chimps | Common News Update

Jan. 7 (UPI) -- The benefits of the nurturing presence of a mom, beyond simply a source of food, are well documented among humans. Time spent with mom is associated with cognitive, social and emotional development. The benefits moms offer juvenile chimpanzees, after they've weaned, are less well understood, but a new study, published this week in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, suggests orphaned chimps develop less muscle mass than chimps with living mothers. "We assessed the muscle mass of 70 offspring from 41 mothers by means of urinary creatinine concentrations, a by-product of metabolic activity in muscles," Tobias Deschner, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, said in a news release. The analysis showed, unsurprisingly, that muscle mas...

Media playback is unsupported on your deviceChimpanzees in Uganda may have changed their hunting strategy in response to being watched by scientists.While studying the animals, researchers documented very different hunting habits of two closely neighbouring chimp "tribes"."Sonso" chimps hunt in small groups for colobus monkeys, while those from the "Waibira" troop hunt solo and catch "whatever they can get their hands on".The findings show how sensitive chimp society is to human presence. They are published in the journal PLoS One, Biologists who have followed and studied these animals for years think that work may have disturbed the group hunting that seems key to chasing and catching colobus monkeys. Lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter, from the University of St Andrews, said the Waibi...

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Orphaned chimps develop less muscle mass than their peers with living moms

Watched chimps change their hunting habits