Killing orangutans

Researchers estimate that between 750 and 1,800 orang-utans were killed in the year leading up to April 2008. In previous years, however, things were even worse: the researchers calculate that between 1,950 and 3,100 were killed each year. These killing rates are higher than previously thought and are high enough to pose a serious threat to the continued existence of orangutans in Kalimantan.

-- report, original paper.

Cultural transmission in chimpanzees

Trasmisión cultural entre primates from Proyecto Gran Simio on Vimeo.

In Tai National Part, Ivory Coast, a young chimp observes and learns from its mother how to use tools to break open nuts. The film was taken by Serge Soiret of the Great Ape Project.

The short man

Richard Freeman outlines some evidence for Orang Pendek, an elusive Sumatran great ape that, if it exists, is probably more closely related to the Orangutan than to hominins.

Through a glass

Perhaps it is objectively true that only poetry can talk of birth and origin. Because true poetry invokes the whole of language (it breathes with everything it has not said), just as the origin invokes the whole of life, the whole of Being.

The mother orangutan has come back, this time with her baby. She is sitting right up against the glass. The children in the audience have come to watch her. Suddenly, I think of a Madonna and Child by Cosimo Tura. I'm not indulging in sentimental confusion. I haven't forgotten I'm talking about apes any more than I've forgotten I'm watching a theatre. The more one emphasizes the millions of years, the more extraordinary the expressive gestures become. Arms, fingers, eyes, always eyes...A certain way of being protective, a certain gentleness -- if one could feel the fingers on one's neck one would say a certain tenderness -- which has endured for five million years.[1]

-- from Ape Theatre by John Berger (1990).

Footnote

[1] More likely, the last common ancestor of orangutans and humans lived about 13 million years ago.

Orangutan oratorio

Research indicates that (some) orangutans make wind 'instruments' out of folded vegetation, blowing through it to modulate the sound of their alarm calls (reports here and here). This makes them the only animal apart from humans known to use tools to manipulate sound.

I happen to be researching (and attempting to write about) the origins and significance of human music at the moment, so especially enjoyed this. As Robert Shumaker of the Great Ape Trust says, "It's really, really nice to see an example [of tool use] that has absolutely nothing to do with food."


(see also the funky gibbon)

Report to the Academy

How to keep species alive that seem overwhelmingly threatened with extinction? I've yet to see the remarks made last night by Richard Leakey [1]. On Thursday a debate at the Linnean Society will focus on great apes. [2]

In some parts of the 'real' world, such as Russia, the fate of some large species is less debated. 35 of the 130 gray whales estimated to remain in the Western Pacific are thought to be breeding females. The Sakhalin Energy consortium has promised not to undertake underwater seismic work, but other oil and gas firms working in the region, including BP, Exxon and Rosneft, plan to continue even though this will interfere with their well-being. Perhaps these corporations tell themselves, "why worry? There are 20,000 or more gray whales on the West coast of North America. And these 'ghosts' are toast anyway."


Footnotes

[1] His talk on climate change and extinction will be archived at RoyalSociety.tv. On 19 May the Society hosts a discussion titled Making choices to conserve the world’s species: what, where and when?.

[2] 'The Great Ape Debate', trailed by The Guardian as Experts feud over how to save apes.

Reflection, isolation

Our gregarious great ape cousins — chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas — along with dolphins and Asian elephants, have passed the famed mirror self-recognition test, which means they will, when given a mirror, scrutinize marks that had been applied to their faces or bodies. The animals also will check up on personal hygiene, inspecting their mouths, nostrils and genitals.

Yet not all members of a certifiably self-reflective species will pass the mirror test. Tellingly,...“animals raised in isolation do not seem to show mirror self-recognition.”

-- from an article on mirrors and psychology.