One brain area, two planning strategies

Ready to strike, the spear fisherman holds his spear above the water surface. He aims at the fish. But he is misled by the view: Due to the refraction of light on the surface, he does not see the actual location of the fish. How must his brain now plan the arm movement? Do the brain cells (neurons) reflect the position where the fish was spotted, in other words, the visual target? Or do they plan the physical target, which is the actual direction in which the arm and spear should move in order to hit the fish?

In their research, Shenbing Kuang, Pierre Morel and Alexander Gail of the Sensorimotor Group within the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the German Primate Center (DPZ) tried to answer this question on the different aspects of planning a limb movement. It was clear that certain neurons in the posterior parietal cortex are responsible for the planning of arm movements. But it was unknown whether neurons take over both described aspects of motor planning and whether one of the two planning functions is more dominant, should they both exist. The results of the Göttingen neuroscientists show: Most neurons are responsible for the encoding of the physical goal, the actual and thus the felt movement of the arm. Regardless of this, some neurons plan the visual goal in the same area of the brain, that is the visualized movement.

To answer their question about the planning of limb movements, the researchers conducted an experiment in which the physical movement of the arm and the visual information about this movement could be separated. Other than for the spear fisherman, these signals are congruent in the everyday life of most humans: If you want to grasp a glass on a table, there is no refraction of light through the water to be taken into account. To find out if neurons indicate the planning of the future visualized movement or the physical movement, the neuroscientist worked with rhesus monkeys which were shown mirrored images of their hand movements during parts of the experiment.

The rhesus monkeys were trained to move their hands to a light cue on a touch screen (for example from the center of the screen to the left), while at the same time the activity of neurons in their posterior parietal cortex was recorded. In some cases they performed the movement under normal vision, but in other cases the monkey saw the exact opposite hand movement produced by a reversing prism: When it reached to the right, it saw a reach movement to the left.

The result: In the planning phase of the movement, the activity of most neurons did not differ between the normal and the reversed-view hand movement. However, some neurons in the same area of the brain responded exactly the opposite in the mirrored situation. The researchers concluded that these neurons were responsible for the planning of the visual hand movement goal, as this goal changed its position when the monkeys saw the reversed hand movement. So Shenbing Kuang and his colleagues were able to prove the coexistence of neurons for these two different planning goals in the posterior parietal cortex. The frequency distribution of these neurons suggests that the planning of the physical goal is the dominant function: In both monkeys the neuroscientists found about three to four times as many neurons for the physical goal of the movement than for the visual goal.

“These results shed light on how the brain plans the various aspects of a movement simultaneously” says Shenbing Kuang, “and it becomes apparent that in the planning of a movement, we include the different sensory consequences of our movements.” Sensorimotor Group leader Alexander Gail adds: “The interplay of visual and physical movements plays a central role in the learning of movements. In order to develop adaptive neural prostheses we would like to have a better understanding of this basic ability.”

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The above story is based on materials provided by German Primate Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Boy or girl? Lemur scents have the answer

Dozens of pregnancy myths claim to predict whether a mom-to-be is carrying a boy or a girl. Some say you can tell by the shape of a woman’s bump, or whether she craves salty or sweet.

Even ultrasound doesn’t always get it right.

But for lemurs, the answer is in the mother’s scent.

Duke University researchers report in the Feb. 25 issue of the journal Biology Letters that lemur moms carrying boys smell different from those carrying girls.

The results represent the first evidence in any animal species that a pregnant mother’s scent differs depending on the sex of her baby, said Christine Drea, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke.

Drea and co-author Jeremy Chase Crawford of the University of California, Berkeley used cotton swabs to collect scent secretions from the genital regions of 12 female ringtailed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina, before and during pregnancy.

Cat-sized primates with long black-and-white striped tails, ringtailed lemurs produce a musky odor that researchers jokingly refer to as “eau de lemur.”

The distinctive scent is a complex cocktail of pheromones and other chemicals that have been shown by previous studies to convey information about an animal’s sex, fertility, and other qualities.

