tagged w/ Bonobos
-
With never-before-seen video, primatologist Isabel Behncke Izquierdo (a TED Fellow) shows how bonobo ape society learns from constantly playing -- solo, with friends, even as a prelude to sex. Indeed, play appears to be the bonobos' key to problem-solving and avoiding conflict. If it works for our close cousins, why not for us?
TED Fellow Isabel Behncke Izquierdo studies the social behavior (and play behavior in particular) of wild bonobos in DR Congo.With never-before-seen video, primatologist Isabel Behncke Izquierdo (a TED Fellow)... more
-
-
Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origins
Ian Nichols/National Geographic Society
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: September 27, 2010
It has taken 10 years for Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn to build the world’s most comprehensive treasury of great ape dung samples.
And now it has yielded an unexpected gem: The most dangerous form of malaria originated in gorillas, not chimps, as had long been believed.
In and of itself, knowing that does nothing to help defeat malaria. But malaria experts were pleased to learn it — and it shows what wonders can be performed when you have 2,700 fecal samples in your freezers and a little imagination.
“There’s a lot you can do with ape scat,” Dr. Hahn said. “It’s worth its weight in gold.”
Dr. Hahn, a virologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is an expert not in malaria but in S.I.V., or simian immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to the virus that causes AIDS in humans. But she has made deals with primate researchers all across Africa who collect fecal samples for their own projects, to have them take extras for her.
They go into vials with a special solution, called RNAlater, that preserves the nucleic acids of all the cells in the sample — which includes not only what apes eat, but cells sloughed off their gut linings, which contain all the things infecting them. She has systematically sequenced the genes of many of those infective agents: S.I.V., simian foamy virus, hepatitis and now malaria parasites.
Her study was published Thursday in Nature.
Knowing that gorillas are the source is not going to lead to a new drug, but it is reassuring in one important way, said Frank Collins, a malaria expert at the University of Notre Dame. The human disease probably came from a mutant parasite that crossed over from a single gorilla thousands of years ago. That implies that if malaria is ever wiped out in humans, it is unlikely that it will ever be reintroduced from apes.
Reintroduction is not an idle threat. In 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation gave up on its 17-year campaign to eradicate yellow fever. Its scientists had realized that monkeys carried the same virus, so it would never be wiped out without wiping out monkeys, too.
Opening the freezer door and rescreening 1,827 dung samples from chimpanzees, 805 from gorillas and 107 from bonobos yielded several surprises, Dr. Hahn said.
Chimpanzees across Africa had various malaria parasites; bonobos, their closest relatives, did not. West African gorillas were infected, but East African ones were not. (The populations are kept separate by wide rivers like the Congo and by humans who chop down their jungle habitats and hunt them.)
Until recently, it had been believed that the falciparum strain of malaria — the most deadly kind, which can kill in 48 hours — came from chimpanzees, because the closest relative to it that had been found, the reichenowi strain, was common in chimps.
But previous surveys of ape malaria — which go back as far as 1907 — have had obvious flaws, several malariologists said. Most sampled only a few apes, who were usually in captivity or in ape sanctuaries close to humans. One bonobo in one previous study, Dr. Hahn said, had parasites that not only were identical to human strains, but showed resistance to malaria drugs — which meant the bonobo must have caught them from a nearby human, not the other way around.
With the exception of 28 samples from a gorilla troupe habituated to humans, “all my samples are from the forest floor,” she said.
One researcher who sends her samples is David B. Morgan, a primatologist at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and for the Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo, who studies gorillas and chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle of the Congo Republic. Dr. Morgan uses fecal samples to track hormone levels, parasites and even family relationships.
He does not try to get blood samples with “biopsy darts” or capture or tranquilize apes for study.
“We want to have as little impact on them as possible,” he said. (Primatologists now frown on the friendly banana-sharing that so endeared Jane Goodall to readers of National Geographic decades ago.) He and his local trackers stay at least 35 feet from troupes they watch. They are vaccinated against diseases that apes can catch, take deworming pills and even defecate in bags that they carry back to camp so as not to risk infecting apes with human parasites, which has happened at other sites, he said.
