A curious 400 pound silverback gorilla living in a zoo investigates a feathered visitor inside his enclosure. It's definitely a goosey vs goliath encounter. Fun!
Here is the link...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Oq0gZiJxP5Q
Showing posts with label Primates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Primates. Show all posts
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Goose Versus Gorilla
A curious 400 pound silverback gorilla living in a zoo investigates a feathered visitor inside his enclosure. It's definitely a goosey vs goliath encounter. Fun!
Here is the link...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Oq0gZiJxP5Q
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Gorillas - 98.6% Human
Here is a link to a wonderful short film that's up close with wild gorillas. We have an obligation to protect these near human ceratures. If we don't they will be gone in the wild by mid-eentury.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co8NneR8ilc
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Koko
In 1971, a female lowland gorilla was born in the San Francisco Zoo. At one year of age, she was given into the care of a behavioral researcher named Francine Patterson. The young gorilla was named Koko.
Koko has lived with Francine Patterson ever since. Koko is 41 years old now. Over the years, she has learned to sign with her hands (American sign language). She can use 1,100 different signs and can understand more than 2,000 words in spoken English.
What can be said about Koko? She is an animal; a primate, sharing all but about one percent of the DNA genetic code that we humans have in our cells. The normal life of gorillas is in Central and West Africa, living in small family units, eating mostly plants. Wild gorillas are shy creatures, who divide most of their time between munching and snoozing. They are generally quiet and non-aggressive, except when threatened.
The difference between humans and other animal species has traditionally involved the concept of sentience. A sentient being is one that feels pleasure and pain, and is capable of at least a modicum of awareness of itself. There are those that hold the view that even higher animals like gorillas are incapable to such feelings.
Koko is without question a sentient being. She is intelligent (as gorillas go), and very much an emotional being.
Nothing demonstrates Koko's ability to feel deep emotion than her relationship with her pet kitten, which she herself named 'All Ball'.
Koko cared for the kitten like it was her own baby.
Unfortunately, the tale of Koko and 'All Ball' took an unexpected turn that fully demonstrated just how sentient Koko is.
The following link is to a video that shows Koko's touching reaction to some very bad news about 'All Ball'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqTUG8MPmGg
Gorillas are not humans. There is a difference. But like so many other animal species, there is ample evidence that they are capable of feeling pleasure and pain; of being happy or sad.
In the case of the gorilla, there is only a small area in the Congo River basin and in Rwanda where they are indigenous. Their numbers have been in constant decline over the past few decades. Habitat loss, due to human encroachment is the biggest cause. The human population has exploded in the few places where gorillas live in the wild. Pretty much all of the people living in those places must survive off of what the land provides. There is some agriculture, but the biggest part of the protein in the human diet in those places is from wild animals. About 20% of animals killed by hunters for human consumption are primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The term used to reduce these wild creatures into a market commodity is 'bushmeat'. I wrote an earlier blog entry about bushmeat in 09/08/2012.
The future of gorillas like Koko and other primates in the wild is not good. In fact, that's probably a big league understatement. The human population in the Congo is currently about 76 million. That number is expected to grow to 180 million by 2050. Given that most people in the Congo depend on bushmeat, it's hard to imagine that any kind of wild animal species will survive. Knowing this pains me to the core. I so wish there was something I could do about it.
Koko has lived with Francine Patterson ever since. Koko is 41 years old now. Over the years, she has learned to sign with her hands (American sign language). She can use 1,100 different signs and can understand more than 2,000 words in spoken English.
 |
| Koko with Francine Patterson |
What can be said about Koko? She is an animal; a primate, sharing all but about one percent of the DNA genetic code that we humans have in our cells. The normal life of gorillas is in Central and West Africa, living in small family units, eating mostly plants. Wild gorillas are shy creatures, who divide most of their time between munching and snoozing. They are generally quiet and non-aggressive, except when threatened.
The difference between humans and other animal species has traditionally involved the concept of sentience. A sentient being is one that feels pleasure and pain, and is capable of at least a modicum of awareness of itself. There are those that hold the view that even higher animals like gorillas are incapable to such feelings.
