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Monkeys grooming dogs. Lemurs adopting other lemurs. A capuchin troop that raised a marmoset for 10 months. A new study of 427 cases suggests pet-keeping’s roots run deeper than Homo sapiens. 🐒🐾 #Primatology #AnimalBehavior #Evolution www.primatology.net/p/when-a-mon...
When a Monkey Adopts a Marmoset
What 427 recorded cases of primates grooming dogs, carrying squirrels and adopting other species reveal about the deep roots of pet-keeping
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Before chimps and bonobos compete over food, they touch each other first, embraces, kisses, even fingers placed in mouths. A new study in Proc. R. Soc. B finds this reassurance predicts who gets fed. #Primatology #Bonobo #Chimpanzees www.primatology.net/p/the-reassu...
The Reassurance Train
What a chimpanzee putting its fingers in another’s mouth tells us about the evolution of trust
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Social media caption: Solitary orangutan mothers travel farther and eat less to get their infants to playdates, steering toward a neighbor’s territory days in advance, then heading home after. #Orangutans #PrimateCognition #MaternalInvestment www.primatology.net/p/the-mother...
The Mother Who Travels Farther So Her Kid Has Someone to Play With
A fifteen-year study of wild orangutans finds mothers steering toward specific neighbors’ territories days before their infants play, then steering home again after
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New analysis revives the “brain lag” hypothesis: body size grew first in some primates, brains caught up... then kept going, overshooting into new cognitive territory. Humans included. #humanevolution #paleoanthropology #primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-brain-...
The Brain That Overshot Its Target
Why some primate lineages didn’t just catch up in brain size, but kept going
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New research overturns a textbook assumption: difficult childbirth isn’t uniquely human. Squirrel monkeys and bushbabies face even tighter cephalopelvic fits than we do. The method was wrong from the start. #Primatology #PrimateBiology www.primatology.net/p/the-obstet...
The Obstetrical Dilemma Was Never Ours Alone
A new comparative study dismantles the long-standing idea that difficult childbirth is a uniquely human burden.
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Slow aging in primates isn’t a human invention — new research traces it back 25 million years to the ancestor of all apes, suggesting genome-wide studies in humans alone won’t crack it. #primatology #evolution #aging www.primatology.net/p/primate-li...
Primate Lifespans Span a Tenfold Range. The Rate of Aging Has Barely Moved in 25 Million Years.
New research on 39 captive primate species finds that what makes apes age slowly is ancient, fixed, and probably invisible to human genetics studies.
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Orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimps, and humans all laugh with the same underlying beat — and new research shows this rhythmic structure dates back 15 million years to our last common ancestor. #Language #Linguistics #Primatology #PrimateVocalCommunication #Anthropology
The Rhythm in Ape Laughter Is 15 Million Years Old
A new comparative study finds that the timing structure of laughter has been conserved across all living great apes since before the hominid lineage began to diverge.
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Savanna chimps in Senegal use the same ant-dipping strategies as forest populations — because ant aggressiveness, not habitat type, is what drives tool use. New research from Dindefelo unpacks why. #Primatology #Chimpanzees www.primatology.net/p/what-the-a...
What the Ants Tell Us About Chimpanzee Culture
The strategies savanna chimpanzees use to harvest army ants look almost identical to what forest populations do — and that’s the surprising part
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Wild primates develop tooth grooves that look almost identical to “toothpick marks” in ancient humans — but no primate shows the wedge-shaped gumline lesions ubiquitous in modern dental clinics. New research reframes both. #paleoanthropology #dentalevolution #fossilrecord
What Primate Teeth Reveal About a Supposed Human Habit
A new study of wild primates complicates one of paleoanthropology’s oldest claims — and raises a stranger question about what our teeth say about modern life
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New research: chimpanzee quartets outperform pairs at sustaining a shared resource — and it’s the dominant animal eating less that makes the difference. A fascinating wrinkle in great ape cooperation. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #ChimpanzeeResearch www.primatology.net/p/when-the-b...
When the Boss Eats Last: Chimpanzee Groups, the Tragedy of the Commons, and a Leadership Paradox
New research shows that chimpanzee quartets outperform pairs at sustaining a shared resource — and the reason why upends assumptions about dominance and cooperation.
