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Great Apes Know When You’re Wrong
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Bonobos Make Love AND War
There is a common misconception that bonobos never fight; if tensions are running high, they have sex or rub their genitals together and everything’s just peachy. But bonobos do fight and they do form coalitions to support one another in aggressive interactions. […]
Altruism in Chimpanzees
In 2005, Drs. Felix Warnecken and Michael Tomasello conducted a study on altruism in human infants and chimpanzees.1 Altruism is taking action to help someone else, even when that action won’t be reciprocated or otherwise benefit oneself. To put it simply, altruistic actions are motivated purely by the desire to […]
Primate Personalities
People who keep animals as pets will often talk about their pet’s personality – identifiable traits that appear to be displayed in a consistent manner across contexts and time. Although it was once considered anthropomorphic to talk about nonhuman animals as having a ‘personality’, today, studies dispute this view, with many researchers […]
Spear-Hunting Chimps
Fashioning spears and wielding them to hunt – these sound like typical activities of our human ancestors. But the surprising fact is that not only are tool-use and tool-building carried out by other animal species, they’re done in the context of hunting as well. Chimpanzees in the Fongoli savanna of Senegal have been observed
Gibbonese Features Many Words
Is language only used by humans? Most linguists would say “yes”, especially given the complexity of human language. However, research is uncovering that many animals have far more sophisticated communication protocols than thus far assumed. Now, a newly published study shows that gibbons too have their own […]
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