Primatology.net

Female bonobos made 99 of 158 captures with a known hunter at LuiKotale, yet the paper does not report per-capita rates and scored some hunters by who held the carcass. A close read of what the data can support. #Bonobos #Primatology #HumanEvolution www.primatology.net/p/bonobo-hun...

In 86 sanctuary chimpanzees, caregivers rated higher-ranking animals as bolder, with the top fifth averaging 2.8 on a 0 to 4 scale against 1.5 for the lowest. The catch: both measures are caregiver judgments. #Primatology #Chimpanzees #Leadership www.primatology.net/p/chimpanzee...

Chimpanzees carry 158 copies of a retrovirus that humans never got, and one of them sits inside a gene that is silent in chimp neural organoids but active in human ones. Cutting it out turned the gene back on in chimp stem cells. #Primatology #Chimpanzee #Retroviruses

Macaques that lived through a deadly SRV outbreak ate food off a feces-coated surface in 47% of trials; an unexposed group did in 79%. A strong lead, but the study has one control enclosure and no baseline. #Primatology #Macaques #BehavioralImmuneSystem www.primatology.net/p/macaque-pa...

A 7.47 mm milk tooth from a one-year-old macaque, found at Schöningen, Germany, sits about 1,800 km north of any wild macaque today. Barbary macaques in a Pleistocene woodland. #Primatology #Pleistocene #Archaeology www.primatology.net/p/barbary-ma...

The most solitary great ape, and yet Bornean orangutan mothers walked farther and fed less so their infants could play with peers, 15 years of tracking show. Whether it pays off is unknown. #Orangutan #Primatology #HumanEvolution www.primatology.net/p/32600-hour...

Chimps at a Ugandan sanctuary stole pineapple in 70% of trials with non-friends but only 61% with friends, and thieves screamed less when robbing a friend. New study of 26 animals, 800 hours of observation. #Primatology #Chimpanzees #Evolution www.primatology.net/p/chimpanzee...

Most of a young orangutan’s solo trial and error starts with watching. In a 12-year study of wild Sumatran orangutans, one bout of peering kept exploration elevated for about 145 minutes. #Primatology #Orangutans #AnimalCulture www.primatology.net/p/young-oran...

At Bossou, Guinea, a chimpanzee mother carried her dead infant for 68 days. A new analysis of 83 cases finds how long mothers carry can be explained without assuming they know death is final. #Primatology #Chimps #HumanEvolution www.primatology.net/p/why-chimpa...

Camera traps in Senegal filmed wild chimpanzees passing tools to one another 33 times, most often to infants, and in all but one case the recipient made the first move. #Primatology #Chimpanzees #AnimalBehavior www.primatology.net/p/wild-chimp...

New primate brain-scan study finds the self-processing network’s hub shifted from insula to cingulate cortex, evolving unevenly across humans, chimpanzees, and macaques. #Neuroscience #PrimateEvolution #BrainEvolution www.primatology.net/p/the-self-p...

A new analysis of 77 primate species finds brain size and group size predict nothing about how many calls a species makes. Body size and life in the trees predict a lot. #Primatology #LanguageEvolution #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/body-size-...

A wild monkey’s foot bends almost exactly like a chimp’s ankle when it climbs straight up a tree trunk. New PNAS research complicates a major debate over how our last common ancestor with chimps actually moved. #Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-monkey...

New Science paper: primate brain expansion wasn’t driven by the frontal lobe after all. Endocast scans show vision-processing regions ballooned instead, tracking optic nerve size back 33+ million years. #PaleoAnthropology #BrainEvolution #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-eyes-h...

Monkeys grooming dogs. Lemurs adopting other lemurs. A capuchin troop that raised a marmoset for 10 months. A new study of 427 cases suggests pet-keeping’s roots run deeper than Homo sapiens. 🐒🐾 #Primatology #AnimalBehavior #Evolution www.primatology.net/p/when-a-mon...

Before chimps and bonobos compete over food, they touch each other first, embraces, kisses, even fingers placed in mouths. A new study in Proc. R. Soc. B finds this reassurance predicts who gets fed. #Primatology #Bonobo #Chimpanzees www.primatology.net/p/the-reassu...