In this latest study, chemical analysis using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry revealed that the hundreds of ingredients that make up each female’s scent change during pregnancy.

Expectant lemur moms give off simpler scents that contain fewer odor compounds compared with their pre-pregnancy bouquet — a change that is more pronounced when the moms are carrying boys, Drea said.

The patterns correlate with changes in blood hormone levels, the researchers found.

Drea said hormones change dramatically during pregnancy, and girls and boys affect their mothers’ hormones differently. “The difference in hormone profiles between pregnant lemurs carrying sons and those carrying daughters is dramatic,” she said.

The researchers don’t yet know why pregnant lemurs produce simpler scents, particularly when they’re carrying sons.

“It could be that producing these compounds uses resources that are directed elsewhere when they’re pregnant, especially if it’s more energetically costly for a female to have a male pregnancy than a female pregnancy,” Drea said.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Duke University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Models predict where lemurs will go as climate warms

Anticipated climate changes in coming decades are likely to leave a lot of Madagascar’s lemurs looking for new places to live.

A new study predicts where the cat-like primates are likely to seek refuge if average temperatures throughout the island rise by 1.1 to 2.6 degrees by 2050, as predicted. Rainfall patterns are expected to change, too.

Changes can already be felt. “Older people in Madagascar talk about how much drier and hotter it is now than when they were children,” said study co-author Anne Yoder, director of the Duke Lemur Center.

Distant primate cousins to humans, lemurs evolved in Madagascar and are found nowhere else on Earth except in zoos and sanctuaries.

Published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the study includes maps showing where lemurs are likely to seek refuge as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change across the 225,000-square-mile island over the next 65 years.

The researchers predict that lemurs are likely to be on the move in search of new sources of the leaves and fruit they rely on for food. Fifty-seven of the roughly 100 known lemur species were included in the analysis.

Some lemurs, like crowned sifakas, could fare relatively well. They and eight other species studied are predicted to benefit from changing climate by gaining an average of 80 percent additional territory.

For a quarter of the species studied, ranges are predicted to stay the same size.

But the majority of lemur species — sixty percent — could lose considerable amounts of suitable habitat before the end of the century due to climate change alone. Their habitats are predicted to shrink by hundreds of kilometers in some cases, and by nearly 70 percent on average.

Hardest-hit would be species like the grey-headed lemur and the golden bamboo lemur, whose ranges are predicted to shrink to less than 1 percent of current sizes.

Based on their projections, the researchers identified three previously overlooked areas on the island that will be particularly important for lemurs in the future. These include a mountainous rainforest region in northeastern Madagascar where the Duke Lemur Center has been sponsoring reforestation and other conservation initiatives since 2012.

The researchers also pinpointed key forest corridors that would need protection if lemurs are to reach future habitats from their current spots.

“The important corridors aren’t necessarily species-rich, or the only areas where some species are found,” said co-author Jason Lee Brown of The City College of New York. “But they provide a key transition zone if lemurs are to get from the areas where they live right now to the areas that will be most suitable in the future.”

The recommendations are all the more critical given that the models don’t take into account other threats to lemurs and the many animals that share their forest home, the researchers say.

Every year, thousands of acres of Madagascar’s forests disappear due to illegal logging, mining and burning to clear space for crops. Such habitat losses will likely increase, as the country’s current population of about 22 million is projected to more than double by 2050.

Most conservation planning in Madagascar prioritizes areas containing the highest species diversity or the greatest number of unique species, not habitats those species might move to in the future under climate change, said Brown, who was a postdoctoral researcher at Duke at the time of the study.

“We’re trying to identify areas that might be neglected by current action plans but will be critically important for conservation planning in Madagascar going forward,” Yoder said.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Duke University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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More infectious diseases emerging in animals as climate changes, say zoologists

The appearance of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change, says a noted zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In an article published online today in conjunction with a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Daniel Brooks warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before.

“It’s not that there’s going to be one ‘Andromeda Strain’ that will wipe everybody out on the planet,” Brooks said, referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen. “There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts.”

