Humans and our closest relatives, living apes, display a remarkable diversity of types of locomotion—from walking upright on two legs to climbing in trees and walking using all four limbs.
Evolution
Jan 29, 2024
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The rotating shoulders and extending elbows that allow humans to reach for a high shelf or toss a ball with friends may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed to get out ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 5, 2023
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Anthropologists have long thought that our ape ancestors evolved an upright torso in order to pick fruit in forests, but new research from the University of Michigan suggests a life in open woodlands and a diet that included ...
Evolution
Apr 13, 2023
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207
Humans retain an understanding of gestures made by other great apes, even though we no longer use them ourselves, according to a study by Kirsty E. Graham and Catherine Hobaiter at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, ...
Plants & Animals
Jan 24, 2023
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A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has found evidence that suggests ...
When we're talking to another person, we probably wouldn't leave without saying goodbye; that would just be impolite. Apes seem to do something similar, researchers report in a study publishing August 11 in the journal iScience, ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 11, 2021
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In the 150 years since Charles Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution. Fossil apes ...
Evolution
May 6, 2021
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When you think about what separates humans from chimpanzees and other apes, you might think of our big brains, or the fact that we get around on two legs rather than four. But we have another distinguishing feature: water ...
Evolution
Mar 5, 2021
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New analysis of the DNA sequence of the male-specific Y chromosomes from all living species of the great ape family helps to clarify our understanding of how this enigmatic chromosome evolved. A clearer picture of the evolution ...
Evolution
Oct 6, 2020
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Humans differ from other primates in the types and amounts of care that males provide for their offspring. The precise timing of the emergence of human "fatherhood" is unknown, but a new theory proposes that it emerged from ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 27, 2020
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Hylobatidae Hominidae †Proconsulidae †Dryopithecidae †Oreopithecidae †Pliopithecidae
An ape is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates. In less scientific language, it has various meanings, although it often (but not always) excludes humans. Due to its ambiguous nature, the term 'ape' is less suitable as a means of describing taxonomic relationships.
Under the current classification system there are two families of hominoids:
A few other primates, such as the Barbary Ape, have the word "ape" in their common names (usually to indicate lack of a tail), but they are not regarded as true apes.
Except for gorillas and humans, all true apes are agile climbers of trees. They are best described as omnivorous, their diet consisting of fruit, grass seeds, and in most cases some quantities of meat and invertebrates—either hunted or scavenged—along with anything else available and easily digested. They are native to Africa and Asia, although humans have spread to all parts of the world. A group of apes is called a "shrewdness".
Most ape species are rare or endangered. The chief threat to most of the endangered species is loss of tropical rainforest habitat, though some populations are further imperiled by hunting for bushmeat.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
