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[gregory nahas <lettherebemonkeys AT yahoo.com>]

www.wtopnews.com/index.php.nid=87
(Anyone else notice that monkey news seems to come in
waves?)

Cheeta Named World's Oldest Chimpanzee 
Updated: Saturday, Apr. 12, 2003 - 1:31 AM EST. 

PALM SPRINGS, Calif. (AP) - Cheeta lives in this
desert resort town like a lot of old movie stars,
painting, playing the piano and watching his old
movies. But as one of Palm Springs' only retired
chimpanzees, he stands out. 
The last actor to have played the lead chimpanzee role
in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and '40s, Cheeta is
71 now _ the oldest chimp in the world, according to
the Guinness Book of Records. 

"He's just part of the family," said Dan Westfall, who
saved Cheeta's life when he adopted him from Tony
Gentry, an animal trainer who worked in Hollywood. 

Gentry, Westfall's uncle, originally left instructions
in his will to have Cheeta euthanized after his death
because he worried that the 142-pound chimp would wind
up in a research lab. His nephew talked him out of
that by promising he'd always take care of Cheeta. 

Westfall and Abe Karajerjian care for Cheeta and other
animals, including orangutans and monkeys, at a house
they have nicknamed Casa de Cheeta. 

Cheeta spends his time playing with preschool toys,
thumbing through magazines including National
Geographic and playing the piano. In addition to his
old movies, he likes watching Animal Planet and
cartoons on television. 

Cheeta's handlers hope to sell some of his paintings _
which they describe as "Ape-Stract" _ to raise money
for a sanctuary for homeless primates. 

(Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.) 



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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/030415/170/3t6h0.html

Russian specialists dress a monkey at the Medical and Biologic Problems 
Laboratory
outside Moscow for zero gravity testing, April 15, 2003. Russian scientists 
at the
country's top space medicine center use animals to test the health effects of 
life in
space. REUTERS/Dima Korotayev 
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Subject: [monkeywire] Elusive African Apes: Giant Chimps or New Species?
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0414_030314_strangeape.html

Elusive African Apes: Giant Chimps or New Species?

John Roach
for National Geographic News
April 14, 2003

A mysterious group of apes found in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo 
in central
Africa has scientists and conservationist scratching their heads. The apes 
nest on the
ground like gorillas but have a diet and features characteristic of 
chimpanzees. 
The apes are most likely a group of giant chimpanzees that display 
gorilla-like behavior.
A far more remote possibility is that they represent a new subspecies of 
great ape.
Researchers plan to return to the region later this month to collect more 
clues to help
resolve the mystery. 

The detective story began in 1908 when a Belgian army officer returned home 
with several
gorilla skulls from near the town of Bili on the Uele River and gave them to 
the
Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren. In 1927 the museum's 
curator
classified the skulls as a new subspecies of gorilla, Gorilla gorilla 
uellensis. 

Intrigued by the subspecies, Colin Groves, now an anthropologist at the 
Australian
National University in Canberra, examined the skulls in 1970 and determined 
that they
were indistinguishable from western gorillas, one of the two known species of 
gorilla.
The case closed, and no further specimens of this gorilla from Bili have 
since been
found. 

But in 1996, Swiss-born, Kenya-based wildlife photographer and 
conservationist Karl
Ammann re-opened the case and embarked on a quest to rediscover the 
mysterious gorillas. 

To date, Ammann has not found the gorilla. But he has collected a wealth of 
information
including skulls, ground nests, hair and fecal samples, footprints, and, most 
recently,
photographs of what appears to be a chimpanzee that behaves like a gorilla. 

Scientific analysis of this data is still being conducted. Ammann awaits the 
results
before making an official announcement about the finds. Meanwhile, he 
continues to
recruit scientists to study the case. 

Shelly Williams, an independent primate behavior specialist in Atlanta, 
Georgia, who has
a doctorate in experimental psychology, spent two months in the northern 
Democratic
Republic of Congo last year trying to determine the identity of these apes. 
She said "at
the very least, we have either a new culture of chimps that are unusually 
large or
hybrids with unusual behaviors." 

