It's not just humans – chimpanzees also like to follow trends, study shows
In 2010, researchers working at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia observed how a female chimp started to dangle objects from her ear, and the behaviour was soon copied by other members of her group, study lead author Ed van Leeuwen, an assistant professor of behavioural biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told CNN on Wednesday.
There was no evidence that the chimpanzees were using the grass or sticks to deal with pain or itches, and they were 'very relaxed' when they did it, Van Leeuwen said.
The behaviour is more of a 'fashion trend or social tradition,' he added.
Interestingly, chimpanzees in a different group at the sanctuary started demonstrating the same behaviour more than a decade later, with some also inserting objects into their rectums.
As this group lived around nine miles from the first group, they couldn't have copied it from them, prompting Van Leeuwen to ask whether the chimpanzees' caregivers could have influenced them.
As it turns out, the staff in one area of the reserve had developed a habit of cleaning their ears with matchsticks or twigs, while those on the other side didn't.
Van Leeuwen believes the behaviour was picked up by chimpanzees from caregivers in the first area, before it was passed on to other members of their group.
The caregivers then also influenced the behaviour in the second group, which they were looking after years later, before this group also developed the practice of inserting sticks and grass into their rectums.
'This is a trend that goes viral by means of social learning,' he added.
Van Leeuwen also cited the example of a group of chimpanzees at a zoo in the Netherlands in which one female started walking as if she were carrying a baby even though she wasn't.
Soon, all of the females had adopted this walking style, he said. In addition, when two new females were brought into the group, the one that adopted the style swiftly was integrated quickly, whereas the one that refused to walk in the group style took longer to be accepted.
For Van Leeuwen, these behaviours are about fitting in and smoothing social relationships, just as with humans.
The grass behaviour was mostly observed at leisure time, when the chimpanzees congregate to groom and play.
Living in the sanctuary, the chimpanzees don't have to worry about predators or competition with other groups, meaning they have more leisure time than their wild counterparts.
'They have a lot of time to just hang out,' said Van Leeuwens.
Nonetheless, wild chimpanzees are probably capable of developing such behaviour, he said, adding that it just might not have been documented yet.
Next, Van Leeuwens plans to study whether chimpanzees can repeatedly innovate new foraging techniques, to examine whether they can develop cumulative culture in the same way as humans.
Elodie Freymann, a post-doctoral affiliate at the University of Oxford's Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that these kinds of observations are key to advancing our understanding of the origins and transmission patterns of cultural behaviours in chimpanzees and other non-human animals.
'This study's finding that there may have been interspecies copying between chimps and their human caretakers is pretty mind blowing,' she said.
'If chimps can copy humans, could they be learning from and copying other non-human species as well? It's an exciting moment in primatology,' Freymann added.
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CTV News
16-07-2025
- CTV News
It's not just humans – chimpanzees also like to follow trends, study shows
Chimpanzees living in a sanctuary in Africa have developed a 'fashion trend' for dangling blades of grass or sticks from their ear holes and their behinds, a new study shows. In 2010, researchers working at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust chimpanzee sanctuary in Zambia observed how a female chimp started to dangle objects from her ear, and the behaviour was soon copied by other members of her group, study lead author Ed van Leeuwen, an assistant professor of behavioural biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told CNN on Wednesday. There was no evidence that the chimpanzees were using the grass or sticks to deal with pain or itches, and they were 'very relaxed' when they did it, Van Leeuwen said. The behaviour is more of a 'fashion trend or social tradition,' he added. Interestingly, chimpanzees in a different group at the sanctuary started demonstrating the same behaviour more than a decade later, with some also inserting objects into their rectums. As this group lived around nine miles from the first group, they couldn't have copied it from them, prompting Van Leeuwen to ask whether the chimpanzees' caregivers could have influenced them. As it turns out, the staff in one area of the reserve had developed a habit of cleaning their ears with matchsticks or twigs, while those on the other side didn't. Van Leeuwen believes the behaviour was picked up by chimpanzees from caregivers in the first area, before it was passed on to other members of their group. The caregivers then also influenced the behaviour in the second group, which they were looking after years later, before this group also developed the practice of inserting sticks and grass into their rectums. 