Koko is without question a sentient being. She is intelligent (as gorillas go), and very much an emotional being.
Nothing demonstrates Koko's ability to feel deep emotion than her relationship with her pet kitten, which she herself named 'All Ball'.
 |
| Koko and 'All Ball' |
Koko cared for the kitten like it was her own baby.
Unfortunately, the tale of Koko and 'All Ball' took an unexpected turn that fully demonstrated just how sentient Koko is.
The following link is to a video that shows Koko's touching reaction to some very bad news about 'All Ball'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqTUG8MPmGg
Gorillas are not humans. There is a difference. But like so many other animal species, there is ample evidence that they are capable of feeling pleasure and pain; of being happy or sad.
In the case of the gorilla, there is only a small area in the Congo River basin and in Rwanda where they are indigenous. Their numbers have been in constant decline over the past few decades. Habitat loss, due to human encroachment is the biggest cause. The human population has exploded in the few places where gorillas live in the wild. Pretty much all of the people living in those places must survive off of what the land provides. There is some agriculture, but the biggest part of the protein in the human diet in those places is from wild animals. About 20% of animals killed by hunters for human consumption are primates, including gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The term used to reduce these wild creatures into a market commodity is 'bushmeat'. I wrote an earlier blog entry about bushmeat in 09/08/2012.
The future of gorillas like Koko and other primates in the wild is not good. In fact, that's probably a big league understatement. The human population in the Congo is currently about 76 million. That number is expected to grow to 180 million by 2050. Given that most people in the Congo depend on bushmeat, it's hard to imagine that any kind of wild animal species will survive. Knowing this pains me to the core. I so wish there was something I could do about it.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Bushmeat
In West Africa, people depend on bushmeat for survival. We're talking about wild animals hunted and killed for human consumption. Professional hunters armed with snares and rifles fan out in the heavily vegetated jungle in places like the Congo and the Cameroon to collect every kind of warm blooded vertebrate for sale in the 'meat' sections of local village markets. In West Africa, villages don't have supermarkets with the latest packaged edibles. They don't have McNuggets or frozen pizza they can heat up in the oven. They don't have ovens either. Even if they did, the people have no money to buy food. The average person survives on less than two dollars a day in West Africa. They get along the traditional way, subsisting on what nature provides, plants like cassava root and bushmeat.
Subsistence living has worked in West Africa for tens of thousands of years of human evolution. It does not work anymore. There quite simply are too many people trying to survive on nature's rapidly dwindling reserves.
As much as twenty percent of the bushmeat trade is in wild primates. We're talking gorillas, chimps, colobus, and various other kinds of monkeys. These creatures have hands like ours, and large brains in relation to body size. The evidence shows they are sentient beings, able to experience pleasure and pain. They can't speak like humans, but the closest primate relatives to humans - the great apes like gorillas and chimps - can be trained to communicate to a remarkable degree using sign language. Koko the gorilla is wonderful testament to that fact. She understands more than a thousand hand signs and more than two thousand spoken words.
In West Africa, we humans are eating our closest relatives; consuming them as food. There is little or no malevolence involved. It's just a fact. It's all they have ever known in West Africa, and there is no alternative. Corporations that provide an abundance of food for developed nations have little presence in West Africa, mostly because there is no money in it.
Eating our closest relatives is not new to humans. A hundred thousand years ago, 'Australopithicus' - a close human relative that walked erect, but had a smaller brain - shared the landscape with humans. Guess who hunted the lesser species and ate them. If you haven't seen the 1981 movie, Quest for Fire, check it out. See who's tied up, hanging from a tree limb, waiting to be put on the dinner menu.
In 2012, the bushmeat trade in West Africa is an abhorent fact of life.
Eating off the land is the way it's always been in Africa. In fact, before developed nations were developed, that's how it was in those places as well. Humans were hunter/gatherers before they became farmers. In much of Africa, it's still that way. Estimates suggest up to 90% of animal protein consumed by people living in the Congo Basin comes from bushmeat. Only now, the human population is exploding. Humans are taking more and more of the land, the water, and other resources for themselves. The massive wild animal slaughter that is taking place is devastating.