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist with the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, have personally observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems. During his career, Brooks has focused primarily on parasites in the tropics, while Hoberg has worked primarily in Arctic regions.

Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn’t previously lived in that area and the departure of others, Brooks said.

“Over the last 30 years, the places we’ve been working have been heavily impacted by climate change,” Brooks said in an interview last week. “Even though I was in the tropics and he was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening.” Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens.

For example, Brooks said, after humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys out of existence in some regions of Costa Rica, their parasites immediately switched to howler monkeys, where they persist today. Some lungworms in recent years have moved northward and shifted hosts from caribou to muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic.

But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don’t quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve.

Brooks calls it the “parasite paradox.” Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.

However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.

Brooks and Hoberg call for a “fundamental conceptual shift” recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly.

“Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible,” Brooks said.

In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they haven’t yet developed resistance.

Though resistance can evolve fairly rapidly, this only changes the emergent pathogen from an acute to a chronic disease problem, Brooks adds.

“West Nile Virus is a good example — no longer an acute problem for humans or wildlife in North America, it nonetheless is here to stay,” he said.

The answer, Brooks said, is for greater collaboration between the public and veterinary health communities and the “museum” community — the biologists who study and classify life forms and how they evolve.

In addition to treating human cases of an emerging disease and developing a vaccine for it, he said, scientists need to learn which non-human species carry the pathogen.

Knowing the geographic distribution and the behavior of the non-human reservoirs of the pathogen could lead to public health strategies based on reducing risk of infection by minimizing human contact with infected animals, much likethose that reduced the incidence of malaria and yellow fever by reducing human contact with mosquitoes.

Museum scientists versed in understanding the evolutionary relationships among species could use this knowledge to anticipate the risk of the pathogen becoming established outside of its native range.

Brooks, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was a zoology professor at the University of Toronto for 30 years until he retired early in 2011 to devote more time to his study of emerging infectious disease. In addition to being a senior research fellow with UNL’s Manter Laboratory, he is a visiting senior fellow at the Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil, funded by the Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Sciences without Borders) of the Brazilian government, and a visiting scholar with Debrecen University in Hungary.

“We have to admit we’re not winning the war against emerging diseases,” Brooks said. “We’re not anticipating them. We’re not paying attention to their basic biology, where they might come from and the potential for new pathogens to be introduced.”

Study: A New Twist On HIV Vaccines Shows Results In Monkeys

An effective vaccine for HIV has eluded researchers for several decades, due to the pathogen’s infamous shape-shifting abilities.Even though researchers have identified certain broadly neutralizing antibodies that can conquer multiple strains of the human immunodeficiency virus, many strains of rapidly mutating HIV remain resistant to the these super antibodies.In recent years however, researches have proposed a new method of battling the virus that involves gene therapy.Instead of using a vaccine to stimulate the body’s own immune system, so that it produces HIV antibodies, scientists are bypassing the immune system entirely.In experiments involving rats and monkeys, the researchers have used non-life-threatening viruses to alter the animals’ genome so that its cells produce designer molecules capable of neutralizing HIV.In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers said they had used the technique to protect rhesus macaques from repeated intravenous injections of a SHIV, a combination of simian immunodeficiency virus and human immunodeficiency virus. Full story here. —————————————–

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

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Animals Are Persons Too

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“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

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Curious monkeys share our thirst for knowledge

Monkeys are notoriously curious, and new research has quantified just how eager they are to gain new information, even if there are not immediate benefits. The findings offer insights into how a certain part of the brain shared by monkeys and humans plays a role in decision making, and perhaps even in some disorders and addictions in humans.

The study, by researchers at the University of Rochester and Columbia University, shows that rhesus macaques have such robust curiosity that they are willing to give up a surprisingly large portion of a potential prize in order to quickly find out if they selected the winning option at a game of chance.

