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Category: Anthropology
It has been said that the only way to effect real change in important socio-political debates is to be very aggressive and unapologetically rude in making arguments. Civility and politeness are the hobgoblins of the Western Heternormative Colonoracist Patriarchy. I personally feel that there are...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:49 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
You probably know that there is a new primate fossil, nicknamed "Ida," and that there is quite a buzz about it. Darwinius masillae, aka Ida Ida comes from fossil deposits in Germany, and was originally excavated in two different parts by private collectors, and only...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:09 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: primates
The incident just reported an hour or so ago is unusual, but not unexpected or unheard of. A 200-pound chimpanzee kept as a pet and once used in commercials was shot and killed by police Monday after it mauled a woman visiting its owner and...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:11 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Archaeology
Or not. Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make...
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:01 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolutionary Biology
And hominids. We know the fossil record underestimates diversity at least a little, and we know that forested environments in Africa tend to be underrepresented. Given this, the diversity of Miocene apes may have been rather impressive, because there is a fairly high diversity in...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:49 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Archaeology
I have had a lot of students of whom I'm very proud because of their accomplishments both in research and generally. One of these students is Mark Foster, who is one of a very small number of undergraduates to engage in significant research at some...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:00 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: primates
Individual animals that live and and forage in groups may not always benefit from a particular move (to or from a foraging site) in the same way as other individuals in the group. Therefore, there must be some kind of negotiation among the critters. Theoretical...
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:52 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: primates
The Trivers Willard Hypothesis predicts that under certain conditions, individuals will bias their investment in offspring differently depending on the sex of the offspring. It is believed that this can be as extreme as infanticide or as subtle as providing different amounts of breast milk....
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:38 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little. When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in...
Posted by Greg Laden at 1:00 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The future for a large primate in a tiny patch of African forest looks bleak. Just three years after it was discovered, Tanzania's kipunji monkey is threatened with extinction ... researchers conducted more than 2,800 hours of fieldwork in the Southern Highlands and Udzungwa Mountains...
Posted by Greg Laden at 10:07 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Tim Lambert 11.22.2009
PZ Myers 11.22.2009
PZ Myers 11.19.2009
Ed Brayton 11.22.2009
Ed Brayton 11.19.2009