It's easy to apply lazy logic and place all the blame on the Africans for the demise of their wildlife. That would be very wrong.
Rapacious multi-national corporations covet the still largely untapped natural resources in Africa. In the Congo, Cameroon, and other West African nations, we're talking timber and a whole range of valuable rare earth minerals that have already been substantially exploited in other parts of the world. Killing off the wildlife that currently occupy the lands these outside forces covet is the first step to opening up rampant exploitation.
It's hard to see much hope for the wild creatures of West Africa. There are already parts of the landscape in the Congo basin that have largely been stripped of their wildlife.
The bushmeat trade is heartbreaking. I so wish there was a way to stop it, or at least reduce it to a level that nature can manage.
Much of the world's human population growth is taking place in Africa. That's because we gave them modern medicine but have not helped them manage their fertility. The Democratic Republic of the Congo currrently has a human population of about 75 million. That is expected to mushroom to 180 million by 2050. With all those people dependent on bushmeat, what chance do the wild animals have? It pains me in the deepest way to think that gorillas, chimpanzees, other primate species - in fact all the wildlife - in Africa are doomed to extinction, to a great degree from being eaten by humans.
Since the earliest days of colonialism, Europeans have manipulated the African continent. One thing we haven't done is provide access to family planning. By focusing mostly on what we can take from Africa rather than what we could do for it, we are complicit in its demise. Africa's expanding human populations will eat their wildlife legacy to survive, and when that legacy is gone, and there is nothing left to eat, the people will starve. As devastasting as it is to consider, the entire African continent is caught up in a death spiral... not just the animals, but for the humans who live there as well.
Here is a link to a study about the impact of the bustmeat trade...
http://www.culturallandscapes.ca/blahdocs/uploads/2003bushmeat_and_food_security_1758.pdf
Here is a link to the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force
http://www.bushmeat.org/
Subsistence living has worked in West Africa for tens of thousands of years of human evolution. It does not work anymore. There quite simply are too many people trying to survive on nature's rapidly dwindling reserves.
As much as twenty percent of the bushmeat trade is in wild primates. We're talking gorillas, chimps, colobus, and various other kinds of monkeys. These creatures have hands like ours, and large brains in relation to body size. The evidence shows they are sentient beings, able to experience pleasure and pain. They can't speak like humans, but the closest primate relatives to humans - the great apes like gorillas and chimps - can be trained to communicate to a remarkable degree using sign language. Koko the gorilla is wonderful testament to that fact. She understands more than a thousand hand signs and more than two thousand spoken words.
In West Africa, we humans are eating our closest relatives; consuming them as food. There is little or no malevolence involved. It's just a fact. It's all they have ever known in West Africa, and there is no alternative. Corporations that provide an abundance of food for developed nations have little presence in West Africa, mostly because there is no money in it.
Eating our closest relatives is not new to humans. A hundred thousand years ago, 'Australopithicus' - a close human relative that walked erect, but had a smaller brain - shared the landscape with humans. Guess who hunted the lesser species and ate them. If you haven't seen the 1981 movie, Quest for Fire, check it out. See who's tied up, hanging from a tree limb, waiting to be put on the dinner menu.
In 2012, the bushmeat trade in West Africa is an abhorent fact of life.
Eating off the land is the way it's always been in Africa. In fact, before developed nations were developed, that's how it was in those places as well. Humans were hunter/gatherers before they became farmers. In much of Africa, it's still that way. Estimates suggest up to 90% of animal protein consumed by people living in the Congo Basin comes from bushmeat. Only now, the human population is exploding. Humans are taking more and more of the land, the water, and other resources for themselves. The massive wild animal slaughter that is taking place is devastating.
It's easy to apply lazy logic and place all the blame on the Africans for the demise of their wildlife. That would be very wrong.
Rapacious multi-national corporations covet the still largely untapped natural resources in Africa. In the Congo, Cameroon, and other West African nations, we're talking timber and a whole range of valuable rare earth minerals that have already been substantially exploited in other parts of the world. Killing off the wildlife that currently occupy the lands these outside forces covet is the first step to opening up rampant exploitation.
