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The Davises are like any other family, only instead of a son, they raised a chimpanzee. For thirty years, everything was going swell. Then something far stranger — and horrifying — happened. Just as horrifying — if not more so — than the chimpanzee attack in Connecticut on Monday.

It's easy to snickeringly dismiss the recent disclosure that the late hotelier Leona Helmsley not only left $12 million to her dog but nearly all of the rest of her estate - an estimated $5 billion to $8 billion (yes, billion) - to dogdom. No correlation, after all, has ever been evident between wealth and sanity. Apes may resemble humans, but they never get punished for stealing a banana. Photo: Courtesy Great Ape Project More significant by far was another recent bit of animal news, the Spanish parliament's June 25 vote in support of extending the right to life and...

By Jerry Markon and Ben Hubbard Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, July 15, 2008; Page B01 A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are "the enemies of the believers" and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. Saudi officials acknowledged that the textbooks used at the Islamic Saudi Academy had contained inflammatory material since at least the mid-1990s but said they ordered revisions in...

A Saudi-funded academy in Fairfax County used textbooks as recently as 2006 that compared Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, told eighth-graders that these groups are “the enemies of the believers” and diagrammed for high school students where to cut off the hands and feet of thieves, a Washington Post review of the books has found. It seems that some pretty smart kids go there. And the school's track record is pretty good, if you don't count the one kid who bypassed college, joined al-Qaeda, and tried to kill President Bush.

Two penguins native to Antarctica met one spring day in 1998 in a tank at the Central Park Zoo in midtown Manhattan. They perched atop stones and took turns diving in and out of the clear water below. They entwined necks, called to each other and mated. They then built a nest together to prepare for an egg. But no egg was forthcoming: Roy and Silo were both male. Robert Gramzay, a keeper at the zoo, watched the chinstrap penguin pair roll a rock into their nest and sit on it, according to newspaper reports. Gramzay found an egg from...

Madrid, Jun 27, 2008 / 01:08 pm (CNA).- The civil rights watchdog website HazteOir.org reported this week that Spain’s Socialist Party and the Green Party of Catalonia have grated orangutans, chimpanzees, gorillas and other apes the “inalienable right” of “companions of humanity.”The Committee on the Environment, Agriculture and Fishing of the Spanish Congress approved a proposal that would press the Zapatero administration to support the Great Ape project in order to guarantee apes the right to life, liberty and the right not to be tortured.  The final text of the proposal was drafted by Green party and Socialist lawmakers,...

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...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans. Parliament's environmental committee approved resolutions urging Spain to comply with the Great Apes Project, devised by scientists and philosophers who say our closest genetic relatives deserve rights hitherto limited to humans. "This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," said Pedro Pozas,...

Great Apes Think Ahead: Conclusive Evidence Of Advanced Planning CapacitiesIn a series of four experiments, Mathias and Helena Osvath investigated whether chimpanzees and orangutans could override immediate drives in favor of future needs, and therefore demonstrate both self-control and the ability to plan ahead, rather than simply fulfill immediate needs through impulsive behavior. (Credit: iStockphoto/Michael Steden) ScienceDaily (Jun. 19, 2008) — Apes can plan for their future needs just as we humans can – by using self-control and imagining future events. Mathias and Helena Osvath’s research, from Lunds University Cognitive Science in Sweden, is the first to provide conclusive evidence...

South Africa's crime problem has taken a new twist. A gang of baboons is being blamed for a series of break-ins. The chacma baboons, which live wild in the Cape peninsula, have been raiding people's homes for food and causing thousands of pounds in damage.

Female chimpanzees 'sell' sex for fruit By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 11/09/2007 Female chimpanzees are "selling" sex to the males that gather the most fruit, according to new research. Behavioural psychologists found that female chimps mate with the males that give them the most fruit, while male chimps steal "desirable" fruits such as papaya from farms and orchards in a bid to woo potential mates. Oranges, pineapples and maize are among the most sought after crops, with bananas proving far less popular. The scientists also discovered that the chimp that gathered the most fruit in the...

Science Daily — Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter's example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize, showing that even before preschool, toddlers are more sophisticated in their social learning skills than their closest primate relatives, according to a report published in the 7 September issue of the journal Science. Chimpanzees participated in a comprehensive battery of tasks comparing their physical and social cognitive abilities to those of 2-year-old human children. (Credit: Image courtesy of MPI EVAN/JGI-USA) This innate proficiency allows them to excel in...