'This is a trend that goes viral by means of social learning,' he added. Van Leeuwen also cited the example of a group of chimpanzees at a zoo in the Netherlands in which one female started walking as if she were carrying a baby even though she wasn't. Soon, all of the females had adopted this walking style, he said. In addition, when two new females were brought into the group, the one that adopted the style swiftly was integrated quickly, whereas the one that refused to walk in the group style took longer to be accepted. For Van Leeuwen, these behaviours are about fitting in and smoothing social relationships, just as with humans. The grass behaviour was mostly observed at leisure time, when the chimpanzees congregate to groom and play. Living in the sanctuary, the chimpanzees don't have to worry about predators or competition with other groups, meaning they have more leisure time than their wild counterparts. 'They have a lot of time to just hang out,' said Van Leeuwens. Nonetheless, wild chimpanzees are probably capable of developing such behaviour, he said, adding that it just might not have been documented yet. Next, Van Leeuwens plans to study whether chimpanzees can repeatedly innovate new foraging techniques, to examine whether they can develop cumulative culture in the same way as humans. Elodie Freymann, a post-doctoral affiliate at the University of Oxford's Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, who was not involved in the study, told CNN that these kinds of observations are key to advancing our understanding of the origins and transmission patterns of cultural behaviours in chimpanzees and other non-human animals. 'This study's finding that there may have been interspecies copying between chimps and their human caretakers is pretty mind blowing,' she said. 'If chimps can copy humans, could they be learning from and copying other non-human species as well? It's an exciting moment in primatology,' Freymann added.
CTV News
14-07-2025
- CTV News
Researchers may have solved mystery of Mercury's missing meteorites, but doubts remain
Researchers suspect that two meteorites found in the Sahara Desert in 2023 may originally have come from Mercury, which would make them the first identified fragments of the solar system's innermost planet. The least studied and most mysterious of the solar system's rocky planets, Mercury is so close to the sun that exploring it is difficult even for probes. Only two uncrewed spacecraft have visited it to date — Mariner 10, launched in 1973, and MESSENGER, launched in 2004. A third, BepiColombo, is en route and due to enter orbit around the planet in late 2026. Scientists know little about Mercury's geology and composition, and they have never been able to study a fragment of the planet that landed on Earth as a meteorite. In contrast, there are more than 1,100 known samples from the moon and Mars in the database of the Meteoritical Society, an organization that catalogs all known meteorites. These 1,100 meteorites originated as fragments flung from the surfaces of the moon and Mars during asteroid impacts before making their way to Earth after a journey through space. Not every planet is likely to eject fragments of itself Earth-ward during collisions. Though Venus is closer to us than Mars is, its greater gravitational pull and thick atmosphere may prevent the launch of impact debris. But some astronomers believe that Mercury should be capable of generating meteors. 'Based on the amount of lunar and Martian meteorites, we should have around 10 Mercury meteorites, according to dynamical modeling,' said Ben Rider-Stokes, a postdoctoral researcher in achondrite meteorites at the U.K.'s Open University and lead author of a study on the Sahara meteorites, published in June in the journal Icarus. 'However, Mercury is a lot closer to the sun, so anything that's ejected off Mercury also has to escape the sun's gravity to get to us. It is dynamically possible, just a lot harder. No one has confidently identified a meteorite from Mercury as of yet,' he said, adding that no mission thus far has been capable of bringing back physical samples from the planet either. If the two meteorites found in 2023 — named Northwest Africa 15915 (NWA 15915) and Ksar Ghilane 022 (KG 022) — were confirmed to be from Mercury, they would greatly advance scientists' understanding of the planet, according to Rider-Stokes. But he and his coauthors are the first to warn of some inconsistencies in matching those space rocks to what scientists know about Mercury. Mercury meteorite A fragment of Northwest Africa 15915, a meteorite found in 2023 that the study authors also believe could have originated from Mercury. Jared Collins via CNN Newsource The biggest is that the fragments appear to have formed about 500 million years earlier than the surface of Mercury itself. However, according to Rider-Stokes, this finding could be based on inaccurate estimates, making a conclusive assessment unlikely. 'Until we return material from Mercury or visit the surface,' he said, 'it will be very difficult to confidently prove, and disprove, a Mercurian origin for these samples.' But there are some compositional clues that suggest the meteorites might have a link to the planet closest to the sun. Hints of Mercurian origins It's not the first time that known meteorites have been associated with Mercury. The previous best candidate, based on the level of interest it piqued in astronomers, was a fragment called Northwest Africa (NWA) 7325, which was reportedly found in southern Morocco in early 2012. Rider-Stokes said that was the first meteorite to be potentially associated with Mercury: 'It got a lot of attention. A lot of people got very excited about it.' Further analysis, however, showed a richness in chrome at odds with Mercury's predicted surface composition. More recently, astronomers have suggested that a class of meteorites called aubrites — from a small meteorite that landed in 1836 in Aubres, France — might come from Mercury's mantle, the layer below the surface. However, these meteorites lack a chemical compatibility with what astronomers know about the planet's surface, Rider-Stokes said. 