using a numerical combination of song and wing motions. The more wing flicks and songs, the more likely it is to attack another bird, she says.

So it looks like the monkeys are lying in wait until our population is low enough for a full on assault.

It appears our days our numbered…literally.

Pero Dios no calla. Habla. Y hoy lo hace de manera clara. A Dios se le rompe el corazón. Él mismo lo dice. Dios se inclina ante el hombre, ante el sufriente, y le da de comer. Encolerizado responde con amor. Dios no calla. Su tristeza es su gran grito.

Me parece cojonudo que en el Congreso se aprueben los derechos de los primates. Seguro que a partir de ahora a ningún mono se le toca el pelo. Han tenido más suerte que algunos...

Un abrazo fraterno

Two-year-old Diksha Mehta really does have a cheeky monkey for a brother.

The Indian girl has become virtually inseparable from an Indian Langur named Ramu which her parents adopted when an attack by stray dogs left him orphaned.

Parents Anil and Rashmi Mehta now see Ramu as the perfect addition to their family.

"Ramu has made all the difference to our family, I feel as if he is part of my life like Diksha," says Mrs Mehta from their home in Bharauch town in the north-western Gujarat state.

Nothing boosts self-esteem like being comparable to a monkey. This kid won't have any image problems when she grows up I'm sure.

"They love to play together and I am as protective of him as I am of Diksha."

"I cannot let anybody take him unless he wants to go."

Ramu was rescued by Mr Mehta, a 36-year-old animal activist, after stray dogs killed his mother.

Still a baby, he was only two days old when he was introduced to Mrs Mehta, 28, and Diksha.

Worried about what to feed and how to care for a wild baby monkey, Mr Mehta left Ramu in the more than capable arms of Rashmi.

"Though my wife agreed to bring the baby monkey home it was very difficult for us to take care of a two-day-old monkey. We did not know what to feed him and how," he said.

"But my wife managed to overcome all such things."

Ramu is fed using Diksha's old feeding bottle and his diet is supplemented by fresh mangoes and oranges.

Langur monkeys are unusual in the monkey world because they spend the majority of their time on the ground and only sleep up in trees.

That is why they are prone to attacks from wild animals and stray dogs who find groups of the monkeys lounging around in the sun.

But what is most amazing is the way that Ramu himself has become attached to his new adopted family.

He clings to his new 'mother' wherever she goes, around the house or on the moped going to the shops.

Town hall staff in a Poland town has put a chimp on the payroll as a tourism promotions inspector.

The 17-year-old ape, called Bobby, is being paid €70 (about R870) a month in Radkow (Occupied Territory) to plug a local beauty spot - and is already up for promotion.

Bobby plugs a district called Table Mountains which has a cluster of outcrops known locally as Monkey Rock.

He is taken around the region's capital Wroclaw with a sign on his back advertising the Table Mountains range and his job title of Bobby, Tourism Promotions Inspector, to inspire people to visit.

"If Bobby achieves good results he may be promoted to a post as a specialist. Then he'll be able to count on a pay rise," said his council boss Marek Niewiadomy.

Why can't a human do this job? And the bigger question… Is any job safe from Punkeys?

Is yours?

Compare him to the goats and he may look small, but Mani the monkey, shepherds nearly 100 goats in Nelliyampathy, Palakkad (Occupied Territory). The goat's ear is how he controls them. He makes the goats turn right or left by tugging gently at their ear. And he attacks anyone who ventures near the goats.

Manager Greenland Farmhouse, P J Martin says, "I got this monkey three years ago, bleeding all over. I applied medicine and left it with the goats. Afterwards he was always with the goats. He does all works as a man does it."

Three-year-old Mani effortlessly shepherds the goats through the coffee plantations. He even eats his food sitting on top of a goat. The tourists who visit the farmhouse watch Mani with awe.

A tourist, S Snehalatha says, "We came here on a holiday and heard about this monkey that is a shepherd. We have been watching him for the past few minutes and he seems to do his job better than a man would."

And you're in trouble if Mani catches you watching the goats. But then again, he's got a job to do.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.626696&w=425&h=350&fv=] 

Monkeys sterilized by the Himachal Pradesh wildlife department last year are reproducing again, officials said Monday.

