By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor

By learning an utterly superfluous technique for scratching their backs, wild chimpanzees are displaying even more evidence that humanity’s closest living relatives are capable of what might be deemed culture.

In recent years, researchers have accumulated many examples of chimpanzees apparently learning relatively complex ideas that get passed down over generations much like in human cultures. For instance, chimps in the wild have developed a variety of specialized tool kits for foraging army ants that differ across regions.
livescience.com

Tags: Animals

By KAREN LOVETT
Telegraph of Nashua

On a day in early summer, a man and his dog set out for a hike. The man wore khaki-colored hiking pants and shades, and wagged a black hiking stick. The dog wore dark red hiking booties to protect his pads, and wagged his yellow Labrador tail.

They ventured to the Wapack Trail in Temple, which features a steep, craggy, somewhat menacing start that eventually settles down into easier pleasantries.

Together, the dog leading the way, they stepped through an easy pathway leading to the sharp verticals.

“Hop up,” the man said repeatedly, signaling the dog to go ahead.

This section was tricky. They carefully hoofed around stony corners and wobbly rocks. They steered around young trees parked mid-trail, and low-hanging branches as threatening as whips.

“Adventure dog!” the man called out with a grin, hoisting himself up a boulder.
sentinelsource.com

Tags: Animals

Pancake batfishes may be getting oiled before they get named

By Susan Milius

Two new fish species — with pancake-flat bodies, wiggling lures on their faces, and elbowed fins for “walking” on the seafloor — have been discovered in the path of spewing Gulf of Mexico oil.

One of these pancake batfishes lives in the northern Gulf where oil is already spreading from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, says ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty of Louisiana State University’s Museum of Natural Sciences in Baton Rouge, a codiscoverer of the species.

Chakrabarty calls this narrowly distributed species the Louisiana pancake batfish.
href=”http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/61109/title/New_walking_fishes_discovered_in_Gulf_oil-spill_zone”>sciencenews.org

Tags: Animals

Slender loris extinction was widely believed before the rare primate was photographed in central Sri Lanka late last year.

By Krishan Francis, Associated Press

GALLE, Sri Lanka
A nocturnal, forest-dwelling primate with orb-like eyes and short limbs was photographed in central Sri Lanka late last year after being feared extinct, researchers said Monday.

A Horton Plains slender loris was caught on camera after lengthy surveys of the forest by researchers from the Zoological Society of London, the University of Colombo and the Open University of Sri Lanka.

Team leader Saman Gamage said the mammal was not sighted for more than 60 years until in 2002 a researcher reported spotting its eyes during a search — inspiring the effort to view it fully and photograph it to prove the primate existed.
csmonitor.com

Tags: Animals