'That's what's so exciting about the samples that we studied — they have sort of the perfect chemistry to be representative of Mercury,' he said. Most of what is known about Mercury's surface and composition comes from NASA's MESSENGER probe, which assessed the makeup of the planet's crust from orbit. Both meteorites from the study, which Rider-Stokes analyzed with several instruments including an electron microscope, contain olivine and pyroxene, two iron-poor minerals confirmed by MESSENGER to be present on Mercury. The new analysis also revealed a complete lack of iron in the space rock samples, which is consistent with scientists' assumptions about the planet's surface. However, the meteorites contained only trace amounts of plagioclase, a mineral believed to dominate Mercury's surface. The biggest point of uncertainty, though, is still the meteorites' age. 'They are about 4.5 billion years old,' Rider-Stokes said, 'and most of Mercury's surface is only about 4 billion years old, so there's a 500 million-year difference.' However, he said he thinks this discrepancy is not sufficient to rule out a Mercurian origin, due to the limited reliability of MESSENGER's data, which has been also used to estimate the age of Mercury's surface layer. 'These estimates are based on impact cratering models and not absolute age dating, and therefore may not be entirely accurate,' Rider-Stokes said. 'It doesn't mean that these samples aren't good analogs for regional areas on the surface of Mercury, or the early Mercurian crust that is not visible on the modern surface of Mercury.' With more modern instruments now available, BepiColombo, the European Space Agency probe that will start studying Mercury in early 2027, may be able to answer long-standing questions about the planet, such as where it formed and whether it has any water. Mercury meteorite An image of a fragment of Ksar Ghilane 022, a meteorite found in the Sahara Desert in 2023 which authors of a new study suspect might have come from the planet Mercury. Jared Collins via CNN Newsource Having material confirmed to have come from other planetary bodies helps astronomers understand the nature of early solar system's building blocks, Rider-Stokes said, and identifying fragments of Mercury would be especially crucial since a mission to gather samples from the planet closest to the sun and bring them back would be extremely challenging and expensive. Clues to planet formation Sean Solomon, principal investigator for NASA's MESSENGER mission to Mercury, said in an email that he believes the two meteorites described in the recent paper likely did not originate from Mercury. Solomon, an adjunct senior research scientist at Columbia University in New York City, was not involved with the study. The primary reason Solomon cited for his doubts is that the meteorites formed much earlier than the best estimates for the ages of rocks now on Mercury's surface. But he said he thinks the samples still hold research value. 'Nonetheless, the two meteorites share many geochemical characteristics with Mercury surface materials, including little to no iron … and the presence of sulfur-rich minerals,' he added. 'These chemical traits have been interpreted to indicate that Mercury formed from precursor materials much more chemically reduced than those that formed Earth and the other inner planets. It may be that remnants of Mercury precursor materials still remain among meteorite parent bodies somewhere in the inner solar system, so the possibility that these two meteorites sample such materials warrants additional study.' Solomon also noted that it was difficult to persuade the planetary science community that there were samples from Mars in meteorite collections, and that it took precise matching of their chemistry with data about the surface of Mars taken by the Viking probes to convince researchers to take a closer look. Lunar meteorites were also not broadly acknowledged to be in meteorite collections until after the existence of Martian meteorites had been demonstrated in the 1980s, he added, even though the Apollo and Luna missions had returned abundant samples of lunar materials more than a decade earlier. Once samples are confirmed to be from a planetary body, Solomon said, they can provide crucial information not available from remote sensing by an orbiting spacecraft on the timing of key geological processes, the history of internal melting of the body, and clues to planet formation and early solar system processes. Rider-Stokes plans to continue the discussion around these meteorites at the annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society, which takes place in Perth this week. 'I'm going to discuss my findings with other academics across the world,' he said. 'At the moment, we can't definitively prove that these aren't from Mercury, so until that can be done, I think these samples will remain a major topic of debate across the planetary science community.'