To control the monkey menace in areas like Shimla, Kufri and Rampur, the wildlife department sterilized about 1,300 simians last year. The males were sterilized using laser technology and tubectomy was performed on females using the laparoscopic technique.

But now the animals are breeding again.

'Most of the monkeys sterilized by the wildlife department are pregnant again,' said a wildlife official at the Himalayan Nature Park in Kufri.

He said 60 monkeys were caught from Kufri, about 25 km from here, and taken to the Tuti Kandi rescue centre on the outskirts of Shimla. After sterilization, they were released in the same area. At that time, male and female monkeys were tagged. But now the tags have also disappeared.

Is it possible…hear us out…but is it possible that these untagged monkeys are…oh, I don't know…DIFFERENT MONKEYS!?!?

Lalit Mohan, conservator of forests (wildlife), admits that there were some flaws in the sterilization program.

Mostly on the sterilizing part.

The drive hit several road blocks due to the shortage of expert monkey catchers. Now the department is training its own staff.

'We have been working on several projects to control their population,' he said. 'The monkeys might be pregnant again as all animals could not be trapped at that time. Those that had been left out at that time might be breeding now.'

R.S. Kishtwaria of the College of Veterinary Sciences in Palampur, about 175 km from here, says sterilization is not good for animals and results in abnormal behavior.

'The behavior of the monkeys should be studied for a while after sterilization. There are instances when the sterilized monkeys get themselves injured during fights, especially when they are in heat, or start attacking human beings,' he said.

The wildlife department had also initiated mass translocation of simians to remote forest areas from cities and towns to control the menace. But this process was not successful as the territory vacated by the animals was occupied by more aggressive troops of monkeys from surrounding areas.

According to a census conducted by the wildlife department, the state has 319,000 monkeys.

It seems that Peta forgot to check the newspapers after their infiltration because there were plenty of stories regarding the perfectly acceptable conditions inside ONPRC. So for the benefit of Peta members, here's some of the news coverage.

Peta's video accused ONPRC of mistreatment - let's look at some of their claims:

Claim 1. Employers spray high power hoses to clean cages with monkeys inside - soaking the monkeys and upsetting them.

Truth: The Peta video is filmed so that most of the cage is not visible. You cannot see that the technician is actually cleaning the pans beneath the cages while the monkey is safely perched on a shelf away from the water. This is a regular occurrence and does not distress the monkeys. Here is actual footage showing what happens during pan cleaning (rather than Peta's video which shows how the ceiling appears during pan cleaning).

Peta's claim that the noise of the water hitting the cages causes the monkeys distress is unfounded when one considers that the monkeys are not sitting right next to the point of impact, but a few feet above on a shelf.

Claim 2. Technicians chase monkeys around their cages in order to move them. This causes the monkeys great distress.

Truth: Unfortunately if you have a large cage then it will is more difficult to capture the monkeys (but most would agree that the other benefits of a large cage, such as the one seen below, outweigh this minor inconvenience). The large cages allow monkeys to move around and play freely - improving animal welfare and adhering to the principle of Refinement within the 3Rs.

In order to reduce the need to "capture" monkeys, positive reinforcement is used to train monkeys to help researchers. Below we can see a monkey being trained to press a button, and later the monkey will be trained to offer up an arm of leg for blood samples.

Claim 3. Mistreatment has resulted in a rectal prolapses in monkeys within the facility

Truth: Rectal Prolapses are a minor problem for monkeys in captivity, similar to hair loss. These problems come and go without causing the monkey much discomfort (if a monkey does appear to be in pain then a veterinarian will attend to them promptly).

Claim 4. The conditions cause monkeys to go mad - animals can be seen in distress, whirling or pacing inside their cages.

Truth: This is perhaps one of the most insidious claims. Peta try to insinuate that the monkeys seen are acting as they always do - whereas it appears that they are acting alarmed by a presence outside their cage (perhaps one with a camera...) This is most certainly not ordinary behavior, and there is a strong chance that the animals filmed are stress-sensitive monkeys used for certain types of experiments at ONPRC. However the fact remains that the footage was almost certainly taken as soon as the intruder entered the room and before the animals had time to acclimatize themselves to the new presence. See the video below for a comparison of Peta's footage to film taken by members of ONPRC.