A reorganization of workers at the Swedish Tax Authority is partly shaped on studies of apes, according to a leaked internal report. Employees are not flattered by the comparison. The tax authority is currently undergoing its largest reorganization for many years. One of the foundations of the restructuring plan is a report which says that studies of apes show that people work best in groups of 150. The reorganization was announced earlier in the summer. Work is being moved from small towns to larger towns and cities. Around 1,350 people are affected by the move. Economies of scale are a...

Don't stare at the apes, zoo tells visitors By Martin Banks Last Updated: 1:15am BST 16/04/2007 Most people visit zoos to see the animals - but visitors to Antwerp Zoo in Belgium are being told not to look at the apes. Instead, visitors are now confronted with signs telling them that making prolonged eye contact with the apes leaves them sad and withdrawn. Zoo staff reckon staring can result in the creatures becoming less sociable. A spokesman said: "We are saying to visitors that, if our apes hold eye contact with them, then they should look away for a bit...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An international movement is growing to grant human rights and "personhood" to apes. In Austria, judges must decide whether a British woman should become legal guardian of a chimpanzee, and in Spain, members of parliament are being urged to grant apes the right to life, freedom and protection from torture, reports BBC News magazine. Ian Redmond of the U.N.'s Great Apes Survival Project contends apes are special because they are so closely related to humans – chimpanzees and bonobos, for example, differ by only 1 percent of DNA. Redmond argues the great apes have the human quality of self-awareness...

Should apes have human rights? By Tom Geoghegan BBC News Magazine Apes and humans have common ancestors but should they have the same rights? An international movement to give them "personhood" is gathering pace. What would Aristotle make of it? More than 2,000 years after the Greek philosopher declared Mother Nature had made all animals for the sake of man, there are moves to put the relationship on a more equal footing. Judges in Austria are considering whether a British woman, Paula Stibbe, should become legal guardian of a chimpanzee called Hiasl which was abducted from its family tribe in...

A BRITISH Muslim school is teaching children that Jews are “repugnant apes” and Christians “pigs”, a former teacher claims. Colin Cook, 57, says when he raised his concerns to chiefs at the Saudi government-funded King Fahad Academy in West London he was told: “This is not England. It is Saudi Arabia.” Some of the 1,250 pupils at the faith school are alleged to have been heard idolising Osama bin Laden, praising 9/11 and saying they want to “kill Americans”. Mr Cook — himself a Muslim — warned yesterday: “The school could produce a dangerous harvest. “It is clearly racist and...

Cultured Cousins? January 31, 2007 by Kirsten Vala Looking at apes, tools, and human evolution Many animals have been observed using tools: Dolphins use sponges when fishing, crows use sticks to forage for insects in dead wood, capuchin monkeys use stones to break open nuts. A wild chimpanzee in a nest (or bed or sleeping platform), essentially a simple shelter. This is a constructed artifact, a simple example of elementary technology, which happens to be a great ape universal. (© W.C. McGrew) Apes use tools. So what? What does that tell us about human evolution? As it turns out, observing...

YET more evidence is in that the Ebola virus is spreading in a wave across Africa - putting the world's last big populations of lowland gorillas directly in its path. In 2003, an outbreak of Ebola struck gorillas living in the Congo. Bats in the area at that time were also carrying the virus, researchers recently discovered (New Scientist, 3 December 2005, p 20). That meant either the virus had always been lurking in bats, and spread to the gorillas, or that the bats were newly infected as the epidemic crossed their territory. Now researchers have found that the bat...

To be a "good" Muslim! Part I http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1726241/posts Part II http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1727912/posts Part III http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1728361/posts Dehumaize victims of Islamic terror, especially Israeli men, women & children as "tanks". Never apologize for the continuing exposed (Like Muhammad Aldura, Reuters "images", Jenin "numbers" & added bodies) long tradition of lying, faking, inventing hoaxes, faking images, etc. but rather be already busy with preparing the next one. Islamic violence and bloodshed is always ahead of West's "reprisal", in other words, Bin Laden, Muhammad Atta, etc. have massacred Americans on 9/11/2001 was because the US will eventually go into Afghanistan afterwards, Islamists almost succeeded with...