Forbidden fruits

I think Chimps are awesome. They keep reminding us that we're not so different. I also like the way they organize their society, especially the bonobo. You can see in them some inkling of culture, society, morality and altruism. Proof that you don't need religion to have those. Sometimes chimps can also be violent, selfish and cruel. Proof that religion hasn't invented those either. I must confess that I've never read the bible growing up, I didn't need to, popular culture already shoves those stories down your throat. So when I finally got my hands on one, I skipped straight to the end, and read about the apocalypse which at least had some entertainment value. Genesis particularly seemed awfully simplistic and a thinly veiled metaphor about why Adam shouldn't have banged Eve. How did Adam convince her? Well maybe by giving her an apple... at least that's what the chimps would do according to PLOS one:

"The sharing of wild plant foods is infrequent in chimpanzees, but in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a ‘social tool’ for nurturing alliances and social bonds. Here we report the only recorded example of regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated, non-provisioned wild chimpanzees, and the contexts in which these sharing behaviours occur. From direct observations, adult chimpanzees at Bossou (Republic of Guinea, West Africa) very rarely transferred wild plant foods. In contrast, they shared cultivated plant foods much more frequently (58 out of 59 food sharing events). Sharing primarily consists of adult males allowing reproductively cycling females to take food that they possess. We propose that hypotheses focussing on ‘food-for-sex and -grooming’ and ‘showing-off’ strategies plausibly account for observed sharing behaviours. A changing human-dominated landscape presents chimpanzees with fresh challenges, and our observations suggest that crop-raiding provides adult male chimpanzees at Bossou with highly desirable food commodities that may be traded for other currencies."

So here you go, chimp males exchange fruits for sex, and they are willing to take great risks in order to get the fruits. Shows you things haven't changed much since our last common ancestor...

I've got kallikreins on the mind

Thanks to some %^&#@ journal editor, I find myself having to update the introduction of a paper on kallikreins. To my surprise, it seems that one of the member of that superfamily (made famous by PSA or kallikrein 3), is neuropsin. Type II Neuropsin seems to have evolved quite recently (5 MY) and is expressed in the frontal lobe of humans and not of other great apes. It may have functions in learning and memory, and it is already speculated that if reintroduced in chimps, they may become indistinguishable from Kamel.

If you are wondering about the artwork above it's anal bum cover : "Nietzsche's Monkey": You haven't heard anything that sounds quite like this. Graduate students in Rhetoric, Critical Theory, and Post-modernist studies will be glad to know someone is finally writing music for them."

Update: Chimp denied legal guardian

A quick update on this bayblab story from earlier this month. In a blow to 'ape rights', the chimp in question has been denied a legal guardian by the courts. As expected, the ruling is being appealed.

Should chimps have human rights?

I found this on slashdot... Apparently the justification for giving human rights to chimps is this: "He recognises himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin.". There is even talks of including chimps in the Habeas Corpus. Obviously these people have their hearts at the right place, but I think they are wrong. Firstly chimps are not human, no matter what their behaviour is like. In fact Bonobos are much closer to us when it comes to behaviour. What will happen when a chimp kills a human? Can it plead insanity because its IQ is lower? Should it get equal opportunity rights? Obviously it doesn't work that way. And why single out the chimp. Do we love ourselves so much that we'll only save animals that look like us? For me I'd rather have all the animals protected under the law to some degree. If we have to give them personal rights, we better design a new system from scratch. Are different species at birth unequal under the law?