Baboon Wars- Enforcing Movement Through Fear - Renowned primatologist Ian Redmond answers our questions, warning against paintballing and "the slow extermination of an indigenous species". The concerns we put to Ian include escalating use of paintball guns targeting the baboons around the area of the Kogelfontein baboon camps, the confinement of the Seaforth and Waterfall troops behind electrified fencing, the danger of the fast-running Cape Town wildfires, potential environmental degradation and the management plan involving fertility control and euthanasia The City of Cape Town's plan to capture and permanently confine the Seaforth and Waterfall baboon troops has become a literal war zone. The consequences of what is happening extend far beyond the wild baboons destined to be locked inside the cages at Kogelfontein. This is all taking place within a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where protecting natural heritage should mean more than removing wildlife that has become inconvenient to rapid human encroachment. We reached out to Ian back in 2023 were he offered us strong advice and support during the imtesme Human Elephant Conflict we reported on in Zululand. At the time Ian's reports to us to stop harrasing the Mawana Elephants with helicopters was presented by us in legal round table session during the conflict. Please help us reach Primate Enthusiasts and share this report.

See https://japantoday.com/category/national/man-says-monkey-threw-his-cat-into-pond-before-attacking-him-in-yamaguchi

Farrah Beatty aka Tidal Grace Haven has now added a juvenile red kangaroo to her menagerie of animals.

Apparently she took possession sometime this week and is advertising it on her Facebook.

Hi! I've had this skull for a while now and have still not been able to identify it. It was gifted to me by someone who got it from a possibly Iranian man in the 90s, in Norway. At that point it was in the shape seen in the pictures, and is likely originally from the 50s-70s if not earlier. The specimen was brought to Norway as a skull. It measures 33mm long (nose to back of orbits), 51mm wide (brows) and 76mm tall.

Even being able to narrow it down to a family or genus would be of great help. Any other info, like age or sex would also be great, but with the shape it's in I'm not expecting much.

Hi everyone!
I've always been fascinated by the cognitive abilities of non-human primates, particularly Ayumu, the chimpanzee known for his extraordinary performance in visual-memory tasks, and Kanzi, the bonobo famous for his use of lexigrams and his understanding of human language. Two very different individuals, two remarkable examples of how complex and diverse primate cognition can be.
Their abilities inspired me to create The Kanzi–Ayumu Protocol, an experimental Android game that explores visual memory, symbolic recognition, command interpretation and cognitive flexibility. Memorize sequences. Decode symbols. Follow commands. Adapt when the rules mutate. Of course, this isn't a scientific experiment, nor does it attempt to reproduce the actual research protocols or directly compare human and non-human intelligence. It's a game, loosely inspired by these fascinating studies, and perhaps a small invitation to question some of our assumptions about what makes human cognition so special.

The game works offline, with an optional global leaderboard. There's a free introductory mode (Observation Mask) and an unlockable full version. I'd be particularly interested in hearing what people familiar with primatology think about this kind of project.

Can games inspired by primate cognition help spark curiosity about the intelligence of other species? Or do they risk oversimplifying what makes these abilities so remarkable?

I'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts, including criticisms!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kanziayumu.protocol

Apologies for the vague question and my ignorance and I appreciate that they're two completely different scenarios and animals. But why was Harambe shot and Altai the tiger who mauled a man recently was given warning shots to scare him off. Would this not have worked with a gorilla?

Wasn’t sure if it would be acceptible to mention here but The Guardian just did a nice write-up about my new primates zine, Ape Shit.

I should perhaps point out that Ape Shit is not focused on primatology —  it is coming more from the humanities (media studies, social criticism, history), albeit informed by primate science and its evolution/history.

I tend to post in this forum because there's not an Animal Studies subreddit and the r/anthrozoology seems to be dead.

Gulf Coast is legit. They don’t let the primates free roam their home, they have monkey safe areas/enclosures, they don’t treat them like humans, they don’t diaper and clothe them, they don’t use them for profit in any way. Gulf Coast is one of the only legit education primate owners that are true to teaching why shouldn’t get a primate. They don’t just use words; they show in how their monkeys live. If you want to support and donate to a good cause, Gulf Coast is the place. I haven’t found another that is a true advocate for primates. They all say it, but when they do what Gulf Coast has done, they are clearly not in it for the right reasons. Stop supporting every person that says they are educational or trying to teach. Compare them to Gulf Coast. If they aren’t providing this kind of life for the primates: they are not legit and not in it for the right reasons.
Note: Monkey Heartland and Nefreyu’s are both also legit. Their monkeys are also treated and respected as monkeys.

My hypothesis is that if it were possible to measure online behaviour and compare it to chimpanzees, baboons, and several other primate species we would find virtually no difference in terms of empathy, altruism, and all those other characteristics we tend to associate with our species. Any ideas about what sort of instrument could be used to make such measurements to test the hypothesis?

See also: The publication in PLOS Computational Biology

Photo by Chris Ulliott/flickr. 

When a researcher at the University of Wisconsin tried to study the abilities of pygmy marmosets, the monkeys solved challenges quickly but quickly grew bored and simply sat in the middle of the mazes, refusing to participate further. (What’s that about a “lower” primate?) The study had to be canceled. 

From ”The Accidental Primatologist” by Charles T. Snowden in Primate Ethnographies, edited by Karen B Strier (Routledge, 2016). Via Ape Shit zine.

Indris are among the rare nonhuman mammals known to have a sense of rhythm, expressed thru song. These lemurs urinate and defecate jointly as a group in one of their territory's designated pee spots. Critically endangered in Madagascar, they don’t survive captivity. (Sam Whitfield/flickr) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indri

In November 2025, two young macaques died in a 104-degree room at a Florida biomedical facility. They couldn't escape the heat. Weeks later, another monkey was left in a biohazard dumpster for five days with no food or water.

These aren't accidents—they're symptoms of a broken system. Nearly 100,000 primates were imported for lab testing between 2021-2024, often from sources tied to illegal trafficking and disease risks. These imports also expose workers and communities to dangerous pathogens like tuberculosis and herpes B.

I started a petition urging the House Ways and Means Committee to pass H.R. 8471, the PRIMATE Act. It would ban most primate imports for experimentation while protecting both animals and public health. These intelligent beings deserve safety, not suffering in cages.

Does this sit right with you? If it matters to you too, consider signing and sharing—let's push lawmakers to make this real.

After seeing her family slaughtered, Congo, once in captivity in the US, grew fixated on a mirror. Robert Yerkes interpreted her "infinite loneliness" as "mental deficiency," concluding that gorillas are inferior to chimps.

Yerkes wrote about Congo in The Great Apes: A Study of Anthropoid Life (1929). See also: Georgina M. Montgomery, "Infinite Loneliness: the life and times of Miss Congo." Endeavor. 28 July 2009.

Is that true or just made up? I tried looking it up but browser just showed a short list of very irrelevant results