All posts tagged: primates

55-million-year-old fossil teeth rewrite the story of early primate evolution

55-million-year-old fossil teeth rewrite the story of early primate evolution

Published by Jenni Sidey

A newly identified primate species from Wyoming is challenging a long-standing model of early primate evolution. The species, Tetonius varleyorum, lived about 55 million years ago and combines primitive and advanced dental traits that do not fit the previously proposed straight-line evolutionary sequence. The fossils suggest early primate evolution involved branching lineages rather than simple, gradual transformation. Researchers say the new species likely split from an early Tetonius-Pseudotetonius lineage, with related groups later developing similar jaw and tooth features independently through parallel evolution. The discovery highlights the importance of looking beyond Wyoming’s famous Bighorn Basin. Fossils from Smiley Draw reveal a different and unusually diverse primate community, suggesting geography, habitat and timing played major roles in shaping early primate evolution across North America. Tiny fossil teeth from southern Wyoming are changing a familiar story about early primate evolution. A new University of Kansas study describes a previously unknown primate species and shows that ancient primates in North America followed a more tangled path than scientists once believed. The research focuses on fossils from Smiley Draw …

Monkeys sometimes have ‘pets’ like humans

Monkeys sometimes have ‘pets’ like humans

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. We humans love our pets, but we aren’t the only great apes who buddy up with other species. Researchers have documented multiple instances of primates forming bonds with different animals, but a recent study indicates these relationships may be even more common than expected. In a first-of-its-kind comprehensive review published in the journal Primates, anthropologists at the University of Oxford explored various instances of monkeys and apes carrying, grooming, playing, and sometimes actually adopting other creatures. The data pool sources 303 cases across available scientific literature, 66 primatologists surveys, and 58 media accounts describing cross-species interactions involving humans’ close relatives. Situations included tufted gray langurs (Semnopithecus priam) petting squirrels in Sri Lanka, snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti) playing with domesticated pigs in China, and …

A Celebration of Our Close Kinship with Other Primates

A Celebration of Our Close Kinship with Other Primates

Published by Jenni Sidey

While there are a good number of photographic books about a wide variety of non-human primates, renowned photographer Lennette Newell’s new book Primates: A Kinship with All Creatures stands out by offering unique, science-based insights into this group of fascinating, diverse mammals. Here’s what she had to say about this highly unique collection of photographs and facts. Marc Bekoff: Why did you publish Primates: A Kinship with All Creatures? Lennette Newell: I did not set out to do a primate book. I started photographing some primates that were confiscated after being brought into the U.S. on the black market. My work as a commercial photographer (in the niche market of pet advertising) gave me contacts across the entire animal network. I was able to photograph these primates, and from there my interest only grew. I began photographing every available situation, whether in a studio set at a facility or at a location; it became a fascination I wanted to share with a broader audience. My world has become clearer through these experiences, and they have …

Monkeys are surprisingly good at geometry

Monkeys are surprisingly good at geometry

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Only a handful of species apart from humans are known to understand geometry. It’s considered so rare among other animals that most scientists have long assumed even our closest non-human primate relatives struggle to grasp the concept of shapes and space. But according to a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some monkeys may not only have a solid handle on geometrical ideas—they cognitively process them in the same way as humans. “What surprised us wasn’t just that monkeys could do the task. It was that monkeys, children and adults seemed to think about geometric relationships in fundamentally the same way,” Jessica Cantlon, a study co-author, a cognitive neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), explained …

Scientists discover a new monkey species (Likweli) hidden in the Congo rainforest

Scientists discover a new monkey species (Likweli) hidden in the Congo rainforest

Published by Jenni Sidey

Likweli is easy to miss, even for people who know central Africa’s forests well. The small black monkey lives high in dense canopy, moves quietly, and occupies a narrow corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo. An international research team has now identified it as a new species, Colobus congoensis. It is only the fifth African monkey species discovered from a population previously unknown to science in the past 75 years. The recommended common name, Likweli, comes from communities living near its range. Its black coat is broken by orange-cream skin around the mouth and nose, along with a white patch beneath the tail. Colobus congoensis and C. satanas in life. (CREDIT: PLOS One) “Our team evaluated multiple datasets that all reached the same conclusion: Likweli is a distinct species of Colobus monkey we haven’t seen before,” said Julia Arenson, a Yale postdoctoral fellow and study coauthor. “Discovering a primate species is exceptionally rare, especially from populations previously unknown to science.” A decade of uncertain sightings The first clue appeared in 2008, when a field …