Social media caption: Solitary orangutan mothers travel farther and eat less to get their infants to playdates, steering toward a neighbor’s territory days in advance, then heading home after. #Orangutans #PrimateCognition #MaternalInvestment www.primatology.net/p/the-mother...

New analysis revives the “brain lag” hypothesis: body size grew first in some primates, brains caught up... then kept going, overshooting into new cognitive territory. Humans included. #humanevolution #paleoanthropology #primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-brain-...

New research overturns a textbook assumption: difficult childbirth isn’t uniquely human. Squirrel monkeys and bushbabies face even tighter cephalopelvic fits than we do. The method was wrong from the start. #Primatology #PrimateBiology www.primatology.net/p/the-obstet...

Slow aging in primates isn’t a human invention — new research traces it back 25 million years to the ancestor of all apes, suggesting genome-wide studies in humans alone won’t crack it. #primatology #evolution #aging www.primatology.net/p/primate-li...

Orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimps, and humans all laugh with the same underlying beat — and new research shows this rhythmic structure dates back 15 million years to our last common ancestor. #Language #Linguistics #Primatology #PrimateVocalCommunication #Anthropology

Savanna chimps in Senegal use the same ant-dipping strategies as forest populations — because ant aggressiveness, not habitat type, is what drives tool use. New research from Dindefelo unpacks why. #Primatology #Chimpanzees www.primatology.net/p/what-the-a...

Wild primates develop tooth grooves that look almost identical to “toothpick marks” in ancient humans — but no primate shows the wedge-shaped gumline lesions ubiquitous in modern dental clinics. New research reframes both. #paleoanthropology #dentalevolution #fossilrecord

New research: chimpanzee quartets outperform pairs at sustaining a shared resource — and it’s the dominant animal eating less that makes the difference. A fascinating wrinkle in great ape cooperation. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #ChimpanzeeResearch www.primatology.net/p/when-the-b...

Your wrist looks more like a gorilla’s than you’d expect. New research finds human carpal bones evolved from knuckle-walking traits, not away from them. #HumanEvolution #Paleoanthropology #FossilRecord #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-human-...

New research across 146 primate species finds that how much neighboring groups’ home ranges overlap is a stronger predictor of male-female size differences than mating system. The threat of rivals, not just fighting them, shapes male bodies. #Primatology #SexualSelection #Evolution

81 apes. 150 studies. 18 years. The largest open-access dataset of great ape cognition just dropped — and what it can tell us about the origins of human intelligence is just getting started. #Primatology #ComparativePsychology #OpenScience www.primatology.net/p/what-81-ap...

New research finds orangutans and chimpanzees match each other’s laugh faces with surprising precision — and the ability likely traces back 10–16 million years to our last common ancestor. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Emotions www.primatology.net/p/great-apes...

Chimps in Uganda’s Kibale National Park split into rival groups and descended into years of lethal conflict — no ideology, no ethnicity, just collapsing social networks. New research in Science challenges what we think drives collective violence. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Anthropology

A 17-million-year-old jaw from Egypt just challenged where all living apes originated. One mandible from the desert, and the field’s East Africa-centered model is under serious pressure. #Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution #Miocene www.primatology.net/p/a-jaw-from...

The “ape culture wars” have raged for 50+ years — not over whether chimps have culture (they do), but what kind and how it spreads. A new paper maps the battle and argues both sides are missing hidden common ground. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #AnimalCulture www.primatology.net/p/the-ape-cu...

Your brain has a “human” voice detector, but it turns out it’s been listening to chimpanzees this whole time. New research shows our neural hardware for voices is an ancient primate inheritance. #Neuroscience #Evolution #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/the-chimpa...

New research on primate inner ears reveals a tripartite system, not a bipartite one. Gravity and rotation sensors evolve independently, changing how we interpret the fossil record. #Evolution #Anthropology #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-three-...