[Please favourite, rate and comment favourably on Youtube to ensure more people see this]

CORRECTION:
The following video was entirely shot by Oregon Primate Center (not PETA) to illustrate how certain stress-sensitive monkeys (used for research into behavior) will act abnormally when in the presence of something new (a camera - that looks like a big eye), but will settle down when they realize it is not a threat. Check the previous video to see how a PETA infiltrator misused this fact.

We look forward to next week when Peta will be reporting on cruelty to animals by the Ancient Egyptians.

Cheers

Tom

When a chimp has sex in the forest, will she make a sound?

Depends in part on who's listening, literally, says a scientist who has spent months recording chimp sex sounds in the wild.

With lots of other females within earshot, a female chimp typically doesn't give a call, says Simon Townsend of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. With a largely male audience, though, she's more likely to give what primatologists call copulation squeaks or screams.

And partners matter. Even if she is not fertile, she's more likely to vocalize when she's with a high-ranking male than with some low ranker. The benefit of this strategy could be that she avoids attacks from other females while confusing males about who's going to be the dad, Townsend and his colleagues propose in the June PLoS ONE.

"It's very elegant and quite novel," says primatologist Stuart Semple of Roehampton University in London. Previous work focused on male reaction, so documenting the effects of a female audience brings a new dimension to the research. Also the new paper finds no evidence for the standard belief that female calls incite male competition, he says.

Just what benefits might drive animals to make these calls, often among the loudest in a species' repertoire, has long intrigued evolutionary biologists. Townsend points out that lions, elephants and plenty of other animals get noisy. An influential 1977 paper on elephant seals theorized that a loud female incited males to compete for her. Her whoops attracted attention from the rest of the males around, who vied to displace the current partner. So the calls end up, the theory goes, gaining the female the attention of the top guy in the neighborhood.

That scenario has shown up in other primate species, although there's variability. Among rhesus macaques, it's the males that call.

But among chimps, it's the female that sings out. Townsend says the chimp sex call is distinctive even to human ears, a rhythmic high-pitched sound that could be spelled something like "eeeeee! eeeeee!"

To find out when the females gave the calls, Townsend and his colleagues studied an unusually female-abundant group, about 30 adult females with only five high-quality adult males, in Uganda's Budongo Forest. As females neared ovulation, their rumps enlarged, so Townsend was able to pick promising chimps to follow through the forest. During the course of months, he observed 287 encounters of seven females. When he noticed activity, he scanned the forest for 50 meters around, the distance that the calls carry. To track the females' hormone cycles, Townsend collected urine left on leaves and sent the samples to Germany for analysis.

The females called only 36 percent of the time, and the pattern didn't fit the standard idea of male-incitement. Females were calling less, not more, when with lower quality-males. If the benefit was to attract the interest of top guys, Townsend says, he would have predicted the reverse. Also the females called before, during and after ovulating. So Townsend argues the females give confusing signals about paternity thus possibly enlisting the support of important males in case other females attack.

however, i went to the zoo just the other day, and had quite a different experience altogether.  now, don't get me wrong here - i am by no means a supporter of PETA, nor do i hold animals in higher esteem than humans.  i simply saw the zoo, for the first time, in a very depressing light.  i'm beginning to rethink my ideas about human/ animal interaction. 

to further explore this concept, i'm starting a series on "caged animal" portraits.

i'm not trying to contribute to some "great" cause or anything, i'm just trying to see something from a different perspective than before, and i believe this is worth pondering.  i hope the photographs speak for themselves. 

thankfully, in all the tragedy that is our world, there remains beauty and humor as well.  i hope that some will find all three in a few of these images...

the primates exhibit an obvious parallel to our own mental malaise.  but what really got me was the bald eagle.  i've been lucky enough to have first-hand experience with wild balds when i lived in wyoming, and they are some of the most freewheeling and majestic creatures i have ever seen.