CTV News
13-07-2025
- CTV News
U.S. aid cuts halt HIV vaccine research in South Africa, with global impact
A laboratory technician Nozipho Mlotshwa works on samples at the Wits laboratory Antiviral Gene Therapy Research Unit, at University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) JOHANNESBURG — Just a week had remained before scientists in South Africa were to begin clinical trials of an HIV vaccine, and hopes were high for another step toward limiting one of history's deadliest pandemics. Then the email arrived. Stop all work, it said. The United States under the Trump administration was withdrawing all its funding. The news devastated the researchers, who live and work in a region where more people live with HIV than anywhere else in the world. Their research project, called BRILLIANT, was meant to be the latest to draw on the region's genetic diversity and deep expertise in the hope of benefiting people everywhere. But the US$46 million from the U.S. for the project was disappearing, part of the dismantling of foreign aid by the world's biggest donor earlier this year as U.S. President Donald Trump announced a focus on priorities at home. South Africa hit hard by aid cuts South Africa has been hit especially hard because of Trump's baseless claims about the targeting of the country's white Afrikaner minority. The country had been receiving about $400 million a year via USAID and the HIV-focused PEPFAR. Now that's gone. Glenda Grey, who heads the Brilliant program, said the African continent has been vital to the development of HIV medication, and the U.S. cuts threaten its capability to do such work in the future. Significant advances have included clinical trials for lenacapavir, the world's only twice-a-year shot to prevent HIV, recently approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One study to show its efficacy involved young South Africans. 'We do the trials better, faster and cheaper than anywhere else in the world, and so without South Africa as part of these programs, the world, in my opinion, is much poorer,' Gray said. She noted that during the urgency of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa played a crucial role by testing the Johnson & Johnson and Novavax vaccines, and South African scientists' genomic surveillance led to the identification of an important variant. Labs empty and thousands are laid off A team of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand has been part of the unit developing the HIV vaccines for the trials. Inside the Wits laboratory, technician Nozipho Mlotshwa was among the young people in white gowns working on samples, but she may soon be out of a job. Her position is grant-funded. She uses her salary to support her family and fund her studies in a country where youth unemployment hovers around 46 per cent. 'It's very sad and devastating, honestly,' she said of the U.S. cuts and overall uncertainty. 'We'll also miss out collaborating with other scientists across the continent.' Professor Abdullah Ely leads the team of researchers. He said the work had promising results indicating that the vaccines were producing an immune response. But now that momentum, he said, has 'all kind of had to come to a halt.' The BRILLIANT program is scrambling to find money to save the project. The purchase of key equipment has stopped. South Africa's health department says about 100 researchers for that program and others related to HIV have been laid off. Funding for postdoctoral students involved in experiments for the projects is at risk. South Africa's government has estimated that universities and science councils could lose about $107 million in U.S. research funding over the next five years due to the aid cuts, which affect not only work on HIV but also tuberculosis — another disease with a high number of cases in the country. Less money, and less data on what's affected South Africa's government has said it will be very difficult to find funding to replace the U.S. support. And now the number of HIV infections will grow. Medication is more difficult to obtain. At least 8,000 health workers in South Africa's HIV program have already been laid off, the government has said. Also gone are the data collectors who tracked patients and their care, as well as HIV counselors who could reach vulnerable patients in rural communities. For researchers, Universities South Africa, an umbrella body, has applied to the national treasury for over $110 million for projects at some of the largest schools. During a visit to South Africa in June, UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima was well aware of the stakes, and the lives at risk, as research and health care struggle in South Africa and across Africa at large. Other countries that were highly dependent on U.S. funding including Zambia, Nigeria, Burundi and Ivory Coast are already increasing their own resources, she said. 'But let's be clear, what they are putting down will not be funding in the same way that the American resources were funding,' Byanyima said. Associated Press writer Michelle Gumede in Johannesburg contributed to this report. The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at Mogomotsi Magome, The Associated Press
