Studies with non-human primates have made major contributions to our understanding of the brain and will continue to be an important, if small, part of neuroscience research, according to a recent review published in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

Researchers report this month that red colobus monkeys in a park in western Uganda have been exposed to an unknown orthopoxvirus, a pathogen related to the viruses that cause smallpox, monkeypox and cowpox. Most of the monkeys screened harbor antibodies to a virus that is similar – but not identical – to known orthopoxviruses.

Chimpanzees make judgments about the actions and dispositions of strangers by observing others’ behavior and interactions in different situations. Specifically, chimpanzees show an ability to recognize certain behavioral traits and make assumptions about the presence or absence of these traits in strangers in similar situations thereafter.

Researchers have made what they say is the first experimental demonstration that a primate other than humans conveys meaning by combining distinct alarm calls in particular ways. The study appears in the March 11th issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

An experimental, combination vaccine against Ebola and Marburg viruses using virus-like particles (VLPs) provides complete protection against infection in monkeys. Researchers from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) report their results today (Feb. 26) at the 2008 ASM Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have released the first known photographs of gorillas performing face-to-face copulation in the wild. This is the first time that western gorillas have been observed and photographed mating in such a manner.

A new study on monkeys has found that moderate exposure to alcohol and stress during pregnancy can lead to sensitivity to touch in the monkeys’ babies. In human children, sensitivity to touch is one of a number of characteristics of the approximately 5 percent of children who over-respond to sensory information.

Monkeys living on an island without big cat predators do not show any particular alarm when recorded tiger growls are played to them, according to research by a UC Davis graduate student. The pig-tailed langurs do, however, flee in a hurry from the sound of human voices.

The deliberate ingestion of soil, or ‘geophagy’, has important health benefits for chimpanzees, according to Sabrina Krief and her colleagues from the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France. Far from being a dysfunctional behavior, geophagy has evolved as a practice for maintaining health amongst chimpanzees.

Socially-learned cultural behaviour thought to be unique to humans is also found among chimpanzees colonies, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found.

A 55-year-old orangutan named Nonja, who was believed to be the oldest living orangutan in the world both in captivity and the wild, has died at the Miami MetroZoo in Miami, Florida.

When it comes to choosing a place to live, male chimpanzees in the wild don’t stray far from home, according to a new report in the Dec. 27th Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. The researchers found that adult male chimps out on their own tend to follow in their mother’s footsteps, spending their days in the same familiar haunts where they grew up.