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Famed chimp 'Moe' escapes into forest As of Monday, there was still no sign of Moe in the San Bernardino National Forest, but there were plenty of rumors about the missing chimp. Water was running and peanuts were missing at the Gem Ranch on Cajon Boulevard, and a dead chicken was found in the same area where Moe disappeared. Someone even called from Rancho Cucamonga saying there had been a possible Moe sighting in the caller's yard. Amidst the mayhem and the media circus at the scene, animal control officers and those close to Moe continued their search for the...

AUSTIN (AP) - A report into the shooting death of a research chimpanzee says the animal threatened a police officer by flailing its arms. The officer says he was scared and can't remember how many times he shot at the chimp. The 17-year-old animal was killed last month after escaping from his play area at a research center run by the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The report says the animal couldn't be subdued with tranqualizer (sic) darts, then grabbed the dart gun from an attendant and threw it away. The report into the animal's shooting death was...

By Associated Press Published January 17, 2007, 4:12 PM CST LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- 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...

SHREVEPORT, La. - In a mysterious bit of monkey business, a female at a chimpanzee sanctuary has given birth, despite the fact that the facility's entire male chimp population has had vasectomies. Now managers at Chimp Haven are planning a paternity test for the seven males who lived in a group with Teresa, a wild-born chimpanzee in her late 40s who had the baby girl last week. Workers have started collecting hair samples from the chimps for testing. Once they identify the father, it's back to the operating room for him. Chimp Haven managers said they knew something was up...

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed piece in the LA Times, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that reproductive facilities should work towards creating a race of human/chimpanzee hybrids, but, he admits, only because it would offend Christians.   Some geneticists have postulated that their distant evolutionary ancestors may have interbred with those of chimps, and Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.   The psychology professor looks forward to...

A chimpanzee at a zoo in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, is trying to stop smoking. The chimp, which used to perform in a circus, had previously been smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Zookeepers said that the animal would get very uneasy if it didn't get its daily fix of nicotine. They have been giving it beer in a bid to stop it smoking. The chimp is now on less than four cigarettes a day.

PARIS - A tribe of apes living in remote forests in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo are unusually large chimpanzees, not a new species of giant ape or a chimp-gorilla hybrid, New Scientist says. Zoologists became excited after people living around Bili, a town about 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of the Ebola River, recounted tales of seeing hugeferocious apes with a taste for killing lions. From photographs, the creatures were estimated to weigh about 100 kilos (220 pounds) and their footprints, at up to 34 centimetres (13.6 inches), were longer than a gorilla’s. But a year-long hunt by...

Cheeta the chimp, star of a dozen "Tarzan" movies in the 1930s and 1940s, celebrated his 74th birthday with sugar-free cake. Although healthy and active, Cheeta is diabetic. "He had a good time. The party went real good," said keeper Dan Westfall, operator of the primate sanctuary Creative Habitats and Enrichment for Endangered and Threatened Apes - or CHEETA. Representatives from a Spanish film festival also showed up for Sunday's party to present Cheeta with the first award of his career - an International Comedy Film Festival of Peniscola prize. Cheeta has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World...

A group of researchers from Korea and Japan has deciphered the Y chromosome of chimpanzees' genetic code, getting a step closer to solving the mysteries surrounding human evolution. It is well known that we share more than 98 percent of our DNA and almost all of our genes with the chimpanzee. Now the researchers have decoded more than half of the Y chromosomes, or 12.7 million base pairs, of man's closest living relative. "Because no genetic exchange occurs, the Y chromosome is important in explaining the evolution process," said Park Hong-seog, a senior researcher at the Korea Research Institute of...

Besides housing the apes in natural habitats for public viewing, the building houses the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, a zoo-funded research component that employs Ross. Keo was the first ape to be trained to use the screen, in January. Currently Keo is doing a task Ross calls "match to sample." Teaching apes to use computers is not new. Keo was the first ape to be trained to use the screen, in January. Teaching apes to use computers is not new.

Scientists say they have discovered the first evidence that chimpanzees speak to each other about objects in their environment. Chimps at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland use a crude language of grunts to talk to each other about their food, say primate experts at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The chimps utter high-pitched noises (hear the audio) or low-pitched grunts (hear the audio) to tell each other about the food they find in their pen, the researchers say. The finding could lead to better understanding of the origins of human speech, the scientists say. Previous studies have found...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 - In hiring Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, to remake the monster classic "King Kong," Universal Pictures took a daring leap, paying him $20 million to direct, produce and be the co-writer of the film. With seven weeks to go before the movie's release, the risks are becoming clearer. After seeing a version of the film in late September at Mr. Jackson's studio in New Zealand, Universal executives agreed to release "King Kong" at a length of three hours. The film is substantially longer than Universal had anticipated and...