this animal, whose wingspan is longer than i am tall, was in a netted enclosure approximately 10'x10'x20'. talk about a caged bird... but it certainly could have been worse.

another factor that i guarantee contributed to all the long faces, was the temperature.  i was drenched in sweat the entire time as i walked the wide paths inside this enormous facility.  it had to have been over 100 degrees fahrenheit on the concrete, so it's a given that the animals (many with gratuitous amounts of fur, hair, or feathers) were overheating, and desperately trying to keep cool.

please let me know what you think about all of this.  what has been your experience at various zoos around the world?  america's zoos would be some of the best and most humane in the world, i imagine.  and i know that one justification people have for the continuation of traditional zoos is to create an awareness and love for animals in humans, which is the precise effect zoos had on me.  are we justified because of this?

i overheard a woman guiding a tour that day ask a group of children where they think zoos get their animals.  

"from the wild," the children all answered.  

she kindly corrected them.  apparently, american zoos now almost exclusively acquire their animals from captivity.  they encourage captive breeding so that they are not pooling from the wild, therefore in theory, caging animals that are "used" to being caged.

i don't know what the answers are.  and frankly, i feel very strong that there are much more important issues going on today with our own species.  however, these questions will eventually need answers.  as we move forward in our own evolution, have we surpassed our need for these exotic attractions?  are there simply better ways of studying and learning about our animal neighbors?  

all images © andrew r. slaton | photographer 2008

For most folks, a nice hug and some sympathy can help a bit after we get pushed around. Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way. And it works. Researchers studying people's closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation.

''Consolation usually took the form of a kiss or embrace,'' said Dr. Orlaith N. Fraser of the Research Center in Evolutionary Anthropology and Paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University in England.

''This is particularly interesting,'' she said, because this behavior is rarely seen other than after a conflict.

''If a kiss was used, the consoler would press his or her open mouth against the recipient's body, usually on the top of the head or their back. An embrace consisted of the consoler wrapping one or both arms around the recipient.''

The result was a reduction of stress behavior such as scratching or self-grooming by the victim of aggression, Fraser and colleagues report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Frans de Waal of the Yerkes Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta said the study is important because it shows the relationship between consolation and stress reduction. Previous researchers have claimed that consolation had no effect on stress, said de Waal, who was not part of Fraser's research team.

''This study removes doubt that consolation really does what the term suggests: provide relief to distressed parties after conflict. The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behavior is an expression of empathy,'' de Waal said.

De Waal suggested that this evidence of empathy in apes is ''perhaps equivalent to what in human children is called 'sympathetic concern.'''

That behavior in children includes touching and hugging of distressed family members and ''is in fact identical to that of apes, and so the comparison is not far-fetched,'' he said.

While chimps show this empathy, monkeys do not, he added.

There is also suggestive evidence of such behavior in large-brained birds and dogs, said Fraser, but it has not yet been shown that it reduces stress levels in those animals.

Previous research on conflict among chimps concentrated on cases where there is reconciliation between victim and aggressor, with little attention to intervention by a third party.

Fraser and colleagues studied a group of chimps at the Chester Zoo in England from January 2005 to September 2006, recording instances of aggression such as a bite, hit, rush, trample, chase or threat.

The results show that ''chimpanzees calm distressed recipients of aggression by consoling them with a friendly gesture,'' Fraser said.

Consolation was most likely to occur between chimpanzees who already had valuable relationships, she added.

The research was supported by the Leakey Trust.

by Randolph E. Schmid
Associated Press

Chimps and orangutans plan for the future just like us.

They are capable of exercising self-control to postpone gratification and to imagine future events via "mental time travel," according to new research from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden.

Holy crap! Time travel?? They are even more dangerous than we think!

The skill of future planning was commonly thought to be exclusive to humans, although some studies of apes and crows have challenged this idea, say researchers Mathias and Helena Osvath. Now, for the first time, there is "conclusive evidence of advanced planning capacities in non-human species," they say.

The results are detailed online this week in the journal Animal Cognition.

The Osvaths figured this out by showing two female chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and one male orangutan (Pongo abelii) from the Lund University Primate Research Station at the Furuvik Zoo a hose and how to use it to extract fruit soup.