New research on 100 primate species finds that mild and lethal aggression are evolutionarily decoupled — species that fight often aren’t more likely to kill. Bickering and murder follow different evolutionary paths. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Aggression @evolletters.bsky.social

A 13-million-year-old jaw from a Colombian desert just gave us the earliest evidence of leaf-eating in New World primates — and it belongs to an ancient howler monkey relative larger than any platyrrhine previously known from the Miocene. #Primatology #Paleoanthropology #FossilRecord

New research: chimpanzees are not more aggressive than bonobos. The real difference is in direction — who hits whom. The peaceful bonobo image may say more about sampling bias than evolution. #HumanEvolution #Primatology #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/the-bonobo...

A chimp named Juma stuck grass in his ear. Within a week, his whole group was doing it. Then he put grass in his rectum. They copied that too. What this tells us about the origins of culture is genuinely unsettling. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #AnimalCulture www.primatology.net/p/grass-in-t...

Chimps given crystals held them up to their eyes, sorted them from pebbles, and refused to give them back. A new study asks what that tells us about why Homo erectus collected quartz 780,000 years ago. #HumanEvolution #Archaeology #Paleoanthropology #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/what-chimp...

New research scanned brains across 12 macaque species and found tolerant societies — not aggressive ones — predict larger amygdalae, with inverted developmental trajectories that flip the standard primate pattern. #Primatology #BrainEvolution #SocialBrain www.primatology.net/p/the-tolera...

Wild chimps at Uganda’s Ngogo site tested positive for an alcohol metabolite in their urine — direct physiological proof they regularly consume ethanol from fermented fruit. What does that mean for the evolution of human drinking? #Primatology #HumanEvolution #DrunkMonkeyHypothesis

New study on bonobo sex finds that facial mimicry doesn’t speed up movement tempo, but tempo drops sharply right after it stops. What does that tell us about the evolutionary roots of rhythm and communication? #HumanEvolution #Primatology #CognitiveScience www.primatology.net/p/what-bonob...

New paper explores how primates co-construct cultures with each other and with humans in shared landscapes, challenging century-old assumptions about what counts as “natural” behavior. #PrimateCulture #AnthropologicalScience #CulturalEvolution www.primatology.net/p/when-macaq...

New research shows Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo, can track pretend objects, suggesting the roots of human imagination go back 6-9 million years to our common ancestor. #CognitiveEvolution #PrimateResearch #HumanOrigins www.primatology.net/p/a-bonobo-t...

New study of 500 wild primate teeth shows grooves once linked to ancient toothpicks can form naturally, while a common modern dental problem appears uniquely human. #Paleoanthropology #EvolutionaryMedicine #DentalAnthropology www.primatology.net/p/toothpick-...

Chimpanzee groups show that bigger can be better for sharing. New experiments reveal that tolerant groups with restrained leaders sustain shared resources longer, offering clues to the deep evolutionary roots of cooperation. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Cooperation #BehavioralEcology

Spider monkeys do more than search for fruit. A seven-year study shows they swap “insider knowledge” by constantly reshuffling social groups, building a shared map of where and when trees ripen. Collective intelligence in action. #Primatology #AnimalBehavior #Evolution

Baby chimps take the biggest risks, not teens. A new study shows how early danger, falling bodies, and limited supervision shaped chimp behavior and may explain why humans delay risk until adolescence. #Anthropology #Evolution #Primatology #HumanOrigins www.primatology.net/p/when-baby-...

New research shows wild orangutans rely on cultural learning to master hundreds of foods. Without social guidance, simulated apes fail to develop full diets, revealing ancient roots of cultural accumulation. #Primatology #Culture #Evolution #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/the-appren...

A long-term study of the Ngogo chimpanzees shows that lethal territorial aggression led to a 22 percent range expansion, doubled birth rates, and dramatically improved infant survival. Territorial gains shaped their evolutionary success. #Chimpanzees #Evolution #Primatology #PNAS

Scientists discover that chimpanzees and bonobos build layered social circles much like humans. The study hints at deep evolutionary roots for friendship, selectivity, and time-limited social bonds. #primatology #evolution #socialbehavior #anthropology www.primatology.net/p/circles-in...