YouTube - Motorcycle ride for backseat dog

YouTube - Motorcycle ride for backseat dog

Monkeys at the San Diego Zoo (in HD)

Popi one of three movie stars living at the Great Ape Trust

Popi, who starred opposite Clint Eastwood in a blockbuster 1980 movie and headlined a Las Vegas floor show, is the third retired entertainment orangutan to move to Great Ape Trust.

Popi packs a Joe Louis Punch in the Movie.

Kanzi is the adopted son of Matata and is very famous

Great Ape Trust is home to six bonobos, including the world-famous Kanzi, whose spontaneous lexigram utterances as an infant opened new frontiers in the study of ape language.

Why save a small group of chimpanzees in Rwanda?

A second chimpanzee birth in a year encourages Great Ape Trust scientists and conservationists and gives added meaning to Rwanda's 'Forest of Hope"






By Dr. Ben Beck
Director of Conservation
Great Ape Trust

"So what?" I was asked. "Why does Great Ape Trust invest all of this time and money in 15 chimpanzees living in a tiny patch of forest, surrounded by 350,000 poor people?"

True, we are investing a lot of resources in studying and saving 15 chimpanzees and 3,000 acres of forest. But how much would be too much? Chimpanzees are the animals most similar to humans and we know that they have very human-like emotions and thinking. The thought of even one of these majestic and wonderful apes starving to death or being killed is simply not acceptable to us at Great Ape Trust. Every ape life has value!

Certainly, the loss of the Gishwati forest and its chimpanzees would not cause the immediate extinction of chimpanzees as a species. But the number of wild chimpanzees in Africa has decreased by 90 percent since 1900. These 15 chimpanzees are the remnants of hundreds that occupied Gishwati only 40 years ago. Only a century or two ago Gishwati was a part of a vast north-south forest that was home to thousands of chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants and other wonderful animals and plants.

We feel obligated to draw the line and insist on no further loss, no matter how small. In fact, we feel obligated to reverse the trend and recover biodiversity that we have already lost. Gishwati is a stepping stone, critically positioned for reconnecting and restoring this vast and unique forest. Since we began our work, the chimpanzee population has increased by 15 percent and the forest by 67 percent, even as we have energized economic and social benefits for local people.

We are blending the best established scientific and conservation strategies with new innovative approaches to succeed in the “do-or-die” environment of Gishwati. We are a model for conservation within the model of economic and political rebirth that is Rwanda, and we are unique among ape conservation projects in enjoying the personal support of a nation’s president, in this case H.E. President Paul Kagame.

We think Gishwati is the place to draw the line, and we think that dispassionate doubts based on “priorities” and “cost-benefits analyses” are not enough to defeat the forces that would rob our children of wild apes and the benefits and wonders of the natural world. If we can save Gishwati, we can save apes everywhere! Tell us what you think. Do you want to help? Please comment.

Gishwati Field Station

Elikya is a young bonobo.

She has a great smile and seizes every opportunity to show it off.

Great Smile

Great Ape Trust

Elikya is a young female adult bonobo living at Great Ape Trust. Elikya, who was born June 28, 1997, likes to be the center of activity and has been known to cause trouble to get attention. She has a great smile and seizes every opportunity to show it off.

 Mischievous

Coy

Matata

She is a very smart girl.

Great Ape Trust 

Matata, one of the last wild-born bonobos to enter the United States, is the undisputed matriarch of the Great Ape Trust bonobos. Matata played a pivotal role in the language research at Great Ape Trust. 

During her own instruction in the 1970s, her 9-month-old adopted son Kanzi accompanied her. Though trials with Matata were unsuccessful, Kanzi's spontaneous lexigram utterances provided the breakthrough discovery that some apes, like humans, acquire language by being exposed to it in infancy.

Pensive

Resting

Great Ape Trust Questions and Bonobo Pictures

Kanzi star pupil

What is Great Ape Trust?
Great Ape Trust, is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of six bonobos and six orangutans involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities. Great Ape Trust is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.

Matata is Kanzi's Mom

Where is The Trust located?
Great Ape Trust is located on the site of a former sand quarry and is approximately five miles southeast of downtown Des Moines. The Trust is adjacent and south of the Des Moines River, north of Army Post Road, west of the Highway 65/69 beltway and east of Easter Lake. The bonobo and orangutan homes are on a 230-acre campus that includes woodlands, wetland and a 30-acre lake. Great Ape Trust received a generous land transfer from the City of Des Moines and Mid-American Energy.

