1,416 results
- Health & Medicine
A Virus Crosses Over to Wild-Animal Hunters
A potentially dangerous virus is moving from nonhuman primates to Africans who hunt and eat wild animals, a new study suggests.
- Anthropology
Anklebone kicks up primate debate
The discoverers of a roughly 40-million-year-old anklebone in Myanmar say that it supports the controversial theory that anthropoids, a primate group that includes monkeys, apes, and humans, originated in Asia.
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Low-cal diet may reduce cancer in monkeys
Researchers monitoring monkeys have seen signs that slashing normal calorie consumption can benefit long-lived primates by extending natural life spans and reducing the odds of suffering diseases such as cancer.
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- Anthropology
Some Primates’ Sheltered Lives: Baboons, chimps enter the realm of cave
In separate studies, researchers have gathered the first systematic evidence showing that baboons and chimpanzees regularly use caves, a behavior many anthropologists have attributed only to people and our direct ancestors.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccine protects monkeys from Ebola virus
A combination of a DNA vaccine and a vaccine based on a genetically modified common cold virus enables monkeys to resist Ebola virus, the first evidence that an Ebola vaccine works in primates.
- Paleontology
Ancestral Handful: Tiny skull puts Asia at root of primate tree
Researchers have unearthed the partial skull of the oldest known primate, a tiny creature that lived in south-central China 55 million years ago.
- Animals
A first for mammals: Tropical hibernating
The fat-tailed lemur, the first tropical mammal documented to hibernate, exploits local heat spikes to save energy during the long snooze.
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Lighting Up the Rainbow: Color perception tied to early visual experience
A study of baby monkeys finds that exposure to natural light in the year after birth fosters their ability to recognize colors as lighting gets brighter or dimmer.
- Humans
Science News of the Year 2005
A review of important scientific achievements reported in Science News during the year 2005.
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Visionary Research
Scientists are debating why primates evolved full color vision and whether that development led to a reduced sense of smell.
- Anthropology
Gene implicated in apes’ brain growth
A gene with poorly understood functions began to accumulate favorable mutations around 8 million years ago and probably contributed to brain expansion in ancient apes.
