Latest news with #primate
Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Today's ‘Wordle' #1490 Hints, Clues And Answer For Friday, July 18th
How to solve today's Wordle. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Looking for Thursday's Wordle hints, clues and answer? You can find them here: Forbes Today's 'Wordle' #1489 Hints, Clues And Answer For Thursday, July 17th By Erik Kain It's 2XP Friday and we have a Wordle to solve! Competitive Wordlers, double your points, whether that means you're gaining double or losing double. The weekend is nearly upon us and it's a lovely summer day. Let's solve this Wordle! The Hint: An unusual primate. The Clue: This Wordle has more consonants than vowels. Okay, spoilers below! The answer is coming! . . . The Answer: Today's Wordle Screenshot: Erik Kain Every day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here . DEALT was an okay starter today, leaving me with 123 remaining words and one yellow box. I got much luckier on my second guess. SPOIL left me with just one possible solution: LORIS for the win! I admit, I had no idea what a LORIS even was before today. They're Southeast Asian primates, usually quite tiny. Some are slow and sloth-like. One species is even venomous, its bite necrotic causing flesh to rot. Almost all species of the little creature are threatened or endangered. Competitive Wordle Score Today's Wordle Bot Screenshot: Erik Kain Just like yesterday, I get 1 point for guessing in three and 0 for tying the Bot. The Bot gets the same. We each double that to 2 points. July totals: Erik: 5 points Wordle Bot: 9 points How To Play Competitive Wordle Guessing in 1 is worth 3 points; guessing in 2 is worth 2 points; guessing in 3 is worth 1 point; guessing in 4 is worth 0 points; guessing in 5 is -1 points; guessing in 6 is -2 points and missing the Wordle is -3 points. If you beat your opponent you get 1 point. If you tie, you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add it up to get your score. Keep a daily running score or just play for a new score each day. Fridays are 2XP, meaning you double your points—positive or negative. You can keep a running tally or just play day-by-day. Enjoy! Today's Wordle Etymology The word loris comes from French loris , which likely derives from Dutch loeris , meaning 'clown' or 'simpleton,' possibly referring to the animal's facial expression. The Dutch word may itself be of unknown or imitative origin. The term was first used in the 18th century for the slow-moving primates of Southeast Asia. Let me know how you fared with your Wordle today on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog where I write about games, TV shows and movies when I'm not writing puzzle guides. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
France 24
08-07-2025
- Science
- France 24
Alpha males are rare among our fellow primates: scientists
"For a long time we have had a completely binary view of this issue: we thought that a species was either dominated by males or females -- and that this was a fixed trait," Elise Huchard, a primatologist at the University of Montpellier in France, told AFP. "Recently, this idea has been challenged by studies showing that the truth is much more complicated," said the lead author of a new study published in the journal PNAS. The French-German team of researchers combed through scientific literature for interactions between male and female primates that revealed their hierarchical relationships. These included aggression, threats and signs of dominant or submissive behaviour, such as when one primate spontaneously moved out of the way of another. Over five years, the team gathered data from 253 populations across 121 primate species, including a range of monkeys, lemurs, tarsiers and lorises. They found that confrontations between members of the opposite sex were much more frequent than had been previously thought. On average, more than half of these interactions within a group involved a male and a female. Males clearly dominating females, which was defined as winning more than 90 percent of these confrontations, was only observed in 17 percent of the populations. Among this minority were baboons and chimpanzees, which are the closest living relatives to humans. Clear female domination was recorded in 13 percent of the primate populations, including lemurs and bonobos. This meant that for 70 percent of the primates, either males or females could be at the top of the pecking order. Battle of the sexes When male domination was particularly pronounced, it was usually in a species where males have a clear physical advantage, such as bigger bodies or teeth. It was also more common among ground-bound species, in which females are less able to run and hide compared to their relatives living in the trees. Females, meanwhile, tended to dominate over societies when they exerted control over reproduction. For example, the genitals of female baboons swell when they are ovulating. Males jealously guard females during these few days of their menstrual cycle, making sure that other competitors cannot mate with them. However in bonobos, this sexual swelling is less obvious. "Males never know when they are ovulating or not. As a result, (the female bonobos) can mate with whoever they want, whenever they want, much more easily," Huchard said. Female dominance is also more common when females compete with each other, and when males provide more care for the young. In these species, females are often solitary or only live in male-female pairs. This means that monogamy is closely linked to female dominance. Can these results be extrapolated to our own species? There are a great many differences between humans and our fellow primates, Huchard emphasised. But we would broadly fall into the middle category in which neither males nor females always have strict dominance over the other. "These results corroborate quite well with what we know about male-female relationships among hunter-gatherers, which were more egalitarian than in the agricultural societies that emerged later" in human history, Huchard said.
