Darwin’s bicentennial

The Science section of the New York Times has published several articles in honor of Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday (Feb 12). You can read them all here.
Many apologies for not keeping this page updated over the past month and a half. It is a New Year’s resolution I have already compromised.

More Pan hunting

Earlier this year, I commented on an article describing the first instance of primate hunting by bonobos (Pan paniscus) [1]. Bonobos, like their more famous cousins—chimpanzees, hunt in groups. This is interesting because both chimpanzees and bonobos are omnivores; hence they need not hunt in groups to acquire adequate nutrition. While individual benefit from group [...]

Bonobo: The Hunter

The first evidence of primate hunting by bonobos (Pan paniscus) was published today in Current Biology (Surbeck and Hohmann 2008). Researchers describe three events where bonobos captured and ate immature monkeys (Surbeck and Hohmann 2008). Hunting parties consisted of differing numbers of adult females, adult males, and adolescents (Surbeck and Hohmann 2008). Prey species included [...]

Nazca boobies are natural born killers!

A recent AAAS podcast brought my attention to this piece of research published during my time in the field. A team of researchers from Wake Forest University (Go Deacs!) compared the androgen levels and behavior of Nazca boobies (Sula granti) and blue-footed boobies (S. nebouxii). They discovered that Nazca booby hatchlings have higher perinatal androgen [...]