“It’s like buying a lottery ticket that you can scratch off and find out if you win immediately, or you can buy one that has a drawing after the evening news,” explained Benjamin Hayden, co-senior author of the study and professor in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. “Regardless, you won’t get the money any more quickly, or in the case of the monkeys, they won’t get the squirt of water any sooner. They will just find out if they selected the winning option.”

In the study published in Neuron, monkeys were presented with a video gambling task in which they consistently chose to learn in advance if they picked the winning option. The monkeys did not receive their prize any sooner, which was a measure of juice or water; they were simply informed immediately if they selected a winner.

“When it’s simply a choice between getting the information earlier or not, the monkeys show a pretty strong preference for getting it earlier. But what we really wanted to do is quantify this preference,” said first author and lead researcher Tommy Blanchard, a Ph.D. candidate in Hayden’s lab.

In the video gambling experiments, graduated colored columns illustrated the amount of water that could be won. The monkeys were more curious about the gambles when the stakes–or columns–were higher.

The researchers found the monkeys not only consistently selected the gamble that informed them if they picked a winner right away, but they were also willing to select that option when the winnings were up to 25 percent less than the gamble that required them to wait for the results. “One way to think about this is that this is the amount of water the monkeys were willing to pay for the information about if they made the correct choice,” explained Blanchard.

“That 25 percent was really surprising to us–that’s pretty big,” Hayden said. “These monkeys really, really want that information, and they do these gambling tasks repeatedly and never get bored of them–it’s intrinsically motivated.”

Rewarding Curiosity

According to the researchers, their study helps to build a broader understanding for how curiosity–information seeking–is processed and rewarded in the brain.

Like monkeys, when curious we evaluate what we’d be willing to pay–or give up–to satisfy our curiosity, Hayden said. And in the case of gambling, there is also the potential of a prize to factor in. So when we make a choice, it depends on the sum of those two things: the gamble (the money you might win), and the value of finding out. And those two things need to be combined in order to make decisions about that gamble.

Earlier work suggests that these components are combined in the brain’s dopamine system. This study looks at that one step earlier in the process, in a region of the brain called the Orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC.

“I think of the OFC as the workshop of economic value, where, in this case, you have the value of the gamble and the value of the information–the raw materials–but they haven’t yet been combined,” said Hayden. “This study seems to have revealed that the mixing of the raw materials happens somewhere between the OFC and the dopamine system. We now have two points in the circuit.”

“One of the reasons this research is important,” Hayden said, “is because this basic desire for information turns out to be something that’s really corrupted in people with anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and addiction, for example.”

“We think that by understanding these basic circuits in monkeys we may gain insights that 10 to15 years down the road may lead to new treatments for these psychiatric diseases,” Hayden concluded.

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Rochester. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Ebola study in macaques provides timeframes for post-mortem viral stability

To determine how long Ebola virus could remain infectious in a body after death, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists sampled deceased Ebola-infected monkeys and discovered the virus remained viable for at least seven days. They also detected non-infectious viral RNA for up to 70 days post-mortem. The study, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, suggests that Ebola transmission from deceased individuals may be possible for an extended period of time following death, underscoring the importance of using safe practices for handling corpses.

The research also highlights oral swabbing of bodies as a reliable and safer alternative to riskier procedures for obtaining diagnostic samples.

To conduct this study, scientists at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases tested samples from five deceased macaques used in Ebola virus studies and euthanized after showing signs of disease. To assess the stability of the virus post-mortem, the scientists placed the bodies in a chamber to mimic environmental conditions in West Africa.

After the scientists sampled seven different body surfaces and removed tissue from four internal organs, they measured the amount of live Ebola virus and viral RNA, and compared test results at various times. The group determined that live virus was detectable in surface swabs up to seven days after death, and in the tissue samples up to three days post-mortem. Viral RNA was detectable in several swab and tissue types for up to 10 weeks.

The scientists believe these findings are likely to be consistent for non-human primates such as gorillas and monkeys. In fact, they designed the study to test animals found dead in the wild, but shifted the timing and emphasis to human implications related to the ongoing West Africa Ebola outbreak.

