Evolutionary Studies

Some articles on evolutionary studies:

Early Man Couldn’t Stomach Milk.
Chimps Use Spears To Hunt Mammals.
Chimp “Stone Age” Finds Are Earliest Nonhuman Ape Tools.

Self-recognition in elephants

Elephants have been reported to recognize themselves in mirrors. Read the article here. Very cool. The only other animals that have this self-awareness are humans, great apes, and dolphins.

Baboon Gangs!

Baboon “gangs” causing havok in South Africa! They even broke into houses and ransacked fridges! Read here.

Also, this was during the summer but when I was at a state park in Pennsylvania I saw a Great Blue Heron! Way cool, I never saw one in the wild before. I couldn’t get a picture though.

Emotional Lives of Elephants

I thought this was very interesting. And I have read of previous instances about the emotional lives of elephants. Dying Elephant Elicits Compassion.

Elephants are just too smart and emotional to be used for entertainment purposes (well really all animals are). That’s why you see footage and stuff about elephants going crazy and attacking at circuses etc. And then they have to shoot the elephant when its not his fault to begin with.

Puffer fish vs. Otter

Here is a really interesting video, Puffer Fish vs. Otter!

Elephant mourning

This is an interesting article about elephants and how they react to their dead. I always thought elephants were very emotional animals. They have very close social bonds so it makes sense that they would react someway to their dead. I’ve seen on documentaries that some elephants start rampaging when a close family member is killed.

Gorilla tool-use

GORILLAS USING TOOLS. It is the first documented use of tools among wild gorillas. Now all the great apes are known to use tools. Evidence that all great apes use tools adds insight to human evolution. It suggests that tool use emerged in primates before humans split from the great apes. Tool-use was once thought a distinguishing characteristic of humans.

Though tool use is likely infrequent among gorillas, the new evidence provides insight to how gorillas see the world and interact with their environment, Breuer said.

“The most fascinating thing about this observation is the similarity [to humans] with which the gorillas solve the problems in this particular habitat,” he said. “If you or me want to cross a swamp, we use the same solutions as gorillas.” [from the NGS article]

Self-recognition

Here’s an interesting little article about capuchin monkeys. Unlike most apes, they can not recognize themselves in mirrors, but they do recognize that it is a living creature. Article.

Sleepless whales

Here is an Interesting article about dolphins and whales. Researchers just discovered that newborns and their mothers actually do not sleep at all during their first month. Also, female bottlenose dolpins have been discovered to teach their daughters to use marine sponges in order to protect their snouts while searching for prey on the rocky ocean floor. Since this is only passed on from mother to daughter, this is the first known example of tool-related culture in cetaceans. Read that article here.