Great Ape Trust founder Ted Townsend is a native Iowan who was captivated by the groundbreaking language research being conducted with bonobos at the Language Research Center at Georgia State University. Townsend envisioned a unique facility in Des Moines dedicated to studying and preserving great apes with local, national, and global influence.


How do the apes cope with Iowa’s weather?
There are a number of excellent great ape facilities located in climates that have four distinct seasons and Great Ape Trust clearly falls into that category. In addition to expansive, naturalistic outdoor areas, Great Ape Trust has designed spacious indoor facilities that maintain warmth in the winter months and remain cool in the summer months to accommodate the needs and comfort of our great ape residents.

Elikya

Can the public visit Great Ape Trust?
Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility not a public attraction. In the past, we accommodated 1,500 – 2,000 visitors a year. We expect to accommodate similar number of guests in the years to come. However, as we move forward we will include fewer members of the general public and more students, scholars and scientific colleagues. It should also be noted that potential funding agencies that might support our scientific studies discourage public visitation at research institutions.

Does The Trust have employment, volunteer and internship opportunities?
As a scientific research facility studying ape language, there are very limited employment, and even fewer, volunteer opportunities. The research and ape caretaking responsibilities are quite specific and most often require years of prior experience.

Maisha is a young male.

Great Ape Trust

The NPR story about Orangutan metabolism mentions the Great Ape Trust so I visited the organizations official website.

"Herman Pontzer, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, wanted to know exactly how much energy the average orangutan uses. To find out, he traveled to the

Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, where several captive orangutans served as test subjects."
http://www.greatapetrust.org/

Kanzi Studying

Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence. Announced in 2002 and receiving its first ape residents in 2004, Great Ape Trust is home to a colony of six bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities, and two orangutans.

Great Ape Trust is also committed to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats through a project we direct in Rwanda called the Gishwati Area Conservation Program.


“When I look into the eyes of an ape, I see the universe. I see a magnificence in nature and in beings that I can’t see any other way. One can begin to sense there is a greatness beyond the ape that we need to work hard to understand."


Dr. Duane M. Rumbaugh Scientist Emeritus, Great Ape Trust


Message From The Founder


What is the definition of a human being? How does a brain create a mind? What is language, how did it evolve, and is it uniquely human? How do children acquire language? How can enlightened rearing environments enhance learning? Great Ape Trust pursues insights to these profound questions through voluntary, non-invasive collaborations with apes.

Specifically, science at Great Ape Trust seeks to understand the origins and future of culture, language, tools, and intelligence. Along with many respected scientists from multiple disciplines, with a range of beliefs, opinions, and methodologies, The Trust blends sanctuary, research, and education into an institution of courage, vision, and longitudinal, cross-generational inquiry.

Fully committed to the scientific method, published results and peer review, building on a corpus of research begun at Georgia State’s Language Research Center, and utilizing the most advanced ape facilities on Earth, Great Ape Trust scientists explore the nebulous boundary between human and not-quite human. The information emerging from this work has the potential to revolutionize early-childhood education, reawaken humanity’s respect for the other life forms with whom we share this planet, and save from extinction our closest living relatives.

Like all leading edge research, some skepticism and even controversy are to be expected. When expressed in professional, thoughtful, unemotional fashion, we welcome the dialogue as a valuable part of the knowledge process. For those who have read the literature and met these apes, their potential to greatly contribute to human understanding is beyond question. Where the research will lead remains to be seen, but I am honored to help support their journey.

Ted Townsend
Founder Great Ape Trust

Orangutans Aren't Lazy, Just Evolved To Hang Around

by GEOFFREY BRUMFIEL
August 3, 2010

Orangutans are known as nimble navigators of the trees, but a new study shows the animals may also be
among the most energy-efficient animals in the world.

Scientists have found that orangutans use less energy, pound-for-pound than any mammal ever studied,
except for the tree sloth. The surprise finding shows how orangutans have evolved to survive in their
native habitat, the forests of Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia.

Orangutans are lanky apes, best known for their bright orange fur. They spend most of their lives living
high up in the forest canopy and feed mainly off of fruit. They are also endangered as a result of
deforestation by humans.

