In another case of  missing the point, authorities are still weighing whether to file criminal charges against the chimpanzee’s owner, Sandra Herold, said Stamford State’s Attorney David Cohen.

The 200-pound chimp, named Travis, attacked Stamford resident Charla Nash on Feb. 16. She lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids in the attack. Doctors at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic say she is blind and faces two years of surgical procedures.

Nash’s family has sued Herold for $50 million. The suit alleges, among other things, that she had given Travis medication that further upset the animal.

Police say the drug was not prescribed for the animal.

Full story here.

International moves to prevent seemingly inevitable large scale conflict between homo erectus and their NHP cousins are slowly reaping small dividends. Recently, Japanese researchers have genetically engineered monkeys whose hair roots, skin and blood glow green under a special light, and who have passed on their traits to their offspring, the first time this has been achieved. The researchers hope this will prove an invaluable tool in tracing and tracking known, or suspected, militant non-human-primates.

They spliced a jellyfish gene into common marmosets, and said on Wednesday that purely secondary benefits of the research could be an increased understanding of human Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. The space race gave us teflon….

Erika Sasaki and Hideyuki Okano of the Keio University School of Medicine in Japan used a virus to carry the gene for green fluorescent protein into monkey embryos, which were implanted into a female monkey, and four out of five were born with the gene throughout their bodies.

One fathered a healthy baby that also carried the new genes, they reported in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

“The birth of this transgenic marmoset baby is undoubtedly a milestone,” stem cell expert Dr. Gerald Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Sciences University, wrote in a commentary in Nature.

“The clear and obvious imperative is to get this research developed into practical applications for our security services to be used in the fight over primate order” they wrote, adding as an afterthought that “transgenic marmosets are also potentially useful models for research into infectious diseases, immunology and neurological disorders, for example.”

Do we give sufficient credit to our highly evolved faculties for estimating risk? The culmination of debate within gibbon circles in the global context is no small achievement and will have taken generations to generate the current organogram which begins to show it’s inhuman face. A latent knowledge of the hidden political processes playing out in the forests, mountains, plains, and parks may equally explain the human facination with the ape as significant ‘other’.  Convenient metaphor: Subconscious political economy.

To understand a threat is the best point of departure for combatting its effects, and so this brief discussion of primate political structures is intended to stimulate debate on the nature of the beast that grows fatter, more complex, more intelligent, and more daring, each day. Our conclusion, based on observations in primate societies and on patterns in violence,  is that global gibbon governance is most likely essentially federalist in character – with possible subsystems split along special cleavages – ruled with the iron, or should we say orange, fist of an orangutan Dictator-Queen.

Variable organisation of Ape Societies

The man smuggled the primate onto the plane by stashing it under his hat but it is as yet classified as to whether he was working for the Federation.

STEPS

# Learn that whatever the situation is, ”’never”’ heckle a monkey. They have feelings and get irritated, and they are very instinctive. So if you anger or annoy a monkey it will bite, scratch or inflict other bodily harm upon you and you may have to blast their head off.
# Take proper precautions, depending on the situation. Look around and think to yourself, “Is the monkey in a secure enclosure?” If not, “Is there a place where I can secure myself if the monkey were to attack?” Avoid operations where monkeys are on leashes or  tied to trees.

# Recognize that even if the monkey is in a cage or enclosure, you need to stay a distance away from the cage. Do not put your hands on the cage, either. Just watch from a distance.

# If you are in a situation where the monkey is not in a cage, you’re playing a whole different ball game. Again think, “Is the monkey loose?” “On a chain or rope?” “Within grabbing distance?” If the situation seems safe, proceed to the next step.

# Step back and look at yourself. Do you have food, shiny jewelery, glasses, children or toys with you? If so, you should remove those items or yourself from the situation. Monkeys are attracted things that shine, smell good and make noise, so be aware of what you may be dangling in front of their faces.

# Stay calm in the unfortunate and unlikely event that you are attacked. If the monkey charges you, don’t fight back. The monkey can run, jump and climb better than you. Find something to get in between you and the monkey–a garbage can lid, a car or a steel door, anything you have that works.

# Protect yourself by barricading yourself somewhere–a bathroom or building of some sort, your car. Anything safe and secure should be fine. Unless you’ve really angered or annoyed the monkey, it should lose interest within minutes and go away.