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The above story is based on materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Otters Eat Rare Monkey In Freak Accident At British Zoo

A British zoo says an endangered monkey that accidentally fell into a pond was eaten by otters.Bristol Zoo Gardens say the rare golden lion tamarin monkey, a squirrel-sized species native to Brazil, was climbing on a branch when it fell and became trapped in the otter enclosure last month. The zoo said staff arrived too late to intervene.The zoo made the statement after a whistleblower disclosed a series of animal deaths at the institution, including an endangered Visayan warty piglet that was eaten by its father shortly after it was born in December. The zoo said the male pig, Elvis, also attacked and killed the piglet’s mother.The zoo’s director of conservation Christoph Schwitzer said despite their best efforts, keepers are unable to prevent unforeseen accidents.Full story here. —————————————–

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

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Similar statistics play role in decision-making and World War II code breaking

“The brain reaches a decision by combining samples of evidence in much the way a good statistician would,” says Michael Shadlen, a Professor of Neuroscience at the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. In a new paper in Neuron, Shadlen and colleagues from the University of Washington and the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences demonstrate this theory by monitoring the decision-making process in rhesus monkeys to determine how much and what information they need to confidently choose a correct answer.

The monkeys were shown a sequence of shapes that served as clues about the location of a reward. They could look at as few or as many such clues before making their choice. The scientists found that the monkeys’ neurons increased or decreased their activity depending on whether the shape in a sequence supported one or the other location (or color). The process halted when the accumulated evidence reach a critical level. This strategy explained both the choice and number of shapes used to make it.

“It’s the brain doing a statistically optimal procedure,” Shadlen says. “It’s nothing less than a basis of rationality. The brain allows us to combine apples and oranges and lemons, so to speak, by assigning them the right kinds of weights so that when we put them together we reason according to the laws of probability.”

This statistical way of decision making resembles a process Alan Turning’s team did in Bletchley Park, England, to work out the settings of German enigma machines. In order to make use of the large clicking machine–called ‘Christopher’ in the recent historical drama “The Imitation Game”–Turing’s team analyzed pairs of randomly intercepted German messages, aligned them one above the other to accumulate evidence from letter pairs (matched or not) until they reach a threshold level of certainty that the messages were sent on identical enigma machines, or not. Once the threshold was reached, the code breaker would either accept or reject the hypothesis.

“Rejections were common, but acceptance allowed them to take the next step, using the brute force method of the machine toward figuring out the message used to establish the settings of the enigma machine,” Shadlen says. “And if they had that, then all codes could be broken that day.”

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The above story is based on materials provided by Cell Press. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Fossils from heart of Amazon provide evidence that South American monkeys came from Africa

For millions of years, South America was an island continent. Geographically isolated from Africa as a result of plate tectonics more than 65 million years ago, this continent witnessed the evolution of many unfamiliar groups of animals and plants. From time to time, animals more familiar to us today — monkeys and rodents among others — managed to arrive to this island landmass, their remains appearing abruptly in the fossil record. Yet, the earliest phases of the evolutionary history of monkeys in South America have remained cloaked in mystery. Long thought to have managed a long transatlantic journey from Africa, evidence for this hypothesis was difficult to support without fossil data.

A new discovery from the heart of the Peruvian Amazon now unveils a key chapter of the evolutionary saga of these animals. In a paper published February 4, 2015 in the scientific journal Nature, the discovery of three new extinct monkeys from eastern Peru hints strongly that South American monkeys have an African ancestry.

Co-author Dr. Ken Campbell, curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), discovered the first of these fossils in 2010, but because it was so strange to South America, it took an additional two years to realize that it was from a primitive monkey.

Mounting evidence came as a result of further efforts to identify tiny fossils associated with the first find. For many years, Campbell has surveyed remote regions of the Amazon Basin of South America in search for clues to its ancient biological past. “Fossils are scarce and limited to only a few exposed banks along rivers during the dry seasons,” said Campbell. “For much of the year high water levels make paleontological exploration impossible.” In recent years, Campbell has focused his efforts on eastern Peru, working with a team of Argentinian paleontologists expert in the fossils of South America. His goal is to decipher the evolutionary origin of one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world.