Williams and Groves will meet Ammann in Kenya this month before traveling to 
the Congo to
conduct further studies on the mysterious apes. 

Ground Nesting Chimp? 

Since Ammann launched his quest, he has led expeditions into the Bili forest 
in the
northern Democratic Republic of Congo where the original skulls were 
recovered. On his
first trip, Ammann recovered a skull which had a pronounced ridge on its 
forehead
characteristic of gorilla. The rest of the measurements link the skull to 
that of a
chimpanzee. 

For the next several years civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo made 
travel to
the Bili forest difficult. Ammann recruited a bush meat hunter from Cameroon 
to visit and
survey the area. The hunter returned with photographs and reports of gorilla 
ground nests
in an area north of Bili. 

In 2000, Ammann returned to the area described by the bush meat hunter with a 
group of
ape researchers. Although they did not find a live ape, the group did stumble 
across
several well-worn ground nests in swampy river beds. 

Ground nests are characteristic of gorillas. Chimpanzees are thought to 
prefer to sleep
in trees. However, an analysis of feces found in the nests suggests that 
whatever left
them was eating a diet rich in fruits, a diet characteristic of chimpanzees, 
not
gorillas. 

Other evidence collected from the site includes hair samples, which have been 
sent out to
various laboratories for DNA analysis. The initial results indicate they 
belong to a
chimpanzee. All of this evidence is causing the researchers to believe that 
what Ammann
has found is a chimpanzee that behaves like a gorilla. 

"It is a chimpanzee," said Esteban Sarmiento, a functional anatomist at the 
American
Museum of Natural History in New York who traveled to the region with Ammann 
in 2000.
"There are presently three recognized subspecies of common chimpanzee Pan 
troglodytes and
it could represent a fourth subspecies or change our present understanding of 
where to
draw the divisions between subspecies." 

Giant Chimps 

Local hunters in the region added to the mystery when they told Ammann and 
his colleagues
about two kinds of chimpanzees in the region. Normal chimps, so-called 
"tree-beaters,"
are easily killed with poisonous arrows when they feed in trees. 

Another, large chimpanzee seldom climbs trees and does not succumb to the 
poison arrows
shot by the hunters. Called "lion killers," these big chimpanzees flee 
through the thick
forest and disappear when shot at by hunters. 

Evidence for these giant chimpanzees collected by Ammann includes a 
photograph of a
cadaver alongside the hunter that killed it and casts of some large 
footprints. The
pronounced ridge, called a sagittal crest, on the skull that Ammann found in 
1996 is
thought to be formed to support large jaw muscles, an indication of large 
body size. 

"Giant chimpanzees occasionally occur here and there in the central and 
eastern
subspecies, but evidence so far indicates that Karl [Ammann] may have a 
population of
giants in his area," said Groves. "Presumably their giantism is relevant to 
their ground
nesting behavior." 

This group of what appear to be a distinct culture of ground-nesting 
chimpanzees is the
now focus of Ammann's research. "Work has started on habituating one of the 
ground
nesting chimp groups. This is done by provisioning them with sugar cane," he 
said. 

This habituation will allow the researchers to document this new culture of 
chimpanzee as
the researchers await the results of nuclear DNA analysis to determine if 
what they have
is indeed a new subspecies of chimpanzee or simply a unique culture. Either 
way, the
scientists are intrigued. 

"Discovering an isolated group of apes exhibiting unusual cultural behaviors 
is just as
important as identifying new DNA profiles. That's why continuous observation,
habituation, and surveying are so important," said Williams. 

Additionally, researchers have not yet given up on the possibility of finding 
gorillas in
the area. 

"I would think there is a strong possibility that south of Bili on the other 
side of the
Uele River there may be gorillas, and this would seem an important area to 
turn our
attention to," said Sarmiento.