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Compared to their sex-mad, peace-loving Bonobo counterparts, chimpanzees are often seen as a scheming, war-mongering, and selfish species. As both apes are allegedly our closest relatives, together they are often depicted as representing the two extremes of human behaviour. Orlaith Fraser, who will receive her PhD from LJMU's School of Biological Sciences in July 2008, has conducted research that shows chimpanzee behaviour is not as clear cut as previously thought. Her study is the first one to demonstrate the effects of consolation amongst chimpanzees. In her recently published article, Fraser analyses how the apes behave after a fight. Working with...

SPOKANE, Washington (AP) -- Washoe, a female chimpanzee said to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University's Ellensburg campus since 1980. Her keepers said she had a vocabulary of about 250 words, although critics contended Washoe and some other primates learned to imitate sign language, but did not develop true language skills. She died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders...

Source: University of Chicago Medical Center Date: April 22, 2007 Chimpanzees Are Actually Three Distinct Groups, Gene Study Shows Science Daily — The largest study to date of genetic variation among chimpanzees has found that the traditional, geography-based sorting of chimps into three populations--western, central and eastern--is underpinned by significant genetic differences, two to three times greater than the variation between the most different human populations. In the April 2007 issue of the journal PLOS Genetics, researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard, the Broad Institute and Arizona State show that there has been very little detectable admixture between the...

By studying chimpanzee droppings in remote African jungles, scientists reported yesterday, they have found direct evidence of a missing link between a chimpanzee virus and the one that causes human AIDS. Scientists have long suspected that chimpanzees are the source of the human AIDS pandemic because at least one subspecies carries a simian immune deficiency virus closely related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But because the simian virus, known as S.I.V.cpz, was identified in chimpanzees in captivity, researchers could not be sure that the same simian virus existed among these apes in the wild. It does, the team...

Chimpanzees are supposed to be the "good" apes, cute and funny, the hairy little people depicted in thousands of films and TV shows. But recent news out of western Africa shows they can be brutally fierce. A chimp attacked and killed a Sierra Leone man who was driving Americans to a wildlife refuge Sunday. Another man lost part of his hand in the attack. Some news reports said a group of up to 20 chimps that had broken out of their enclosures gang-attacked the men, while other stories have pinned responsibility on one animal, possibly a chimp named Bruno, the...

No Way to Treat a Relative Chimps shouldn't be forced to live like me. BY PAMELA ANDERSON Friday, April 28, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT King Kong is my hero. He's big, muscular, sensitive, a terrific actor--and he's not real. The use of computer-generated imagery has really taken off in Hollywood. So why has Madison Avenue suddenly gone bananas for real apes? Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, with at least 95% of the same DNA. We're closer to them than they are to gorillas, so when I see chimpanzees being used as on-screen comedians, dressed up in silly costumes to...

Bruno, the alpha male, is said to be large, powerful and wary of visitors Police in Sierra Leone are on the hunt for a group of chimpanzees, who escaped from their wildlife sanctuary after a fatal attack on construction workers. Armed reinforcements are combing the area after a Sierra Leonean died and two Americans were seriously injured. Security personnel said four men were attacked on Sunday after entering the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. Angry chimps killed and mutilated the driver. The two Americans are in a hospital in the capital, Freetown. A worker at Tacugama told the BBC that some...

By Clive Cookson, Science Editor Published: August 31 2005 18:46 | Last updated: August 31 2005 18:46 The first detailed genetic comparison between humans and chimpanzees shows that 96 per cent of the DNA sequence is identical in the two species. But there are significant differences, particularly in genes relating to sexual reproduction, brain development, immunity and the sense of smell. An international scientific consortium publishes the genome of the chimpanzee, the animal most closely related to homo sapiens on Thursday in the journal Nature. It is the fourth mammal to have its full genome sequenced, after the mouse, rat...

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...

CALIENTE, Calif. -- Several chimpanzees escaped from their cages at an animal sanctuary and attacked workers, injuring two, authorities said. At least one chimp was shot to death. One of the employees was badly injured and had to be airlifted to a hospital after the attack at the Animal Haven Ranch, about 20 miles from Bakersfield, said Cheryl Longwith, a sheriff's spokeswoman. The other employee's condition was not disclosed. Animal Haven employees shot and killed at least one of the escaped chimpanzees, Longwith said. Longwith said she did not know how the chimpanzees had escaped their cages or whether any...

Monkeys make a meal of human babies From The Times January 01, 2004 Chimpanzees struggling to survive amid the destruction of their forest habitat are snatching and killing human babies. At least eight children have died in the past seven years in Uganda and Tanzania after being taken by chimpanzees and a further eight have been injured. The children were found with limbs and other body parts chewed off. Primate experts blame deforestation and human encroachment on the chimpanzees' habitat for the aggressive behaviour, but are divided on whether the animals are defending their territory or seeking a replacement food...

Mutated monkey viruses gave us Aids - study By Steve Connor London - Scientists have pinpointed the origin of Aids. A new study claims to prove that HIV came about when two monkey viruses joined together in chimpanzees. Scientists have found that chimpanzees became infected with two simian immuno-deficiency viruses (SIVs) that had "viral sex" to form a third virus capable of infecting humans. The findings follow 10 years of research into the origin and evolution of Aids by Paul Sharp of Nottingham University and Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama. One implication of the research - published...

Researchers investigating the origins of the AIDS virus have traced it to a similar virus--simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)--that jumped from chimpanzees to humans. But how chimpanzees first acquired SIV remains unclear. New findings published today in the journal Science indicate that HIV's predecessor arose as a combination of two monkey viruses about a million years ago. Paul Sharp of the University of Nottingham and his colleagues studied the evolutionary history of a variety of SIV strains. The researchers found that the family trees of the chimpanzee virus (SIVcpz) constructed using different parts of its genome varied significantly, suggesting it arose...

You reach Harvard University's biological anthropology department by climbing five flights of fusty wooden stairs in the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Mass. It's an old building, haunted by the remnants of long lost tribes and the ghosts of an era when anthropologists thought nothing of collecting the paraphernalia of ancestor worship, not to mention the bones of the ancestors themselves. But it's not bones that have brought me to the Peabody today. I've made the climb to meet Carole Hooven, a young graduate student in biological anthropology, and Richard Wrangham, one of the world's leading experts on chimpanzee behavior. They...