The researchers then tempted the apes (apes are a group that includes chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans) with their favorite fruit alongside the hose to test their ability to suppress the choice of the immediate reward (favorite fruit) in favor of a tool (the hose) that would lead to a larger reward about an hour later (the fruit soup).

The apes chose the hose more frequently than their favorite fruit, suggesting they are able to make choices in favor of future needs even when they compete directly with an immediate reward.

A second experiment involved offering the apes new tools - a functional one that would work like the hose and two "distractor objects," such as a blue plastic car, a small teddy bear or a discarded wrist watch.

The apes consciously chose the new functional tool more often and later used it appropriately, demonstrating they selected the tool based on what it could do for them down the line.

The apes were likely pre-experiencing a future event, that is visualizing the use of the new tool to extract the fruit soup, the Osvaths say.

"This suggests that the advanced mental capacities utilized in human future planning are shared by phylogenetically more ancient species than previously believed," the authors wrote, and "that capacities central to humans evolved much earlier than previously believed."

The researchers suggest conducting similar experiments in the future on small children and on gibbons, the closest relatives to the great apes.

I'm starting to believe children are the closest relative to great apes. Have you ever seen them eat? Ugh.

Disculpad la ausencia, pero entre las fiestas, y el calor, moverse cuesta.

He leído en varios medios que se va a votar una proposición no de ley, para reconocer los derechos de los grandes simios. Personalmente creo, que la trampa esta en lo de los "Derechos", algo muy bonito pero que no es más que papel mojado, tanto los derechos humanos, como los de los animales, son una manera de desvirtuar la ley natural. Y esto de los monos, ya es el nova más, dentro de poco se plantearan darles el derecho a voto, un plátano < 400€ .

Al final lo que va a pasar, es que dentro de dos generaciones, no habrá ningún respeto por la vida, ni animal, ni humana, si ya somos egoístas, y nos cuesta preocuparnos, por un desconocido, ahora que nuestra sociedad se encamina, a equiparar a un animal, con ese desconocido, ¿Qué valor, le darán dentro de unas generaciones, a la vida de un desconocido?

Realmente, en la loca carrera, por progresar, por pagar deudas imaginarias, no estamos dejando de correr, más y más deprisa, sin ser conscientes, de que tropecemos, ¿o no?, nuestro camino tiene un final.

Sobre lo de los derechos de los animales, hay que respetarlos, pero ¿se ha conseguido alguna vez, mediante la legislación, respeto? El respeto es algo muy distinto, al miedo, que se pueda tener a una sanción, o al vació que la sociedad pueda hacer a un individuo, ante determinado patrón de conducta. Aparte de la crueldad innecesaria, de algunos individuos, cuya vida sigue siendo mucho más preciada que la de cualquier animal.

Otra cosa que me preocupa al respecto, es que probablemente aprovechen esta situación, para cargar, un una tradición, tan noble, como son los toros, sobre los cuales, se han pronunciado en contra, un par de ministras de este gobierno, si no me confundo.

Pero bueno, me falta, mucho camino, para poder hacer, algo más que plasmar pensamientos inconexos, estoy pensando en hacer los artículos como los de algún panfleto, que me duele ver de vez en cuando, no solo cualquiera puede entenderlos, si no también escribirlos,

Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project.

Spain may be better known abroad for bull-fighting than animal rights but the new measures are the latest move turning once-conservative Spain into a liberal trailblazer.

Spain did not legalize divorce until the 1980s, but Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government has legalized gay marriage, reduced the influence of the Catholic Church in education and set up an Equality Ministry.

The new resolutions have cross-party or majority support and are expected to become law and the government is now committed to update the statute book within a year to outlaw harmful experiments on apes in Spain.

"We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening," Pozas said.

Keeping apes for circuses, television commercials or filming will also be forbidden and breaking the new laws will become an offence under Spain's penal code.

Keeping an estimated 315 apes in Spanish zoos will not be illegal, but supporters of the bill say conditions will need to improve drastically in 70 percent of establishments to comply with the new law.

Philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri founded the Great Ape Project in 1993, arguing that "non-human hominids" like chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

Next…the right to Vote!

From paintings and photographs to coins and credit cards, we are constantly surrounded by symbolic artifacts. The mental representation of symbols -- objects that arbitrarily represent other objects -- ultimately affords the development of language, and certainly played a decisive role in the evolution of our hominid ancestors. Can other animal species also comprehend and use symbols? Some evidence suggests that apes, our closest relatives, can indeed use symbols in various contexts. However, little is known about the symbolic competence of phylogenetically more distant species.

A new study presents evidence of symbolic reasoning in tufted capuchin monkeys, a South-American species that diverged from humans about 35 million years ago. In the experiment, five capuchins engaged in "economic choice" behavior. Each monkey chose between three different foods (conventionally referred to A, B and C), offered in variable amounts. Choices were made in two different contexts. In the "real" context, monkeys chose between the actual foods. In the "symbolic" context, monkeys chose between "tokens" (intrinsically valueless objects such as poker chips) that represented the actual foods. After choosing one of the two token options, monkeys could exchange their token with the corresponding food.

The researchers examined whether capuchins' preferences in both real and symbolic contexts satisfy transitivity -- a fundamental trait of rational decision-making, according to which if A is preferred to B, and B is preferred to C, then A must be preferred to C.

Capuchins' choices did satisfy transitivity, both in the real context and in the symbolic context. Capuchins systematically preferred item A to B, item B to C, and item A to C both with tokens and with the actual foods. Hence, their preferences were qualitatively similar in both contexts. Quantitatively, however, expressing choices in the symbolic context increased the value distance between the corresponding foods.

For example, when choosing between actual foods, capuchins were indifferent between one Cheerio and two pieces of parmesan cheese, indicating that the value of one Cheerio is equal to two times the value of one piece of parmesan cheese. When choosing between tokens that represented the same foods, the relative value increased -- for example, capuchins were indifferent between one Cheerio-token and four parmesan-tokens.

These results indicate that capuchin monkeys can indeed reason about symbols. However, as they do so, capuchins also experience the cognitive burden of symbolic representation, and in this respect they appear to behave similarly to young children. In sum, though capuchins may not achieve adult-human-like symbolic competence, this study demonstrates that animal species relatively distant from humans have undertaken the path of symbolic use and understanding.

Compared to their sex-mad, peace-loving bonobo counterparts, chimpanzees are often seen as a scheming, war-mongering, and selfish species. (They are!!) As both apes are allegedly our closest relatives, together they are often depicted as representing the two extremes of human behaviour.

Orlaith Fraser, who will receive her PhD from LJMU's School of Biological Sciences in July 2008, has conducted research that shows chimpanzee behavior is not as clear cut as previously thought. Her study is the first one to demonstrate the effects of consolation amongst chimpanzees.

In her recently published article, Fraser analyses how the apes behave after a fight. Working with Dr Daniel Stahl of Kings College London and Filippo Aureli, LJMU's Professor of Animal Behaviour, she found that third-party chimpanzees will try to console the 'victim' of the fight by grooming, hugging and kissing.

Although this behavior has been witnessed in chimpanzees since the 1970s, anthropologists previously believed that the motivation behind it was purely selfish - with the consoling chimp wanting to pre-empt further violence.

See…even scientist presume ulterior motives when it comes to chimps! Cheeky monkeys!

However, the study challenges this assumption. ''If that was the case then there shouldn't be a calming effect from the consolation, rather, just a reduction of aggression,'' said co-author Professor Aureli, ''I think it's much more likely that it is done for the benefit of the others rather than the third party.''

Fraser, who successfully defended her PhD on conflict management in chimpanzees, said: ''Unlike previous studies, this research demonstrates the link between consolation and stress reduction, showing the potential for empathy in chimpanzees as opposed to their more renowned aggressive behavior.''

Apes are the only primates to show consolation, and it has been speculated that this behavior is perhaps equivalent to what in human children is called 'sympathetic concern'. One of the world's leading primatologists, Professor Frans de Waal, of Emory University in Atlanta, USA, said: ''The behavior of young children that falls under sympathetic concern (touching, hugging of distressed family members) is in fact identical to that of apes, and so the comparison is not far-fetched. The present study is significant in that it suggests that the function of this behavior in chimpanzees is similar to humans, in that it comforts the other.''