It's hard to see much hope for the wild creatures of West Africa. There are already parts of the landscape in the Congo basin that have largely been stripped of their wildlife.
The bushmeat trade is heartbreaking. I so wish there was a way to stop it, or at least reduce it to a level that nature can manage.
Much of the world's human population growth is taking place in Africa. That's because we gave them modern medicine but have not helped them manage their fertility. The Democratic Republic of the Congo currrently has a human population of about 75 million. That is expected to mushroom to 180 million by 2050. With all those people dependent on bushmeat, what chance do the wild animals have? It pains me in the deepest way to think that gorillas, chimpanzees, other primate species - in fact all the wildlife - in Africa are doomed to extinction, to a great degree from being eaten by humans.
Since the earliest days of colonialism, Europeans have manipulated the African continent. One thing we haven't done is provide access to family planning. By focusing mostly on what we can take from Africa rather than what we could do for it, we are complicit in its demise. Africa's expanding human populations will eat their wildlife legacy to survive, and when that legacy is gone, and there is nothing left to eat, the people will starve. As devastasting as it is to consider, the entire African continent is caught up in a death spiral... not just the animals, but for the humans who live there as well.
Here is a link to a study about the impact of the bustmeat trade...
http://www.culturallandscapes.ca/blahdocs/uploads/2003bushmeat_and_food_security_1758.pdf
Here is a link to the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force
http://www.bushmeat.org/
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Simian Finger
A surly reaction to an intrusive photographer?
Getting the finger is not an everyday occurance for most people, especially when the perpetrator is a gorilla.
In this instance, the image is funny, but the story behind it is not. This primate provocateur, who lives in a Colorado zoo, is named Kwisha. She's 19 years old and her finger is permanently extended, due to tendon damage. It's been that way for 12 years.
Getting the finger is not an everyday occurance for most people, especially when the perpetrator is a gorilla.
In this instance, the image is funny, but the story behind it is not. This primate provocateur, who lives in a Colorado zoo, is named Kwisha. She's 19 years old and her finger is permanently extended, due to tendon damage. It's been that way for 12 years.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Talking to Bonobos
The bonobo, Pan paniscus, looks like a smaller version of the chimpazee. In fact, they are close relatives to chimps, but are a separate species.
Bonobos live in a small area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Size is not the only thing that makes them different from chimps. Bonobo culture is considered matriarcal, with male status tied to the mother's status in the group. Bonobos are significantly less aggressive than chimps, very likely because they are highly sexual. Relationships and social status are reinforced with frequent sexual activity, both heterosexual and homosexual, among both sexes. Perhaps one of the reasons bonobos are not often found on display in zoos is because they are are prone to sexual behavior, all day, every day. As a way of maintaining relationships and keeping the peace, it appears to work very well for them.
Given that bonobos are such close relatives to humans, could it be that our cultural morays are causing us to stifle our own natural sexual instincts? I think that case could be made, just on the anecdotal evidence. Bonobos benefit socially from the frequent expression of their sexuality. I don't guess we're going to see humans emulating them any time soon, but we might benefit from being a bit more tolerant of the many ways that people do express that part of their lives.
In Iowa, there is a research center, where a family group of bonobos resides. They are clearly very intelligent. The whole group has learned 400 symbols that relate to ideas or words. They are able to communciate with researchers using these symbols.
Now, there is an effort underway to create an electronic interface that will translate bonobo symbolic communciation into words spoken by a robotic bonobo. A clever way to foster interspecies communications.
Here is the link to the robotic bonobo development project...
http://www.gizmag.com/bonobo-chat-ape-communication-app/22002/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=5156a9d703-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
There are only about 40,000 bonobos left in the wild. Their numbers have dropped significantly in recent years, mostly because of poaching. The Congo is a place where a large portion of the growing human population relies on bushmeat from wild animals for food. They hunt bonobos and kill them for food.
