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Blobrana


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RE: Predators
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Humans are 'unique super-predator'

Humans' status as a unique super-predator is laid bare in a new study published in Science magazine.
The analysis of global data details the ruthlessness of our hunting practices and the impacts we have on prey.
It shows how humans typically take out adult fish populations at 14 times the rate that marine animals do themselves.
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Blobrana


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Washoe
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Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept.
Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University's Ellensburg campus since 1980. Her keepers said she had a vocabulary of about 250 words, although critics contended Washoe and some other primates learned to imitate sign language, but did not develop true language skills.

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Blobrana


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RE: Predators
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The fossil record seems to indicate that the diversity of marine creatures increased and decreased over hundreds of millions of years in step with predator-prey encounters, Virginia Tech geoscientists report in the proceedings of the National Academy of Science online early edition the week of Sept. 10.
For decades, there has been a debate between palaeontologists, biologists, and ecologists on the role of ecological interactions, such as predation, in the long term patterns of animal evolution.

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Blobrana


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Deep in the Congolese jungle is a band of apes that, according to local legend, kill lions, catch fish and even howl at the moon. Local hunters speak of massive creatures that seem to be some sort of hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla.
Their location at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has meant that the mystery apes have been little studied by western scientists. Reaching the region means negotiating the shifting fortunes of warring rebel factions, and the heart of the animals' range is deep in impenetrable forest.

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Blobrana


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Chimps using caves
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Chimpanzees in Senegal apparently have much in common with our earliest human ancestors.
A month after Iowa State University Assistant Professor of Anthropology Jill Pruetz reported chimpanzees at her Fongoli research site are using spear-shaped tools to hunt, her new study indicates those same chimps are also seeking shelter in caves to get out of the extreme African heat. The National Geographic Society-funded research is the first to document regular chimpanzee cave use.

Pruetz' paper, titled "Evidence of Cave Use by Savanna Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Implications for Behavioural Thermoregulation," will be published in an upcoming issue of Primates, a professional journal.

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Blobrana


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Chimpanzee spears
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Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.
Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks.
The report's authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, said the finding could have implications for human evolution.
Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools.
Pruetz and Bertolani made the discovery at their research site in Fongoli, Senegal, between March 2005 and July 2006.

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Blobrana


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Chimpanzee Tools
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Chimpanzees in West Africa used stone tools to crack nuts 4,300 years ago.
The discovery represents the oldest evidence of tool use by our closest evolutionary relative.
The skill could have been inherited from the a common ancestor of chimps and humans, the authors say, or learnt from humans by imitation.
Alternatively, humans and chimps may have developed tool use independently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal reports.

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Blobrana


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Predators
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Predators such as leopards and chimpanzees consistently target smaller-brained prey less capable of escape; research at the University of Liverpool has shown.
They avoid more intelligent prey such as monkeys which have exceptionally large brains and are more capable of escaping attacks.

The study, carried out by Dr Susanne Shultz, from the School of Biological Sciences, focused on predators from Africa and South America such as the jaguar, chimpanzee, leopard and puma. Dr Shultz found that prey with a small brain such as small antelope, mongooses and the red river hog were more susceptible to attacks by predators compared with larger-brained prey. The report showed a strong correlation between the brain size of the prey and the predatory bias towards it.
Animals with small brains lack behavioural flexibility and are probably less capable of developing new strategies to escape predators, compared with larger-brained species.

"When these findings are put into perspective, it makes sense that being clever should help individuals avoid or escape danger – the larger-brained chimpanzees rarely feature in the diets of predators. Some animals' ability to avoid being eaten by predators may be a contributing factor to the evolution of large brains across some species, adding to conventional theories which argue this is important for developing social relationships and using tools." - Dr Susanne Shultz

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