The oldest fossil records of New World monkeys (monkeys found in South America and Central America) date back 26 million years. The new fossils indicate that monkeys first arrived in South America at least 36 million years ago. The discovery thus pushes back the colonization of South America by monkeys by approximately 10 million years, and the characteristics of the teeth of these early monkeys provide the first evidence that monkeys actually managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Africa.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Attention: How eyes reveal the brain’s focus

Whether you’re taking a test or walking your dog across a busy street, your ability to tune out irrelevant sights and sounds in the environment — or your openness to detecting potential dangers — is crucial for success and survival.

Duke University researchers have looked into monkeys’ eyes for insight into how the brain processes distractions and they’ve found that changes to pupil size in response to distractors might predict how well the brain focuses on a goal.

The results, appearing Feb. 4 in the journal Neuron, may inform our understanding of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or other disorders in which mechanisms for maintaining attention go awry. The results could also inspire new ways to improve performance in school or on the job.

In recent years, researchers have gained a greater appreciation of the importance of eye movements and pupil size for focusing the mind, and how the brain might regulate these behaviors.

Building on these studies, a new generation of cars may read our eyes for signs of distraction or sleepiness, for example. And in the clinic, pupils may help diagnose or identify people at risk for mental illnesses, such as anxiety, or the effectiveness of potential therapies.

“Where the eyes go and how much visual information gets in seems to be telling us a lot about what’s going on inside the brain,” said Michael Platt, director of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience.

In the new study, Platt and his team trained monkeys to shift their gaze to a visual target in order to get a juice reward. During this task, the scientists then flashed images of other monkeys’ faces onto the periphery of the screen.

Monkeys typically find other monkeys impossible to ignore, and this experiment was no exception: the monkeys often failed at the reward task because they looked at the faces, especially if the faces depicted emotion.

When humans are torn between paying attention to two different things, it triggers a “conflict” circuit in a brain region called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) which is part of a larger brain structure controlling rational thought and emotions.

Using a tiny sensor implanted in the dACCs of the monkeys, Platt’s group was able to measure the electrical activity of single neurons. The team found a set of neurons that were active only when monkeys were completing the task and trying to override the distracting faces, but not when faced with either of the stimuli alone.

That was surprising, said Platt, because a distraction signal had never been found before in monkeys.

“I didn’t think we’d see conflict signals, because there had been other studies explicitly looking for signals like these but didn’t end up finding them,” Platt said, adding that as a result, scientists had started to believe that the activation might be part of what makes people uniquely human.

The more active the dACC neurons were, the better the monkeys were at tuning out the distracting faces in later trials. Even so, it was a difficult task.

“Experiencing conflict or making an error is something that normally gets us worked up, perhaps by activating our fight-or-flight response, which can interfere with our ability to focus on a task,” said first author R. Becket Ebitz, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University who conducted this study as a graduate student at Duke.

The fight-or-flight response causes a release of the stress hormone noradrenaline, widens the pupils and allows a person to take in more information about their environment.

Intriguingly, the monkeys’ pupils seemed to change in size to compensate for how difficult the task was. They constricted when the faces became harder to ignore, and the smaller they got, the better the monkeys performed in subsequent trials.

Although there were strong relationships among the activity of the neurons, pupil size and the ability to ignore faces, the three measures were merely correlated, Platt said. To know for sure whether the brain’s conflict signals and pupil size caused the monkeys to perform better requires further study.

The dACC doesn’t directly control pupil size, but it connects to another region of the brain that does. The dACC may well play a role in keeping us calm in the face of demands for our attention that might otherwise make us confused or stressed out, Ebitz said.

