The roots of civilization trace back to ... roots
... and jaws. The teeth and jaws of savannah dwelling apes evolved into large massive jaws, jaw muscles and molars, ideal for grinding roots instead of shearing leaves. The size of the teeth and jaws reflect the apes' secondary food source (roots) instead of primary foods like meats and fruits, which do not...Photos reveal first tool usage in wild gorillas
...Wildlife Conservation Society. "Tool usage in wild apes provides us with valuable insights into the evolut...st other observed instances of tool-usage in great apes are related directly to processing food (i.e. the cracking of nuts with rocks or extracting termites...Woods Hole Research Center scientist part of international initiatives to save the great apes
The extinction of the great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimpanze...r habitats. Conservation efforts to save the great apes must identify, prioritize, and optimize actions and investments to protect these diminishing populat...Ancient anthropoid origins discovered in Africa
...cestor of living anthropoids -- including monkeys, apes and humans -- arose in Africa and that the group had already begun branching into many species by that time. Also, they said, one of the creatures appears to have been nocturnal, the first example of a nocturnal early anthropoid. The researchers publ...Charting the path of the deadly Ebola virus in central Africa
... hundreds of humans and tens of thousands of great apes in Gabon and the Republic of Congo--which harbor r...ns after increased contact between humans or great apes and an unidentified reservoir host. But Walsh et al. found support for the alternative hypothesis: t...'Perception' gene tracked humanity's evolution, scientists say
...ked or guided humanity's separation from the other apes is a short one. Genes controlling the development ...gists that hominid divergence from the other great apes was fueled not by the origin of new genes, but by the quickening (or slowing) of the expression of e...Evolution study tightens human-chimp connection
... than chimps are to the other two species of great apes gorillas and orangutans. They also found that hum...thor of the research paper. "We used to think that apes shared one generation time, but that's not true. There's a lot more variation. In our study, we foun...Less is more, gene study shows
...s that we acquired completely new genes that other apes don't have. Another is that some of our genes have taken on different functions through mutation. It's also possible that we humans lost some genes along the way, and those losses provided opportunities for changes that otherwise could not have occu...You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours: Chimps point to spot they'd like groomed
...tching only in captive chimps and language-trained apes who interacted with humans, Mitani said. "The more we learn, the more we see chimpanzees employing remarkable, seemingly human-like behaviors," Mitani said. "To me that is one of the lessons of this little paper." The findings appear in today's issu...UAB researchers confirm HIV-1 originated in wild chimpanzees
...ciency virus from chimpanzees), only a few captive apes had been found to harbor SIVcpz. In the study, UAB Professor of Medicine Beatrice H. Hahn, M.D., and her team conducted the first-ever molecular epidemiological survey of SIVcpz infection in wild-living chimpanzees in west-central Africa. By analyzi...West develops taste for primates
...ifferent to harvesting large mammals such as great apes and elephants," he says. "It would be very hard for that to be sustainable." Davies says that central governments in Africa need to be made aware of the millions of dollars being spent on the parallel economy of the bushmeat trade, and they need to...Gorilla susceptibility to Ebola virus: the cost of sociality
... unclear. It has been argued that the infection of apes only occurs by way of the so-called "reservoir" sp...they point out that because the impact of Ebola on apes is still difficult to control, strengthened protection of gorillas and chimpanzees is needed through......e played a major role in the evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, according to a new hypothesis by Lynne Isbell, professor of anthropology at UC Davis. The work is published in the July issue of the Journal of Human Evolution. Primates have good vision, enlarged brains, and grasping hands and feet, and...Ancient global warming drove early primates' dispersal
...rimates known as tarsiers. Like tarsiers, monkeys, apes and humans, Teilhardina was a true primate, or euprimate. In both Asia and Europe, the genus is the oldest known primate; in North America, it appears in the fossil record around the same time as another primate, Cantius. Previously, scientists had c...Apes -- not monkeys -- ace IQ tests
Durham, N.C. -- The great apes are the smartest of all nonhuman primates, with or... said. The smartest species were clearly the great apes -- orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas which performed much better than monkeys and prosimians. ...Brain gene shows dramatic difference from chimp to human
... much more complicated structure in humans than in apes and monkeys.The researchers found HAR1F RNA associated with a protein calledreelin in the cortex of embryos early in development. The samepattern of expression is found in both humans and rhesus monkeys, butsince the human HAR1F has a unique structur...Viruses can jump between primates and humans, researchers warn
...s describe how human viruses infecting monkeys and apes can wreak havoc on those animals' populations. "Viruses are already jumping the species barrier and affecting both people and animals, and there is the potential for much worse," explained Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel, a research scientist in the Division o...Social imitation in neonatal monkeys
...udy 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 in front of a researcher who began with a passive expression (the baseli...A cognitive strategy shared by human infants and our great-ape kin
...ts display the same preferences as all other great apes in their strategies for remembering where things a... researchers first showed that all non-human great apes and 1-year-old human infants exhibit identical preferences. This suggests that the common ancestor o...... hominids. They compared the five species of great apes - orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees and h...nce to conclude that 1-year-old children and great apes do not lack the capability to develop a feature-based strategy, but simply prefer to use a place-bas...