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Your wrist looks more like a gorilla’s than you’d expect. New research finds human carpal bones evolved from knuckle-walking traits, not away from them. #HumanEvolution #Paleoanthropology #FossilRecord #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-human-...
The Human Wrist’s Knuckle-Walking Past
The bones that enable human dexterity appear to have been inherited from a knuckle-walking ancestor.
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New research across 146 primate species finds that how much neighboring groups’ home ranges overlap is a stronger predictor of male-female size differences than mating system. The threat of rivals, not just fighting them, shapes male bodies. #Primatology #SexualSelection #Evolution
Why Primate Males Grow Large: The Case Against the Standard Answer
Neighboring groups, not just rival males, may be shaping sexual size dimorphism across primates
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81 apes. 150 studies. 18 years. The largest open-access dataset of great ape cognition just dropped — and what it can tell us about the origins of human intelligence is just getting started. #Primatology #ComparativePsychology #OpenScience www.primatology.net/p/what-81-ap...
What 81 Apes Can Tell Us About the Origins of Human Thought
A new open-access dataset assembles 18 years of cognitive experiments from the world’s most-studied great ape population.
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New research finds orangutans and chimpanzees match each other’s laugh faces with surprising precision — and the ability likely traces back 10–16 million years to our last common ancestor. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Emotions www.primatology.net/p/great-apes...
Great Apes Match Each Other’s Laugh Faces with Surprising Precision
A new study on orangutans and chimpanzees suggests the fine-tuning of facial mimicry runs deep in primate evolution
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Chimps in Uganda’s Kibale National Park split into rival groups and descended into years of lethal conflict — no ideology, no ethnicity, just collapsing social networks. New research in Science challenges what we think drives collective violence. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Anthropology
When Former Friends Become Enemies: The Ngogo Chimpanzee Fission and What It Says About Collective Violence
A community of nearly 200 chimpanzees in Uganda split into two rival groups and descended into years of lethal conflict — without ideology, ethnicity, or language.
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A 17-million-year-old jaw from Egypt just challenged where all living apes originated. One mandible from the desert, and the field’s East Africa-centered model is under serious pressure. #Paleoanthropology #HumanEvolution #Miocene www.primatology.net/p/a-jaw-from...
A Jaw from Egypt Rewrites the Origin of Modern Apes
A newly described Early Miocene ape from northern Egypt suggests the common ancestor of all living apes lived in a region that paleontologists had largely stopped looking.
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The “ape culture wars” have raged for 50+ years — not over whether chimps have culture (they do), but what kind and how it spreads. A new paper maps the battle and argues both sides are missing hidden common ground. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #AnimalCulture www.primatology.net/p/the-ape-cu...
The Ape Culture Wars Are Not Really About Apes
How a decades-long fight between primatologists says as much about scientific culture as it does about chimpanzee culture
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Your brain has a “human” voice detector, but it turns out it’s been listening to chimpanzees this whole time. New research shows our neural hardware for voices is an ancient primate inheritance. #Neuroscience #Evolution #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/the-chimpa...
The Chimpanzee in the Machine
Our brains have a dedicated space for human voices, but it turns out we’ve been keeping the door open for our closest relatives.
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New research on primate inner ears reveals a tripartite system, not a bipartite one. Gravity and rotation sensors evolve independently, changing how we interpret the fossil record. #Evolution #Anthropology #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/the-three-...
The Three-Room Apartment in the Primate Ear
New research suggests the vestibular system is not one organ, but two distinct evolutionary modules.
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New research on 100 primate species finds that mild and lethal aggression are evolutionarily decoupled — species that fight often aren’t more likely to kill. Bickering and murder follow different evolutionary paths. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #Aggression @evolletters.bsky.social
Killing Is Not Just Fighting Turned Up
A new comparative study of 100 primate species finds that lethal and mild aggression have decoupled evolutionarily — and that how often a species bickers tells you almost nothing about whether it kill
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A 13-million-year-old jaw from a Colombian desert just gave us the earliest evidence of leaf-eating in New World primates — and it belongs to an ancient howler monkey relative larger than any platyrrhine previously known from the Miocene. #Primatology #Paleoanthropology #FossilRecord
A 13-Million-Year-Old Jaw and the Origins of the Howler Monkey's Diet
New mandibular fossils from Colombia push back the earliest evidence of committed leaf-eating in South American primates
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New research: chimpanzees are not more aggressive than bonobos. The real difference is in direction — who hits whom. The peaceful bonobo image may say more about sampling bias than evolution. #HumanEvolution #Primatology #Anthropology www.primatology.net/p/the-bonobo...