In fact, human population growth is the chief threat to bonobo survival. The Congo is a place larger than all of Europe combined. It is also the center of an ongoing human genocide. More than ten million people have died violent deaths over the last two decades. Despite that fact, the human population has been growing at a rate of 3% annually. The current population of nearly 70 million is expected to swell to 180 million by 2050. What does that mean for the Congo's wild animal species? It's deeply depressing to think that bonobos, chimps, and gorillas, the closest relatives to humans, could be wiped out by humans consuming them for food. That very likely will happen before the end of this century. We humans should find a way to prevent it. We shoud encourage a sustainable future for the Congo that celebrates and protects that nation's unique biological heritage. Unfortunately, very little like that is happening, and time is running out.
Bonobos live in a small area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Size is not the only thing that makes them different from chimps. Bonobo culture is considered matriarcal, with male status tied to the mother's status in the group. Bonobos are significantly less aggressive than chimps, very likely because they are highly sexual. Relationships and social status are reinforced with frequent sexual activity, both heterosexual and homosexual, among both sexes. Perhaps one of the reasons bonobos are not often found on display in zoos is because they are are prone to sexual behavior, all day, every day. As a way of maintaining relationships and keeping the peace, it appears to work very well for them.
Given that bonobos are such close relatives to humans, could it be that our cultural morays are causing us to stifle our own natural sexual instincts? I think that case could be made, just on the anecdotal evidence. Bonobos benefit socially from the frequent expression of their sexuality. I don't guess we're going to see humans emulating them any time soon, but we might benefit from being a bit more tolerant of the many ways that people do express that part of their lives.
In Iowa, there is a research center, where a family group of bonobos resides. They are clearly very intelligent. The whole group has learned 400 symbols that relate to ideas or words. They are able to communciate with researchers using these symbols.
Now, there is an effort underway to create an electronic interface that will translate bonobo symbolic communciation into words spoken by a robotic bonobo. A clever way to foster interspecies communications.
Here is the link to the robotic bonobo development project...
http://www.gizmag.com/bonobo-chat-ape-communication-app/22002/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=5156a9d703-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email
There are only about 40,000 bonobos left in the wild. Their numbers have dropped significantly in recent years, mostly because of poaching. The Congo is a place where a large portion of the growing human population relies on bushmeat from wild animals for food. They hunt bonobos and kill them for food.
In fact, human population growth is the chief threat to bonobo survival. The Congo is a place larger than all of Europe combined. It is also the center of an ongoing human genocide. More than ten million people have died violent deaths over the last two decades. Despite that fact, the human population has been growing at a rate of 3% annually. The current population of nearly 70 million is expected to swell to 180 million by 2050. What does that mean for the Congo's wild animal species? It's deeply depressing to think that bonobos, chimps, and gorillas, the closest relatives to humans, could be wiped out by humans consuming them for food. That very likely will happen before the end of this century. We humans should find a way to prevent it. We shoud encourage a sustainable future for the Congo that celebrates and protects that nation's unique biological heritage. Unfortunately, very little like that is happening, and time is running out.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Simian Delight
Human interaction with wild gorillas was pretty much unheard of until Dian Fossey's enchanting, but ultimately tragic story was told in the movie, Gorillas in the Mist. The mountain gorilla is one of the most critically endangered, large animal species on Earth. As of January, 2011, there were just under 800 of them in the world. They can only be found in a few protected areas in the Eastern Congo, Uganda, and Ruwanda. These days their best hope may come from the tourist dollars generated by foreigners, who travel to Africa to experience wild gorillas, up close. These intelligent, peaceful, and mostly vegetarian creatures share about 99% of their genetic identity with humans.
I love this video. Partially because it is reminiscent of a scene in Change Agents, my most recent screenplay. The large male patriarch, also known as the silverback, weighs in the range of 400 pounds. In this amazing moment of human-gorilla interaction, the silverback pays an unexpected visit to a tourist camp, accompanied by his wives and their kiddies.
The best part begins just over a minute into the video. It is magical. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvWjBlzArII
I love this video. Partially because it is reminiscent of a scene in Change Agents, my most recent screenplay. The large male patriarch, also known as the silverback, weighs in the range of 400 pounds. In this amazing moment of human-gorilla interaction, the silverback pays an unexpected visit to a tourist camp, accompanied by his wives and their kiddies.
The best part begins just over a minute into the video. It is magical. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvWjBlzArII
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