Land Mammals, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 13, 2018

Ancient Monkey Transformed into a 'Sloth' When It Arrived in Jamaica

About 10 million years ago, a family of monkeys left the South American mainland on a cruise to Jamaica and, as is still the case for so many tourists today, swiftly fell for the lazy pace of island life. Over many generations, the primates' legs evolved for slow climbs up...

Dec 15, 2018

Scientists Try to Save Woolly Monkeys from Extinction … by Training Them to Be Wild Again

Colombia's Andes Mountains used to be loaded with wildlife, including South America's sole bear species, the spectacle bear, and the mountain tapir, which lives only in the world's highest altitudes. You couldn't walk a mile in the jungle without seeing a woolly monkey – big, agile and charismatic primates with...

Jan 24, 2019

In Photos: The Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzees

David, the alpha male (Image credit: John Brown/BBC America)The second episode of BBC America's new series, Dynasties, follows David, the alpha male of the Fongoli savanna group of chimpanzees. Watch Dynasties this Saturday, Jan. 19 on BBC America at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST. The caretaker (Image credit: Marc MacEwen/BBC...

Jan 24, 2019

When You're an Alpha Chimp, Life Isn't a Barrel of Monkeys

Chimpanzees are clever creatures that are known for learning skills to make their lives easier, like using twigs to pull tasty termites out of their dirt mounds for an easy snack. But in a surprising scene that unfolds in a clip from BBC America's new series, Dynasties, male chimps, in...

Mar 26, 2019

Why Does This 'Buff Monkey' Look Ridiculously Ripped?

A monkey in a Finland zoo recently gained a lot of attention on social media for her unusually buff body, but she isn't quite as muscular as she appeared. In the photo, the primate — a female white-faced saki monkey (Pithecia pithecia) named Bea — crouches on a branch in...

Apr 29, 2019

'Hippie Chimps' Had Sex with Mysterious 'Ghost Ape' Hundreds of Thousands of Years Ago

Mysterious ghost apes may have interbred with the great apes known as bonobos just as modern humans repeatedly had sex with now-extinct human lineages, a new study finds. Bonobos are, with chimpanzees, humanity's closest living relatives. Together, bonobos and chimps are part of the group Pan, just as modern humans...

Jul 11, 2019

After This Young Monkey Got Hit by a Car, Monkey Strangers Comforted Him

Even monkeys know it's right to care for strangers in need. (Or maybe their parents just didn't teach the helpers about stranger danger.) In a new paper published in the July issue of the journal Primates, scientists document for the first time Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) fostering an older juvenile...

Jul 28, 2019

Why Do Chimpanzees Throw Poop?

Going to the zoo can be a great adventure, especially if you find poop hurtling in your direction. The likely perpetrators, chimpanzees, are known to sometimes throw their feces at visitors. But what's the reason behind this behavior? And, more importantly, should you consider yourself lucky to be the center...

Oct 17, 2019

Game Over: These Monkeys Just Crushed Humans on a Computer Game

When it comes to winning games and solving puzzles, sometimes monkeys play smarter than humans. Monkeys may show off their physical flexibility as they clamber over tangled tree branches, but the animals also display impressive cognitive flexibility, or the ability to quickly change how they think about, and work to...

Dec 9, 2019

First Pig-Monkey Chimeras Were Just Created in China

Exclusive: Two pigs engineered to have monkey cells born in China https://t.co/bDWSc4QyUN pic.twitter.com/ppu9qidp3EDecember 9, 2019 See more Two piglets recently born in China look like average swine on the outside, but on the inside, they are (a very small) part monkey. A team of researchers generated the pig-primate creatures by...

Feb 10, 2020

Single lightning strike kills 4 endangered mountain gorillas

Four endangered gorillas died suddenly in a Ugandan national park, apparently killed by a single lightning strike. Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), a subspecies of eastern gorilla, live at elevations of 8,000 to 13,000 feet (2,400 to 4,000 meters) in the Congo Basin of Africa, according to the World Wildlife...

Feb 18, 2020

Neuroscientists discover 'engine of consciousness' hiding in monkeys' brains

A team of researchers has found an engine of consciousness in the brain — a region where, in monkeys at least, even a little jump start will make them wake up from anesthesia. Consciousness is a mystery. We don't know for certain why creatures are sometimes awake and sometimes asleep,...

Mar 16, 2020

Starving monkey 'gangs' battle in Thailand as coronavirus keeps tourists away

In one of the more unusual incidents being attributed to the new coronavirus outbreak, a turf war between dozens of street monkeys and temple monkeys broke out in Thailand's historic city of Lopburi on Thursday (March 12). According to city residents, the furry fracas likely resulted from a sharp dip...

Apr 29, 2020

Robot 'spy' gorilla records wild gorillas singing and farting, because nature is beautiful

Mountain gorillas have been caught on camera as they sing during their supper, a behavior that has never before been documented on video. Filmmakers captured the astonishing footage of the primate crooners with a little help from a very special camera: a robotic spy designed to look like a young...

Oct 29, 2020

Building blocks of language evolved before humans split from chimps and monkeys

The building blocks of human language were around at least 40 million years ago, long before humans evolved, scientists have discovered. Researchers recently found that humanity's last shared ancestor with great apes and monkeys — our closest primate relatives — had evolved the ability to detect relationships between groups of...