Chasing samples is hard work, said Sabrina Locatelli, a State University of New York primatologist who works in Africa and collaborates with Dr. Hahn.
With colobus monkeys, who rain feces down from 70 feet up in the forest canopy, finding samples “means keeping your head up and your neck bent to spot them, so it can be painful,” Dr. Locatelli said.
With chimps and gorillas, she said, you follow them until they start building nests for the night, take a GPS point, go back to camp, get a few hours of sleep, and then come back early in the morning to look for samples, which are usually in or near the nest. With luck, the nest also has a few stray hairs, useful for DNA analysis.
Explaining her job to local officials is not easy either, she added.
Seven years ago, she said, when she was negotiating for permission to track bonobos in the Congo, she tried to explain what she wanted by showing park officials a vial of gel used for drying samples.
“It had these tiny blue beads in it,” she said. “People thought I was smuggling diamonds. They just would not believe me. They were saying ‘Why would this tiny woman come so far to collect bonobo poop?’ ”Finding on Malaria Comes From Humble Origins
Ian Nichols/National Geographic Society... more
-
-
ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2010) — Success is sexy -- a statement that applies not just to human beings, but also to various other animals. Male bonobos appear to benefit from this phenomenon as well. A team of researchers led by Gottfried Hohmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has discovered that the higher up a male bonobo is placed in the social hierarchy, the greater his mating success is with female bonobos.
link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100831201424.htmScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2010) — Success is sexy -- a statement that applies not... more
-
-
eva2
-
added this
-
1 year ago
- |
-
Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, writes on a 5-year study of bonobos by Germany's Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
During the study, scientists observed female bonobos "capturing, killing and eating young monkeys in the lowland evergreen forests of Salonga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo."
Chimpanzees and bonobos are the closest relatives to humans.
"Chimpanzees were the only nonhuman primate species known to hunt monkeys, and scientists had surmised that the jaunts were an elaborate male-bonding exercise... but because bonobo society is dominated by females, researchers had figured that their peaceful demeanor made them disinclined to hunt prey larger than squirrels, rodents and duikers, a small antelope species."
Kaplan writes that "[t]he discovery undermines the conventional wisdom that hunting among primates is an outgrowth of male dominance and aggression, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Current Biology."
Full article at link...Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, writes on a 5-year study of bonobos by... more
-
-
SDLN
-
added this
-
3 years ago
- |
-
A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may not be all about peace, love, and understanding after all.
A new study reveals that some bonobos—one of humankind's closest genetic relatives—hunt and eat other primates.
Could this lead to humans roots as cannibals?!
Groups of the endangered chimpanzee subspecies were observed stalking, chasing, and killing monkeys they later consumed
the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, were intrigued to find that some female bonobos hunt just as well as the males.
Among chimpanzees, females rarely hunt and have not been seen taking active roles in hunting parties.
But female bonobos launched themselves up trees and attacked their monkey prey just as effectively as the males, Hohmann and Surbeck reported. A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may... more
-
-
Their mission is to promote conservation of the bonobo and its tropical forest habitat. Bonobos are found in only one country: the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), a resource-rich region ravaged by years of war.
Biologically speaking, bonobos are the closest you can get to being human without being human. Bonobos and people share 98.4% of the same genetic make-up (DNA).
In contrast to the competitive, male-dominated culture of their close relative the chimpanzee, bonobo society is peaceful, matriarchal and more egalitarian. Bonobos live in large groups where harmonious coexistence is the norm.
Female-female contact, or "GG-rubbing," is actually the most common. Unlike other apes, bonobos frequently copulate face-to-face, looking into each others eyes.
When bonobo groups meet in the forest, they greet each other, bond sexually, and share food instead of fighting. Likewise, almost any conflict between bonobos is eased by sexual activity, grooming, or sharing food.Their mission is to promote conservation of the bonobo and its tropical forest... more
-
