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Category: Anthropology
Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. "Drives" is a nicely vague term that we...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:13 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: primates
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...
Posted by Greg Laden at 6:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science News
I know Marc Hauser, and I trust him. I worked with him for a few years as a colleague on the faculty in the Anthropology department on various administrative matters (such as graduate admission and undergraduate program development) and we taught together. We are very...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:24 PM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Organisms
Not exactly a missing link, but close. Too bad we ruined the term "missing link" just before this important fossil was reported!
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:39 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Human Evolution
Is it a Falsehood that Humans Evolve from Apes? How about this one: Is it a Falsehood that Humans did NOT evolve from Apes???? Yes and no. Humans descend from a population of primates from which other apes also descended (minimally the two species of...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:21 AM • 54 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: lost congo memoir
I had mentioned earlier that the volcanoes of the Virugna region in the Western Rift Valley (as well as other highland spots) have often been islands of rain forest separated from each other by different habitats, including grasslands and wooded savannas. this has produced an...
Posted by Greg Laden at 3:40 PM • 13 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
The world's rarest great ape has found a safe haven in the mountains of the west central African nation of Cameroon. With guidance from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Cameroon's prime minister, Ephraim Inoni, has created the world's first sanctuary exclusively for the Cross River...
Posted by Greg Laden at 4:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