Why some primates have even tougher births than humans

Why some primates have even tougher births than humans

Published by skeptic

Scientists have long thought humans have a uniquely difficult birth compared to other primates. And it’s true that from an evolutionary perspective, we face an obstetrical dilemma. As we evolved to walk on two feet, our pelvis changed shape and size and our birth canal became smaller and oddly twisted. Meanwhile, the evolution of our enormous brain meant that a large-headed baby needed to fit through it. But our new study found that some primates have to give birth to babies that are squashed even more tightly in the birth canal. Primate births usually happen at night which makes them difficult to study, especially in the wild. Because of this, we do not know much about them. Rare observations suggest a more solitary, shorter and less noisy labour compared to humans. To get around this lack of direct observations, in 1949, the Swiss anthropologist Adolph H. Schultz looked for clues in anatomy instead. He measured the size of the pelvic birth canal and of the neonatal head in humans and seven other primates. He wanted …

Apes and humans share an ancient laughter rhythm dating back 15 million years

Apes and humans share an ancient laughter rhythm dating back 15 million years

Published by Jenni Sidey

A laugh can feel spontaneous, messy, almost impossible to pin down. But deep inside that burst of sound, researchers found a timing pattern so stable that it may have survived for 15 million years, long before humans began to speak. That pattern appears across all living great apes, according to a study in Communications Biology led by researchers at the University of Warwick. By comparing laughter from orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans, the team found that each species produces laughter with evenly spaced intervals between successive sounds. The finding points to a striking possibility. A basic rhythmic structure in laughter may already have been present in the common ancestor shared by all great apes, then preserved across millions of years of evolution even as species moved in different directions. “How did humans evolve the remarkable ability to speak?” said Dr. Chiara De Gregorio, an honorary research associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick. “Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species. But we’ve found a …

Great apes (including us) have been giggling for 15 million years

Great apes (including us) have been giggling for 15 million years

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. We share 98.9 percent percent of our DNA with many of our primate cousins, but we also may share something a little more silly. Modern humans and great apes may have been laughing for at least 15 million years. The findings, published today in the journal Communications Biology, shed new light on how our speech evolved.  “How did humans evolve the remarkable ability to speak? Speech leaves no fossils, and complex language exists only in our own species,” Dr. Chiara De Gregorio, a study co-author and primatologist at the University of Warwick, said in a statement. “But we’ve found a 15-million-year-old clue in an unexpected place: our laughter.” All living great apes (orangutans, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and humans) laugh. However, it’s been unclear …

Orangutan poop holds surprising clues about how long they breastfeed

Orangutan poop holds surprising clues about how long they breastfeed

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. How do you determine how many months or years animal mothers nurse their babies? If you’re not in a rush and can observe this dynamic, you could supposedly stick around to see when the baby, mother, or both decide that they’re done. However, that could take years. A team of researchers investigating breastfeeding in orangutans recently opted for a different, perhaps surprising strategy—searching for particular proteins in poop.  In a preliminary study published in the journal Communications Biology, researchers searched for milk‑specific proteins in the feces of wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) living in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. These proteins prove that he or she is continuing to drink breast milk.The practice of …

Pregnant gorillas undergo ultrasounds and the results might look familiar

Pregnant gorillas undergo ultrasounds and the results might look familiar

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. When Sachita Shah sent her cardiologist brother an ultrasound of her patient’s heart, he was very confused. The heart was huge, and the left ventricle incredibly muscular. His confusion was warranted, as the ultrasound was not of a human heart. It belonged to another primate—a gorilla. Shah, emergency physician and VP of Global Health at medical equipment manufacturer Butterfly Network, tells Popular Science that if she had shown an ultrasound of a gorilla fetus to a radiologist, they would have assumed it was a human baby.  Shah is on the gorilla care team currently looking after Jamani and Olympia, two western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) mothers at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, Washington. Jamani gave birth on Monday May 18, and Olympia …