Browsing All posts tagged under »mankind«

Prequel to Planet of the Apes is a visual effects masterpiece

August 12, 2011

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I have been chopping at the bit ever since I heard Rise of The Planet of the Apes was out this summer. Its release this week in the UK couldn’t have been more timely following the rioting and looting in various cities up and down the country. Although the film centres around the untamed side […]

Chimp recognises distorted speech

July 12, 2011

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The notion that language evolved only in the human lineage has long been attributed to the linguist, Noam Chomsky. He argued that mankind had a special “language organ” unique to us which did not exist in any other animal. This idea has been challenged over the years by a number of researchers who argue that […]

Madagascar’s creatures great and small

June 6, 2011

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They say good things come in small packages and one new species recently discovered is so small it weighs the same as just three cups of cereal. A feather-weight among primates, Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae), is 10cm long and weighs around 30g. This primate is so small it even trumps the pygmy marmoset (Cebuella […]

To boldly go where no primate has been before

May 28, 2011

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Exactly 52 years ago today mankind decided to boldly go where no man had been before. Except it wasn’t man who embarked on this mission but his nearest cousin. During the 1950’s astronauts still hadn’t travelled beyond the earth’s atmosphere. There were concerns among scientists about the effects of prolonged weightlessness; and so began the […]

New evidence suggests “Lucy” was no swinger

February 27, 2011

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If I said the word metatarsal, most non-scientistsĀ among you, would know exactly where this bone is in the human body – thanks to David Beckham. Beckham‘s metatarsal became a talking point and a hugely important issue to England football fans when he fractured it in theĀ build-up to the 2002 World Cup. He’s not the only […]