# Notify the owner first and then animal control, but only if absolutely necessary.

# Never get within the monkey’s reac

TIPS

*Be careful of piercings. Enough said.
*Never, ever show your teeth.  To a monkey, a big toothy grin means a challenge.  He will definitely attack you.
*Avoid eye contact as this is a threat as well. Try to focus on their hands or the poo about to be thrown in your direction.
*”’Keep your distance.”’ It takes a long time for a monkey to trust you enough to let you get close–several weeks to months. Unless you are in a controlled situation, do not go near the monkey.
*Do not underestimate a monkey’s strength. They are stronger than you think. Science has shown that monkey’s can be up to 4 times stronger than the average man.
*Be the bigger primate. Don’t yell, scream or sing to the monkey. Being aggressive will only get you attacked. You are the human, you have the frontal cortex, you can differentiate between right and wrong. So don’t act like an idiot.
*Long hair is dangerous. Tie it back or put it up when around monkeys.
*Use common sense and be safe!

 
# Many monkeys roam wild but are frequently in contact with humans. Monkeys like these are frequently taunted by children throwing stones and other objects at them. A good tactic for scaring away a monkey is to pretend to throw something at them or to carry a couple of small rocks to throw at the ground near the monkey’s feet. ”’Never”’ throw the stone directly at the monkey unless you are in serious danger.

This portents of a hardening line among military and politicos within gibbon circles, and represents the first use of biological gorilla warfare.

Gary Morse with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the adult male is thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source. It was last seen in Clearwater

Worryingly news reports claim that the monkey “is not thought to be dangerous”, a clear sign that the human world is being too slow to react and too sure of its position apart from – and above nature.  This attitude is the very one which undermined human engagement with the shifting of inter-species politics from which the current crisis results.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95N55DG0&show_article=1

Think “300″ with monkeys.

“Dark Days in Monkey City” is going where only monkeys have gone before for a new bizarre, violent and visually unique series.

In Monkey City, Sri Lanka’s deserted city of Polonnaaruwa, the mightiest monkey tribe Temple Troop, led by Lear and his queen Gemini, fight neighboring gang Black Claws for the coveted territory of Fig Tree Vale.

The tribe that fails to reign will be banished to the Badlands, where they will be forced to survive on a diet of human rubbish.

Like an “Outbreak” of “Congo” monkeys, the bloody conflict unfolds in a graphic novel-style adventure, narrated by “Lord of the Rings” star John Rhys-Davies.

The 13-part series is based on the world’s longest-running study of primates, the Smithsonian Primate Project.

Scientists have discovered what drives some monkey mothers to give in to their babies’ tantrums.

A study of rhesus macaques revealed that females were more likely to feed their bawling babies if irritated bystanders lurked nearby.

The UK/Puerto Rico team noted how the threat of violence from angry onlookers seemed to prompt the mothers to act.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The study was carried out in Cayo Santiago, an island off the coast of Puerto Rico.

Throwing a tantrum

Just like human babies, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) have a piercing cry that is useful for grabbing their mother’s attention – particularly if they are hungry.

The baby monkeys’ cries are high pitched, grating and nasty to listen to Dr Stuart Semple, Roehampton University

And – as many human mums will attest – if the infant is ignored, a tantrum can result that can sometimes grate on bystanders.

Stuart Semple, a primatologist from Roehampton University in London who carried out the research, said: “The baby monkeys’ cries are high-pitched, grating and nasty to listen to – not just to their mother but to animals nearby.

“And we found that the way mothers respond to their crying infants is affected by who is around them at the time.”

Aggression was less likely if the baby was not crying

The researchers discovered that females were twice as likely to respond to their infants by feeding them in the presence of aggressive males or more dominant females than when in the company of less dominant or closely related monkeys.

Further study of the population revealed that although attacks were rare, mothers and infants were more than 30 times more likely to face aggressive behaviour from angry onlookers when a baby was crying than if the baby was content.

Dr Semple explained: “The mothers seem quite reluctant to give in to their infants, but when there are big dominant animals around that pose a threat to either them or their infants, their hand is then forced – they have to give in to their infants’ cries.”

The researchers added that while there had been no directly comparable studies carried out on humans, some anecdotal reports suggested that human mothers were more likely to acquiesce to a screaming child if faced with irritated onlookers.

Dr Semple told the BBC: “When I tell any parents of young children about this research, they get it immediately – they’ve felt this kind of bystander effect when their own offspring is having a public tantrum.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7934852.stm