BBC News
30-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Isle of Wight charity 'heartbroken' after death of 'beloved' ape
A primate rescue centre has said it is "utterly heartbroken" in a tribute to a "beloved" ape which has died aged was one of the first animals to be saved by Monkey Haven in Newport on the Isle of Wight 19 years ago."Xhabu was more than just an animal in our care - he was family," said Don Walser, the charity's founder, who expressed how much he would be gibbon bravely battled to recover from a stroke, but the strain on his body finally became too much, the centre said in a social media tribute. Xhabu was an endangered Siamang, native to the forests of Indonesia, Malaysia, and was rehomed to the Isle of Wight with his nephew Bog in 2006 and the pair formed an unexpected friendship with two Müller's gibbons - mother and daughter duo, Bono and Kajan - who lived in a home next centre referred to this as a remarkable achievement, as Siamangs and Müller's gibbons come from different parts of South East Asia and would never encounter each other in the added that his gibbon family has been "feeling his loss deeply".The resilient ape was born with disabilities, including stunted growth and being cross-eyed and the sanctuary said he suffered a stroke in called him "a true icon" and "deeply loved by our animal carers, visitors, and fans around the world"."His presence, his powerful call, and his gentle spirit brought joy to so many. He had a beautiful life with us, surrounded by those who adored him, and we feel incredibly privileged and proud to have been part of his journey," the centre said. "Xhabu taught us that every life matters, every story is worth telling, and every act of kindness counts," said Terri Cook, animal manager at Monkey Haven."We will honour his memory by continuing to give animals a second chance and a safe, loving home." You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Gizmodo
21-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
Capuchins Are Abducting Baby Howler Monkeys in Strange, Deadly New Trend
A young male capuchin named Joker may just be the world's first primate influencer. But the trend he started—abducting babies belonging to a separate species—has deadly consequences. Joker is one of many white-faced capuchins living on Jicarón Island off the coast of Panama. Researchers had been using cameras to observe the behavior of these round-headed, stocky monkeys when, in 2022, something unusual caught the eye of Zoë Goldsborough, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute and a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. She was scrolling through camera-trap footage when she spotted a male capuchin carrying a baby monkey on its back. This was already an unusual sight—female primates are almost always the ones to carry the young. But upon closer inspection, it got even stranger. 'I really quickly saw that the coloration was completely wrong,' Goldsborough told Gizmodo. 'The capuchin monkeys have dark fur and light face, and this [baby] had lighter fur and a dark face.' The only other primates on the island are howler monkeys, and this infant's coloration matched that species, she explained. 'So it was really quickly clear that it could only be a howler monkey, but that just made no sense whatsoever.' This sighting inspired Goldsborough to sift through tens of thousands of images captured by all cameras deployed around the same time period, according to a statement from the Max Planck Institute. She found four different instances of the same capuchin, a male who she named Joker, carrying baby howler monkeys. 'With everything we found, we had more answers, but also more questions,' Goldsborough said. At first, she and her colleagues thought this behavior could be a form of adoption—when an animal assumes a parental role for an infant of another species. It's relatively common among primates, but almost exclusively carried out by females who presumably do it to practice caring for young, according to the Max Planck Institute. So what was motivating Joker—a male—to kidnap these baby howlers? Before Goldsborough and her colleagues could begin to answer that question, new ones arose. They discovered video and images of four more young male capuchins carrying baby howlers, five months after Joker started doing it. They were copying him—it was a real-world case of 'monkey see, monkey do.' The researchers' study, published Monday in the journal Current Biology, details how the trend-setting Joker and his four followers carried 11 different howler infants over the course of 15 months. The babies clung to their backs or bellies as the capuchins went about their business, sticking together for up to nine days at a time. Aside from some occasional annoyance when the infants tried and failed to nurse, Goldsborough said the capuchins were gentle with their strange passengers—Joker especially. 'He seems to be really interested in having these infants and carrying them for long periods of time,' she said. But because these males could not produce milk, the infants didn't fare well with their adoptive fathers. The researchers saw four babies die from apparent malnourishment, and suspect the others perished as well. In three cases, the capuchins continued to carry their dead infant for at least a day after it had passed. Based on their findings, the researchers determined that this was a case of interspecies abduction, not adoption. It's not yet clear why the capuchins picked up this trend, as it is rare for primates to kidnap the young of other species, but it's not uncommon for one individual's behavior to spread to other members of the population through social learning. As for why Joker initiated the behavior in the first place, Goldsborough says there are a few possible motivations. His remarkably gentle interactions with the howler babies suggest he may have had some sort of caring motivation, she explained. 'I think it's possible that there was something a little quirky about him, or that he was kind of lonely in a way,' she said. To get to the root of his behavior, Goldsborough wants to learn more about his social position. Determining whether Joker is a leader or a loner could provide further insights into how social learning manifests in primate groups, she said.
