baboon
dr. dolittle | December 27, 2015According to the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University, folate (which includes folates from food and folic acid supplements) is important for amino acid metabolism and methylation reactions in the body. Anyone who has had a baby knows that folic acid is an important nutrient to prevent the birth defect spina bifida. Folate and vitamin B-12 deficiency may also lead to a type of anemia known as megaloblastic anemia.
Image from CDC
New research published in Physiological Reports examined baboons to find out how maternal obesity and excess nutrient availability to the fetus…
dr. dolittle | August 17, 2015 Image of baboon with offspring By RADION Imaginery / Kamil Wencel (RADION Imaginery / http://imaginery.radion.org/) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons
Malnutrition during pregnancy is a major global health issue that leads to restricted growth of developing fetuses making them more prone to death and disease. In fact, babies born from poorly nourished mothers are more likely to develop obesity, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease as adults.
Researchers from the University of Colorado and University of Texas Health Sciences Center teamed up to examine whether the placenta can…
laelaps | April 7, 2010
A leopard (Panthera pardus). Image from Wikipedia.
When a leopard eats a baboon, what is left behind? This question is not only relevant to primatologists and zoologists. Even though instances of predation on humans is relatively rare, big cats still kill and consume people, and when they do they can virtually obliterate a body. Yet, just like a human criminal, the dining habits of big cats leave tell-tale clues, and in 2004 researchers Travis Pickering and Kristian Carlson fed two captive leopards eight complete baboon carcasses each in order catalog the most useful ways to identify the…
emjohnson | January 23, 2010
Sapolsky's talk begins at 5:00 after an introduction by the Stanford Provost.
The neuroendocrinologist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky has been one of my primary scientific influences and the reason I pursued my masters and PhD in primate behavior and evolution. Not only is he a brilliant researcher and writer, he's also a genuinely kind and supportive guy. Back in 2001, as an undergraduate, I wrote what was then my first fan letter to a neuroscientist. To my surprise he wrote back and we had an ongoing correspondence. He even recommended a piece of writing I had sent him to his editor…
emjohnson | July 23, 2009Primate sociality is linked to brain networks for pair bonds.
Social conservatives are fond of linking morality with monogamy and will be quick to condemn the moral crimes of adulterous felatio while ignoring the moral crimes of cutting social programs for poor mothers. However, in a bizarre twist, research suggests that morality and monogamy are closely intertwined, though it's doubtful many conservatives will champion the reasons why.
In the journal Science Robin Dunbar revisits the question with a unique perspective as to why some species (including humans) succeed so well as members of…
grrlscientist | July 30, 2008tags: flamingos, baboons, nature, streaming video
This streaming National Geographic video shows a group of hungry baboons in Kenya's Lake Bogoria that find themselves surrounded by a million unsuspecting, and unprotected, flamingos. I am sure you can guess what happens next. [2:40]
laelaps | October 9, 2007Category: Anthropology
As I mentioned just prior to my move to Sb, I spent this past Saturday at NYU at the "Evolutionary Anthropology at the Interface" conference, which was primarily a celebration of the work of Cliff Jolly. I'm still a bit over my head when it comes to knowing the full "Who's Who" of evolutionary anthropology, but I do know that Cliff Jolly is most well known for his "seed-eaters" hypothesis of human origins, in which extant baboons (Papio sp.) are proposed to be better primates to study when considering primate origins and a seed-eating diet is put forward as one of the…