BEIJING - A nicotine-addicted chimpanzee is kicking her 16-year-old habit using dumplings and pop music. The chimp, Ai Ai, began scavenging cigarette butts left by visitors at the Qinling Safari Park in the late 1980's after her first mate, Jian Jian, died, the official China Daily newspaper said. Zookeepers eventually began giving Ai Ai cigarettes of her own and lighting them, the paper said. She was smoking between eight and 10 cigarettes a day before zookeepers decided in August to help her kick the habit. The paper said Ai Ai tended to smoke more when she was lonely or depressed....

Human/chimp DNA similarityEvidence for evolutionary relationship? by Don BattenThe idea that human beings and chimps have close to 100% similarity in their DNA seems to be common knowledge. The figures quoted vary: 97%, 98%, or even 99%, depending on just who is telling the story. What is the basis for these claims and do the data mean there really is not much difference between chimps and people? Are we just highly evolved apes? The following concepts will assist with a proper understanding of this issue: Similarity (‘homology’) is not evidence for common ancestry (evolution) as against a common designer (creation)....

A man who was severely mauled by two chimpanzees at an animal sanctuary last week was quickly overwhelmed when the apes attacked, his wife said Monday. "One was at his head, one was at his foot. But all that time ... he was trying to reason with them," a sobbing LaDonna Davis told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I couldn't do anything." Davis, 64, and her husband, St. James Davis, were visiting Animal Haven Ranch near Bakersfield on Thursday when two male chimps escaped their enclosure and attacked the couple. "When we made eye contact, the charge was on," LaDonna Davis...

Woman attacked by chimp speaks of the attack updated 03/05/05 BAKERSFIELD - A West Covina man critically attacked by a chimpanzee on earlier in the week continues to struggle for his life at Loma Linda University Medical Center. The attacked happened on Thursday morning at the Animal Haven Ranch near Havilah. On Saturday, his wife LaDonna Davis, who was also attacked, spoke to NBC’s Today Show about the trauma that changed her and her husband's lives forever. Davis and her husband St. James Davis were having a birthday party for their longtime pet chimpanzee Moe. When they were suddenly attacked...

Chimps escape cages, injure couple 2 of the attackers killed by workers at animal haven Associated Press CALIENTE, CALIF. - Several chimpanzees broke from their cages at an animal sanctuary Thursday and attacked two visitors, seriously injuring them, authorities said.Sanctuary workers shot and killed two of the powerful animals.Officials did not immediately release the victims' names, but a television station reported that they were a couple who were visiting another chimpanzee that had been removed from their home years earlier for his own aggressive behavior.One of those injured at the Animal Haven Ranch was airlifted to Kern Medical Center in...

The brains of chimpanzees show a number of similarities to human brains, the results of two new studies suggest. Findings published in the December issue ofBehavioral Neuroscience indicate that the animals have differences between the right and left sides of their brains in much the same way that humans do. In addition, it appears that the neurological basis for handedness is not unique to our species. Hani D. Freeman of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and his colleagues scanned the brains of 60 chimpanzees with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and measured two key regions of the brain's limbic system,...

ORIGINAL STORY THREAD On an official school website, Harvard University had a .gif of a chimp morphing into President Bush. After FR got on the case, it has been removed. The .gif had been in the upper right corner of the website. In Quicktime, here is what was removed. This morning, I phoned the office of Harvard President Lawrence Summers. They referred me to the news office. I also phoned the department, and an assistant to Professor Mark Hauser had admitted that it was there, had been removed, but that he could not further comment. Dr. Mark Hauser of...

Sexual frustration has driven a mild-mannered chimpanzee to take up smoking and spitting, according to China's Xinhua news agency. Feili, 13, has turned from a "gentle girl" into a "shrew", said Liu Bing, the director of her zoo in Zhengzhou, central Henan province. Mr Liu said Feili's partner at the zoo was 28 years her senior, and was unable "to meet her sexual demands". Feili was not addicted to nicotine, he said, but was just imitating tourists. However, she does appear to be quite keen on smoking - and has been known to resort to desperate measures to get what...

January 7, 2003 For Retired Chimps, a Life of LeisureBy SHERYL GAY STOLBERG AWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — The chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center were acting up. Jessie, a pink-faced 20-year-old, slapped her ample belly and hooted wildly from behind a steel gate. Dover, a mischievous 4-year-old, spied an unfamiliar human and served up his standard greeting for strangers, a fistful of feces, pitched with remarkable accuracy. Jessie and Dover do not really have to be at Yerkes, but there is nowhere else for them to go. Bred for biomedical research, they are now unemployed, a result of...

<p>MESA, Ariz. -- Simba has had a good life since he retired from the Ice Capades more than two decades ago. The 31-year-old chimpanzee lives here with five other chimps in a clean enclosure shaded from the desert sun. For lunch, he eats half a melon, six oranges, a bunch of spinach and a head of lettuce. His caregivers cater to his fondness for Pavarotti. His teeth are cleaned every six months.</p>