See an orangutan, take a photo, earn some money: A viable conservation model? In Kapuas Hulu district in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, a pilot program is attempting to change how people living in Borneo perceive and engage with wildlife and wildlife conservation. Kehati...

"It’s some Western idea that they need to be protected... Half the people we work with, they eat orangutans. Orangutans eat your fruit. They steal from your gardens.... "

Interesting piece from @mongabay.com

A screen shot of the text from the lead of AP's story, with leads with "In Mexico, a baby mopnkey is growing up clinging to a plush toy after being rejected by his mother."

And here is AP's version with the classic line about rejection. It may seem subtle but this angle is essential, as it positions zoo staff as heroes and rescuers. (AP does score brownie points for using "his" instead of the more typical "its," tho)

A circa 1940 black-and-white photo shows a young chimpanzee wearing a soldier's cloth bag, shoes, and a gas mask. Photo via Osaka Tennoji Zoo.

Nice piece from PRIMATES recounts the history of chimps imported into Japan. Rita, below, was purchased by the Osaka City Zoo to entertain crowds. In ~1940, she was photographed wearing a gasmask to boost morale during WWII.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Infant care in primates is surprisingly non-instinctive. They need to learn from their mothers and/or by watching other moms in a group and “practicing” as adolescents. Many in zoos simply haven’t had those healthy developmental experiences. Plus, they may be too young...or stressed.

Baby monkey finds comfort in stuffed teddy bear at Mexican zoo A baby patas monkey at a Mexican zoo has been given a stuffed teddy bear for comfort after its inexperienced mother was unable to care for it, zoo officials said.

Props to Reuters on this post-Punch subhead that refrains from the usual monkey-mother bashing. The typical line about a baby being "abandoned" by their mother is updated to more accurately capture the problem with primates who give birth in zoos.

Wild chimpanzees recorded waging ‘civil war’ with coordinated attacks between two groups New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps turning on itself

If you've seen Netflix's "Chimp Empire," you've already seen some of the chimps in this battle, but the recent publication in Science goes into the details www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Photo of an adult chimpanzee withdrawing her lips into a grimace that highlights her gums and teeth. The caption on the photo reads: "Fully adult chimpanzee may lapse into childlike behavior when upset. This female begged for food from another female but was rejected. She is screaming in frustration, hitting herself with spasmodic arm movements. (Yerkes Primate Center)"

From Frans de Waal's _Peacemaking Among Primates_ (1989)

At the funeral for an 85 year-old woman who fed wild macaques near Bengaluru in India, one monkey approached the body to give her a final hug.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengalu...

Top: 3 b&w headshots of different woolly monkeys. Bottom: 3 b&w headshots of 3 white men, who all kinda look alike. --from Man and Monkey by Leonard Williams

From Man and Monkey (1968) by Leonard Williams, who ran a proto-wildlife sanctuary in 1960s Cornwall and grew weary of visitors saying that all woolly monkeys look alike. #primates

Famed primatologist Biruté Galdikas dead at 79 | CBC News Biruté Mary Galdikas, a Canadian scientist who dedicated her life to the study and conservation of orangutans, has died. She was the last living member of the renowned primatologists known as "trimate...

RIP to the last of Leakey’s “trimates”

She's THE BEST.

"I have disappointed multitudes over the years by not being Jane Goodall... and I have had to turn away droves of students who wanted to become Jane Goodall, since to do it through me would have required calculus."

Portland Oregonian

March 15, 1926: A pet store fire kills 5,000 canaries, 150 parrots, 40 monkeys and several cats and dogs in downtown New York. A hero of the tragedy is a baboon who carries a kitten to safety.

2/ DM me if able to help with copyediting — or if you simply want to get on the email list. The format will be similar to my old zine, Stay Free!, which had nothing to do with animals. (A few copies are at archive.org/search?query=stay+free+zine)

Logo for our new zine, Ape Shit. In place of the "i" in "Shit" is an asterik designed to look like splatter.

1/ Any experienced copyeditors up for a unpaid gig? We’re finishing up issue #1 of a new print zine about primates. Part animal studies, part media criticism, part weird history. Issue #1 takes a deep dive into the use of capucins as cheap labor: as helper monkeys and beggars (for organ grinders).

Robert Sapolsky's Baboons:The Surprising Power of Social Change #Baboons #StressAndAnxiety YouTube video by DeepWorldCuriosity

Fantastic Sapolsky talk, as important in 2026 as it was in 2011. Highly recommend.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykUk...
(Thanks, @billiehinton.bsky.social)

Dude, we’re going to bring it back for the inaugural issue of Ape Shit!

【全人類に捧げるムービー】モンキークレーン（ダイジェストバージョン） YouTube video by 楽市楽座

A few years ago, a biopark in Japan placed an arcade claw game into the capuchins' enclosure — and the internet delivers the video!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ApG...

Ape cracks exhibit's glass as it launches at Memphis Zoo visitors The zoo said the incident had led to the closure of its bonobo exhibit for an unknown time as it replaces the glass.

Imagine how much of asshole these guys were to piss of a bonobo like that www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Great piece. But if Punch were not born in a zoo, and if his natural habitat hadn’t been destroyed, please consider that his mother may not have rejected him in the first place. Maternal rejection happens far more often in primates in captivity.

Nice piece, but I would have appreciated some acknowledgement that maternal failure is very often an artifact of captivity.

Pic of page 62 of a book by Vicki Croke with highlighted text that reads: "A drill at the San Diego Zoo finds human females—particularly blonds—sexually appealing, and the zoo capitalizes on this to collect semen samples." From _the Modern Ark: The Story of Zoos: Past, Present, and Future (Avon, 1997)

I have so many questions

Baboon Sibling Rivalry Suggests Monkeys Feel Jealousy Like People

Field researchers have remarked about this for decades but it ain't science until the fancy math says so.

Gift link.

For those who didn't unsubscribe from the NYT in anger, here is a gift link thanks to @stmdc.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/s...

I love this book too, esp. the pieces by Thelma Rowell & Alison Jolly. Early 20th c. primate researchers wrote in more accessible manner, and with anecdotes... Seems like scientists gotta be well-established before they can write like a normal human person today.

Monkeys With Smaller Testicles Scream Louder to Compensate It's a "calls vs balls" tradeoff.

Howler monkeys, one of the loudest animals on Earth, scare off rivals with what amounts to false advertising. #primates

A newspaper article headlined "Monkey That Killed Boy Is Destroyed" along with a photo of a macaque monkey in a metal cage. https://www.newspapers.com/image/181286704/

Wondering what went wrong with this July 1975 AP story because the monkey they captured and killed is clearly not a capuchin. Wrongful conviction?

Diaper keeps 20-day-old baby from drowning after monkey throws her into well A 20-day-old baby girl in Seoni village, Janjgir-Champa district, was thrown into a well by a monkey but survived due to her diaper and the timely actions of villagers and a nurse.

#primates

St. Louis police say ‘no evidence’ any officer ever spotted monkeys In FOX 2’s recent coverage of Vervet monkeys on the run around St. Louis, the St. Louis Department of Health shared that a St. Louis police officer reported seeing at least one of the monkeys…

Important update.

Perhaps it's worth pointing out that AI photos of the alleged monkeys also circulated last week, showing the monkeys wearing safety gear in workshops.