Researchers Crack "Splicing Code".

In my chapter ALADDIN'S CAVE I detail a number of genomic mechanisms that potentially can add up to greater genetic distance than that represented by DNA base substitution (point mutation) in the genetic code. One such mechanism is called "splice variation" where a gene can produce a whole range of mRNA intermediates between DNA and protein by selective splicing out of exonic and intronic DNA. In this way one gene can produce up to several thousand different, but related, proteins. It is becoming obvious that this is a potent way in which a limited number of genes can produce the complexity of structure and function of the brain, and, already, a number of differences between chimps and humans have been noted in splice variants. This article reports on a recent Nature paper by Brendan Frey and Benjamin Blencowe, of the University of Toronto, explaining how they have managed to decipher this splicing code.

Bonobos Shake Heads To Say "No".

Is this report from the BBC on some recent research at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig yet another piece of anthropomorphic licence - or not? Bonobo mothers have been recorded shaking their heads as if to say "no" when their infants ignore previous and other methods to reprove them. The researchers add this gesture to a list of communicative head movements which, in bonobos, is richer than in any other of the great ape species. The report comes from a research group headed by Josep Call and I am therefore prepared to take it more seriously than most reports of this nature - and the researchers are more cautious in their interpretation than the story's headline. As one of them, Christel Schneider, told the BBC, horizontal shaking of the head is not a human universal for "no", so it is a perilously long jump to see some evolutionary antecedent to human "preventative head shaking" in bonobo behaviour!

When It Comes To Sex, Chimps Need Help, Too!

Continuing the torrent of anthropomorphic rubbish currently being talked about chimpanzees, here is an amusing little piece from John Tierney in the New York Times - commenting on a recent article in Science from Bill McGrew, a world expert on chimpanzee technology, currently at the University of Cambridge. Tierney was fascinated that McGrew included "sex" as one of the daily life functions for which chimps had evolved tool use. It turns out that McGrew was referring to the practice of male chimps in one Tanzanian colony, augmenting their full view erections with the harsh sound of leaf-ripping - repeated until the, presumably visually-challenged, female showed some interest in what he had to offer. Tool use and manufacture? Rather stretching a point, methinks! McGrew is easily impressed!! You only have to compare a few ripped leaves with the multi-billion dollar internet porn industry, with the fact that there are computers, cameras and internet, together with world-wide prostitution, a plethora of sex toys, and several billion vivid imaginations to realise that, right down to the act of "getting it on", the gulf between humans and chimps is ENORMOUS.

Why Chimps Are Not Us...BBC Focus Magazine

The paperback version of NOT A CHIMP is due out in late June so it is nice to see this advertisement feature for OUP in the BBC's Focus magazine, featuring a short article penned by me and a "Sneaky Preview" link to the paperback.

Can You Hurt A Chimp's Feelings?

I've posted twice already about a recent spate of anthropomorphism in the popular and scientific press concerning "grieving" chimps. The spate seems to be turning into a major outbreak! Reports of chimps grieving over the death of an elderly female, Pansy, at a Scottish safari park, and female chimps carrying around dead infants, seemingly reluctant to let them go, from Africa, have now been conflated with the idiotic assertions on animal behaviour by a lecturer in film and television studies, from the University of East Anglia, Brett Mills, concerning our infringement of animals' privacy through the act of natural history film-making! When we poke a specialised camera into an animal's den or nest to film, for instance, rearing behaviour, we do it, says Mills, without the animal's consent. We are invading its privacy - its very behaviour, sequestering itself away, suggests it does not want to be seen. Here again, Mills operates from the assumption that other animal species feel the same emotions, often to the same intensity and cognitive depth, as humans. His suggestion that, in the absence of informed consent, we resist such activities, in rather the same manner that we might delicately avert our gaze while our dog relieves himself in the park, is yet another example of the misguided and scientifically unjustifiable basis for according rights to animals. In this Guardian piece, the "epidemic" gets a gentle put down from Ros Coward. It deserves a much ruder repudiation!