Platt will continue to probe the relationships between pupils, attention and vigilance in further studies. Hormones may well influence these measures: In a 2013 study, his group showed that monkeys performing the same gaze-shifting task did a better job overriding distractions if they had inhaled oxytocin, a hormone widely heralded for its role in social bonding which also has calming effects.

Machine learning offers insights into evolution of monkey faces, researchers find

Computers are able to use monkey facial patterns not only to correctly identify species, but also distinguish individuals within species, a team of scientists has found. Their findings, which rely on computer algorithms to identify guenon monkeys, suggest that machine learning can be a tool in studying evolution and help to identify the factors that have led to facial differentiation in monkey evolution.

“Studying the cues that species use to discriminate each other often poses a challenge to scientists,” explains James Higham, an assistant professor of anthropology at New York University and one of authors of the study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “Many species are now rare and, in the case of these particular monkeys, they live high in the rainforest canopy, so are very difficult to reach.”

“Driving our study was the premise that if a characteristic such as individual identity can be classified reliably from physical appearance, or what we call ‘visual signals’, then these signals may have evolved in part for the purpose of communicating this characteristic,” says study author William Allen, who undertook the work while at NYU, but who is now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hull (UK).

“We sought to test a computer’s ability to do something close to what a guenon viewing other guenons’ faces would do,” adds Allen. “We did so by taking measurements of visual attributes from photographs of guenon faces and asking a computer to try and separate different groups as accurately as possible on the basis of these measurements.”

Their study relied on more than 500 photographs of 12 species of guenons collected in various settings: in zoos in the United States and the United Kingdom and in a wildlife sanctuary in Nigeria. The guenons, the authors note, are a particularly interesting and visually striking group to study, with many closely related species that exhibit a remarkable diversity of colorful patterned faces.

The analysis focused on specific guenon visual signals — facial patterns generally as described using the ‘eigenface’ technique, a method used in computer vision for human facial recognition, as well as eyebrow patches and nose spots segmented from images. From here, the researchers tested whether or not an algorithm could accurately accomplish the following: identify individual guenons, classify them by species from among the 12 in the sample, and determine the age and sex of each individual.

Their results showed that the computer could employ both overall facial pattern and eyebrow patches and nose spots to correctly categorize species and identify individuals, but not their age or sex.

“The reason that machine learning cannot classify age and sex is because facial patterns do not seem to be different between males and females and do not seem to change as individuals age,” observes Higham. “This suggests that conveying these characteristics to others has not been an important factor in the evolution of guenon appearance.”

“In contrast, the fact that species and individual identity can both be reliably classified suggests that the ability to indicate these things to others has been a strong factor in the evolution of guenon faces,” he adds. “More broadly, these results demonstrate that faces are highly reliable for classification by species and that visual cues have played an important role in the radiation of this group into so many different species.”

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by New York University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Chimpanzees Change Accent To Fit In With Friends

Most people will find that their accents change subtly if they spend enough time in a different area or country.But it seems the same is true of chimpanzees.Scientists have discovered that when groups of chimps merge, they alter their accents until they are all grunting in the same manner.The ability to modify vocalisations to fit in with social groups was believed to be a purely human trait until now.”Our study shows that chimpanzee referential food calls are not fixed in their structure and that, when exposed to a new social group, chimpanzees can change their calls to sound more like their group mates,” says Katie Slocombe of the University of York. Full story here. —————————————–

Monkey Mustaches And Beards Reveal Evolution of Facial Hair

Colorful monkeys called guenons sport moustaches, nose spots and ear tufts that make it easy to distinguish between different species of guenons. But to the average passers-by, monkeys of the same species might look strikingly similar.But in a new study, researchers uploaded 541 photographs of 110 monkeys of 12 different guenon species. The scientists found that a computer algorithm could correctly identify these monkeys by their faces, as well as distinguish among species.Scientists might be able to use algorithms like this one to study which factors are important in evolution, the researchers said. For instance, the algorithms could look at which aspects of a monkey’s face are important to its evolutionary success. Full story here. —————————————–

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

To save articles or get newsletters, alerts or recommendations – all free.

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”