Pregnant Chimp Mystery

It's both a surprise and a mystery. At Caddo Parish's Chimp Haven, where retired male chimpanzees all get vasectomies, a female chimp has turned up pregnant. Chimp Haven managers knew something was up when they could not find one of their chimps last week.

Teresa, who's been at Chimp Haven for the past year and a half, was missing during the morning rounds. Later, she appeared with a newborn chimpanzee in her arms.

"Well, we were all just a little bit surprised when we heard the news," said Linda Brent, a spokeswoman for Chimp Haven.

Escaped Chimp Gets Snack, Cleans Bathroom

An escaped chimpanzee at the Little Rock Zoo raided a kitchen cupboard and did a little cleaning with a toilet brush before sedatives knocked her out on top of a refrigerator.

The 120-pound primate, Judy, escaped yesterday into a service area when a zookeeper opened a door to her sleeping quarters, unaware the animal was still inside.

As keepers tried to woo Judy back into her cage, she rummaged through a refrigerator where chimp snacks are stored. She opened kitchen cupboards, pulled out juice and soft drinks and took a swig from bottles she managed to open.

Keeper Ann Rademacher says Judy went into the bathroom, picked up a toilet brush and cleaned the toilet. Rademacher says the 37-year-old Judy was a house pet before the zoo acquired her in 1988, so she may have been familiar with housekeeping chores. Judy wrung out a sponge and scrubbed down the fridge.

Singing For Survival: Gibbons Scare Off Predators With 'Song'

It is well known that animals use song as a way of attracting mates, but researchers have found that gibbons have developed an unusual way of scaring off predators -- by singing to them.

The primatologists at the University of St Andrews discovered that wild gibbons in Thailand have developed a unique song as a natural defence to predators. Literally singing for survival, the gibbons appear to use the song not just to warn their own group members but those in neighbouring areas.

They said, "We are interested in gibbon songs because, apart from human speech, these vocalisations provide a remarkable case of acoustic sophistication and versatility in primate communication. Our study has demonstrated that gibbons not only use unique songs as a response to predators, but that fellow gibbons understand them."

How one leopard changed its spots ... and saved a baby baboon

She is the ultimate predator - a sleek and stealthy killer. Pouncing on her prey, she silences the baboon with one swipe of a vicious paw. Then, suddenly, something stirs in the dead animal's fur, and the law of the jungle is rewritten.
From the bedraggled pelt of her kill crawls a tiny infant - a one-day-old baboon. In that moment, this young leopard forgets she is a hunter, and nurtures the baby baboon as if it were her own cub.

Smelling blood, a pack of hyenas gather to finish off the kill. Legadema, as she has been named by the camera crew who took these moving shots, carefully carries the baby baboon high up into a tree for protection. There, she cuddles the newborn to her for warmth through the long, African night.
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Report Defends Experiments on Monkeys

There are strong scientific reasons for British scientists to continue research using monkeys in "carefully selected research problems," especially when it is the only way to save human lives, a committee of experts said Tuesday.

"There is a strong scientific case for maintaining work on non-human primates for carefully selected research problems ... at least for the foreseeable future," the Weatherall Report said.

Animal testing causes great controversy in Britain and animal rights groups have attacked companies and individuals involved in research on animals. Each year, around 3,300 monkeys are used in scientific or medical research in Britain, about 0.1 percent of all animals used in laboratory experiments in the country.

10 Famous Monkeys in Science

It’s a common theory that, given enough time (and food … and ink ribbon), a million monkeys on a million typewriters will eventually bang out the works of Shakespeare. But that only goes for average monkeys. Round up a few higher-class primates armed with an education and some travel experience, and we wouldn’t be surprised if you got a masterpiece on par with Harry Potter or The Firm.

Millions of exotic pets being smuggled into the country

A zoo official holds a seven-day-old Stump-Tailed Macaque at the state zoological park in Gauhati, India. Though the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has prohibited importation of most monkeys as pets since 1975, some macaques imported for research are now being sold on the open market.

Boxing Orangutans Freed And Returned Home

Dozens of orangutans forced to box each other in a Thai amusement park returned home Wednesday to start a new life in a jungle reserve on their native island of Borneo, officials said.

The 48 orangutans were flown to the capital, Jakarta, on board an Indonesian military transport plane and welcomed at the airport by the wife of Indonesia's president.

"We are very happy to get the orangutans back," Kristiani Yudhoyono said at a ceremony. "They belong to our vast nation, therefore we have to take them back to their habitat in a proper way."

Chimps prefer the older woman

Chimpanzee males prefer to have sex with older females, according to US researchers, showing one of the biggest behavioural differences between humans and our closest biological relatives.

Male chimps will chase down and fight over the oldest females.

Meanwhile, the youngest female chimps are forced to beg for masculine attention, say anthropologist Assistant Professor Martin Muller and colleagues at Boston University.

Clever Bonobo again triggers fire alarm

Panbanisha the bonobo is up to her tricks again. For the second time in two months, the 20-year-old animal triggered a fire alarm at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa research center.

The trouble started at about 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, when Panbanisha wanted to go outside but the staff was too busy to let her out, trust officials said. Panbanisha then apparently lost her temper and pulled the alarm, officials said.

It's a trick Panbanisha initially learned in October when she saw a welder start the alarm. It took her less than a day to learn how to duplicate the excitement.

When the alarm sounded again the next morning, "I went to check on Pan, and she was sitting there next to it with a smile on her face," said lead scientist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh last month.