The Bonobo Myth: Why the Peaceful Ape Story Doesn't Hold Up
A new large-scale study finds that Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes are equally aggressive — they just hit different targets.
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A chimp named Juma stuck grass in his ear. Within a week, his whole group was doing it. Then he put grass in his rectum. They copied that too. What this tells us about the origins of culture is genuinely unsettling. #Primatology #HumanEvolution #AnimalCulture www.primatology.net/p/grass-in-t...
Grass in the Ear, Grass in the Rectum: What Chimpanzee Fads Reveal About the Origins of Culture
A sanctuary in Zambia accidentally documented something strange about why animals — and maybe humans — copy each other.
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Chimps given crystals held them up to their eyes, sorted them from pebbles, and refused to give them back. A new study asks what that tells us about why Homo erectus collected quartz 780,000 years ago. #HumanEvolution #Archaeology #Paleoanthropology #Primatology www.primatology.net/p/what-chimp...
What Chimpanzees Do With Crystals Tells Us Something Strange About Ourselves
A new study tested whether our closest relatives share our ancient attraction to quartz and calcite — and the results are hard to explain away.
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New research scanned brains across 12 macaque species and found tolerant societies — not aggressive ones — predict larger amygdalae, with inverted developmental trajectories that flip the standard primate pattern. #Primatology #BrainEvolution #SocialBrain www.primatology.net/p/the-tolera...
The Tolerant Brain: What Macaque Amygdalae Tell Us About the Evolution of Social Life
A new study scanned the brains of 12 macaque species and found that tolerance, not aggression, predicts amygdala size — and the developmental story is stranger than expected.
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Wild chimps at Uganda’s Ngogo site tested positive for an alcohol metabolite in their urine — direct physiological proof they regularly consume ethanol from fermented fruit. What does that mean for the evolution of human drinking? #Primatology #HumanEvolution #DrunkMonkeyHypothesis
Wild Chimpanzees Are Regularly Consuming Alcohol, and Their Urine Proves It
New fieldwork from Uganda's Kibale National Park delivers the clearest physiological evidence yet for the "drunken monkey hypothesis" — and what it means for understanding human drinking
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New study on bonobo sex finds that facial mimicry doesn’t speed up movement tempo, but tempo drops sharply right after it stops. What does that tell us about the evolutionary roots of rhythm and communication? #HumanEvolution #Primatology #CognitiveScience www.primatology.net/p/what-bonob...
What Bonobo Sex Tells Us About the Origins of Rhythm and Communication
A new study on facial mimicry and movement tempo in bonobos opens a window into the deep evolutionary roots of human social behavior.
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New paper explores how primates co-construct cultures with each other and with humans in shared landscapes, challenging century-old assumptions about what counts as “natural” behavior. #PrimateCulture #AnthropologicalScience #CulturalEvolution www.primatology.net/p/when-macaq...
When Macaques Started Washing Sweet Potatoes, We Weren't Ready to Call It Culture
How a 70-year delay in translation reveals our blindness to what we think makes us human
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New research shows Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo, can track pretend objects, suggesting the roots of human imagination go back 6-9 million years to our common ancestor. #CognitiveEvolution #PrimateResearch #HumanOrigins www.primatology.net/p/a-bonobo-t...
A Bonobo Tracks Imaginary Juice
What Kanzi's pretend play reveals about the deep evolutionary roots of the human mind
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New study of 500 wild primate teeth shows grooves once linked to ancient toothpicks can form naturally, while a common modern dental problem appears uniquely human. #Paleoanthropology #EvolutionaryMedicine #DentalAnthropology www.primatology.net/p/toothpick-...
Toothpick Grooves That Were Never Toothpicks
A survey of 500 primate teeth shows that marks once linked to ancient human hygiene can form naturally, while a common modern dental problem appears nowhere else in the primate lineage
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