Human ancestors learned to walk upright in the trees, say experts
...became separated and further apart, preventing our ape ancestors from swinging from one tree to the next. This forced them to go down to the ground in order to move between trees. Our ancestors made use of the way they moved through the trees to adapt to their life on the ground. Ancestors of chimp...Lessons from the orangutans: Upright walking may have begun in the trees
...to tell whether you're looking at a human or other ape ancestor. It's been getting more and more difficul...that bipedalism would have benefited tree-dwelling ape ancestors. Because these ancestors were probably fruit-eaters, as orangutans are, they would have ...Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans
... the expression of type II in the PFC of two great ape species, chimpanzees and orangutans, and found that it was not present. Since these two species diverged most recently from human ancestors (about 5 and 14 million years ago respectively), this finding demonstrates that type II is a human-specific fo...Ebola outbreaks killing thousands of gorillas and chimpanzees
...aks may be amplified by Ebola transmission between ape social groups. The study provides hope that newly ... groups are rare. Therefore, when reports of large ape die-offs first surfaced in the late 1990s, outbreak amplification was assumed to be through "massive......referential communication system in a free-ranging ape species." "Finding this ability among ape species, especially gibbons who in a sense bridge the evolutionary gap between great apes and monkey...Ebola-outbreak kills 5000 gorillas
...rilla and chimpanzee populations. Since reports of ape die-offs first circulated widely in 2003, sceptics...ted areas that were designed to be the bulwarks of ape conservation efforts. Ebola has not totally made apes totally extinct from these areas but it has pu...Republic of Congo announces two massive protected areas
... though the deadly Ebola virus has decimated great ape populations in nearby regions of northern Congo an... and may in fact support some of the highest great ape densities on the planet. Along with great apes, this mosaic of swamp forest, clearings, and mixed f...How did our ancestors' minds really work?
...ce changed. It was established that all four great ape species and one-year-old children actually use the location as a way of finding something hidden, even if it is hidden under a completely different object. This outcome suggests that this preference has been part of our cognitive structure for 15 mil...Social imitation in neonatal monkeys
...estigation of neonatal imitation outside the great ape lineage, their study suggests that the trait is not unique to great apes after all. Ferrari et al. tested 21 baby rhesus monkeys' response to various experimental conditions at different ages (one, three, seven, and 14 days old). Infants were held...UAB researchers confirm HIV-1 originated in wild chimpanzees
...g chimpanzees in west-central Africa. By analyzing ape fecal samples collected by trackers from the fores...n) in as many as 35 percent of chimpanzees in some ape communities. The UAB investigators went on to molecularly clone and sequence the complete viral gen...Human and chimp genomes reveal new twist on origin of species
... human-chimpanzee speciation was unlike any modern ape population. Something very unusual happened at the time of speciation", said David Reich, the senior author of the Nature paper, and an associate member of the Broad Institute and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Genetics...'Banana-jawed' fossil mammal linked to rare sound-producing skill
...ecades, Simons visited the site in search of early ape and monkey fossils, as part of his main research focus on the evolution of primates leading up to humans. During these explorations in the "Badlands of Egypt," his group collected enough specimens of Thyrohyrax to allow a systematic analysis of its j...Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation
...his study shows that as humans diverged from their ape ancestors in the last five million years, genes for transcription factors -- which control the expression of other genes -- were four times as likely to have changed their own expression patterns as the genes they regulate. Because they influence the...Most human-chimp differences due to gene regulation not genes
...his study shows that as humans diverged from their ape ancestors in the last five million years, genes for transcription factors -- which control the expression of other genes -- were four times as likely to have changed their own expression patterns as the genes they regulate. Because they influence the...Genetic evidence shows colonialists pushed orang-utans to brink of extinction
...arming and recent human related decline of a great ape population has been demonstrated using genetic data," said Dr Benot Goossens, Cardiff School of Biosciences. "The research used a new, innovative analysis that meant we could distinguish between population decline that happened thousands of years ago...Genetic study shows humans have pushed orangutans to the brink of extinction
...time that a recent and alarming decline of a great ape population--brought about by man--has been demonstrated, dated, and quantified using genetic information," says Goossens, a wildlife geneticist at Cardiff University who conducted the genetic study. "Developing effective conservation and recovery pro...Scientists narrow the time limits for the human and chimpanzee split
...recent common ancestor of humans and their closest ape relatives -- the chimpanzees -- lived. Scientists at Arizona State and Penn State Universities have placed the time of this split between 5 and 7 million years ago -- a sharper focus than that given by the previous collection of molecular and fossil...The first laugh: New study posits evolutionary origins of two distinct types of laughter
...st 7 million years. Evolutionarily elaborated from ape play-panting sometime between 4 million years ago and 2 million years ago, laughter arising from non-serious social incongruity promoted community play during fleeting periods of safety. Such non-serious social incongruity, it is argued, is the evol...Woods Hole Research Center scientist part of international initiatives to save the great apes
...e these practices have been initially implemented, ape populations must be monitored to evaluate their su... website containing a preliminary list of priority ape populations and sites. To view the site, visit http://whrc.org/africa/prioritypops/index.htm . The...