The allegedly telltale signs of nervousness in humans include scratching ourselves or hand-to-face movements. Similarly, when our simian cousins find themselves in stressful situations they often resort to self-grooming and self-scratching. Fraser and Professor Aureli found that after a fight, these actions occurred with increasing frequency, but when the non-aggressive chimp entered the fray, the agitated ape soon stopped their nervous movements.

Interestingly, the study also found that apes with mutually beneficial relationships will try to calm each other down. Professor Aureli explained: ''It's what we call a valuable relationship - basically those animals that are good friends, not just individuals that spend a lot of time together or groom one another, but ones that actually have some value to one another. For example, they help one another in fights, tolerate one another around limited resources, share food, and collaborate.''

One of the most controversial and divisive issues in anthropology today is whether or not animals can empathize. Fraser said that as well as altruistic behavior, our closest evolutionary ancestors could potentially have an empathetic side. She said: ''Showing the calming effect of consolation is one of the building blocks from which we can learn more about the emphatic abilities of animals.''

Professor de Waal added that this study removes any previous doubt that consolation provides relief to distressed parties after conflict: ''The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behaviour is indeed an expression of empathy.''

Just remember, when you hug, it's easier to stab someone in the back. Don't believe the punkey PR!

Long-tailed macaque monkeys have a reputation for knowing how to find food - whether it be grabbing fruit from jungle trees or snatching a banana from a startled tourist.

Now, researchers say they have discovered groups of the silver-haired monkeys in Indonesia that fish.

Groups of long-tailed macaques were observed four times over the past eight years scooping up small fish with their hands and eating them along rivers in East Kalimantan and North Sumatra provinces, according to researchers from The Nature Conservancy and the Great Ape Trust.
The species had been known to eat fruit and forage for crabs and insects, but never before fish from rivers.

"It's exciting that after such a long time you see new behavior," said Erik Meijaard, one of the authors of a study on fishing macaques that appeared in last month's International Journal of Primatology. "It's an indication of how little we know about the species."

Meijaard, a senior science adviser at The Nature Conservancy, said it was unclear what prompted the long-tailed macaques to go fishing. But he said it showed a side of the monkeys that is well-known to researchers - an ability to adapt to the changing environment and shifting food sources.

"They are a survivor species, which has the knowledge to cope with difficult conditions," Meijaard said Tuesday. "This behavior potentially symbolizes that ecological flexibility."

The other authors of the paper, which describes the fishing as "rare and isolated" behavior, are The Nature Conservancy volunteers Anne-Marie E. Stewart, Chris H. Gordon and Philippa Schroor, and Serge Wich of the Great Ape Trust.

Some other primates have exhibited fishing behavior, Meijaard wrote, including Japanese macaques, chacma baboons, olive baboons, chimpanzees and orangutans.

Agustin Fuentes, a University of Notre Dame anthropology professor who studies long-tailed macaques, or macaca fascicularis, on the Indonesian island of Bali and in Singapore, said he was "heartened" to see the finding published because such details can offer insight into the "complexity of these animals."

"It was not surprising to me because they are very adaptive," he said. "If you provide them with an opportunity to get something tasty, they will do their best to get it."

Fuentes, who is not connected with the published study, said he has seen similar behavior in Bali, where he has observed long-tailed macaques in flooded paddy fields foraging for frogs and crabs. He said it affirms his belief that their ability to thrive in urban and rural environments from Indonesia to northern Thailand could offer lessons for endangered species.

"We look at so many primate species not doing well. But at the same time, these macaques are doing very well," he said. "We should learn what they do successfully in relation to other species."

Still, Fuentes and Meijaard said further research was needed to understand the full significance of the behavior. Among the lingering questions are what prompted the monkeys to go fishing and how common it is among the species.

Long-tailed macaques were twice observed catching fish by The Nature Conservancy researchers in 2007, and Wich spotted them doing it two times in 1998 while studying orangutans.