You and I sitting in front of our computers use more energy each day than these orangutans that are
walking around, and climbing around and socializing around their big enclosures.

- Herman Pontzer, Anthropologist, Washington University in St. Louis

Field scientists have known for a long time that orangutans are languid creatures. "Orangutans are major
slow-mos, any way you look at it," Anne Russon, a researcher at York University in Toronto, wrote in an
e-mail from the forests of Borneo. The animals can spend 12 hours a day sleeping and nap for several
hours more.

Herman Pontzer, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, wanted to know exactly how much
energy the average orangutan uses. To find out, he traveled to the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa,
where several captive orangutans served as test subjects. Pontzer gave the orangutans water with a
specific ratio of different oxygen and hydrogen isotopes. The body uses hydrogen and oxygen differently,
and so measuring how the ratio changes over time gives a precise estimate of how much energy an animal
uses.

To follow the change, Pontzer's team needed urine samples from the orangutans. "We walked around with
some little paper Dixie cups and just held them under the ape and asked them if they would pee in the cup
for us," says Rob Shumaker, vice president for life sciences at the Indianapolis Zoo and an author on the
study. Shumaker had worked with the orangutans for years already and says that the animals were happy to
provide the samples.

What the team found "was so surprising that we actually went back to make sure that we hadn't done
something wrong," Pontzer says. The largest male orangutan weighed over 250 pounds but consumed just
2,000 calories a day — that's 20 percent less than a typical human male.


"You and I sitting in front of our computers use more energy each day than these orangutans that are
walking around, and climbing around and socializing around their big enclosures," Pontzer says.
So what's going on?

"We think it's something deep in their physiology that the metabolic processes that are used to fuel
their energy needs are just basically turned down," he says. In the wild, orangutans live mainly off
fruit. But in the forests they call home, fruit can be hard to come by for several months of the year.
Those who can survive on the least the longest stand a better chance of reproducing.

"Orangutans are an example of one evolutionary strategy for dealing with crappy habitat," says Russon,
who was not involved with the work. She says the new study, which is published in this week's issue of
the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can help us learn more about how humans and
other apes, like chimpanzees, evolved. Pontzer agrees. He's now working with hunter-gatherer societies to
gauge their caloric needs, in the hopes of comparing it to orangutans and other apes.

 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128937520&sc=nl&cc=sh-20100807



Richard Zimmerman (redapes) wrote:
Orangutans are great big shaggy Buddhas sitting calmly in the trees.

They are also critically endangered because of rapid deforestation and the expansion of palm oil
plantations into their rainforest home. If nothing is done to protect them, these amazing creatures will
be extinct in the wild in a few years.

Visit the Orangutan Outreach website to learn more: http://redapes.org

Orangutan Outreach
Reach out and save the orangutans!
Adopt an orangutan today!

Bonnie the Whistling Oranguatang

Whistling Orangutan Impresses Zoo Researchers

by ARI SHAPIRO

At the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., Bonnie the orangutan has been amazing researchers with her
special talent: Bonnie knows how to whistle.

Those notes are a symphony to the ears of primate researchers who believe her musical abilities could
lead to a greater understanding of how human speech evolved.

"I think what makes it significant is that you can train apes to whistle, but no one trained her to do
it. She decided to do it on her own," says Erin Stromberg, who works in the National Zoo's Great Ape
house and helps care for the orangutans.

Stromberg helped publish a recent paper on Bonnie's talents. Researchers believe Bonnie was trying to
imitate the sounds of zookeepers who whistle while they work. Stromberg says Bonnie's ability to copy
that sound is powerful evidence that apes can re-create the sounds of other species.

"So what's significant about Bonnie learning to whistle is not that she's able to do it, it's that she
saw someone else do it and just picked it up," Stromberg says.

Bonnie is 32 years old, with dark orange hair and a big round belly, and weighs in at a svelte 140
pounds. She lives in a concrete enclosure with plenty of things to climb up and swing down. A large
window allows spectators to look in, and Bonnie to look right back at them.

Bonnie has been mimicking her zookeepers' movements for years. She likes to sweep the floors and wash the
windows, although she uses dirty rags to do it.

When she started whistling, researchers decided to test her gift for mimicking sounds. They asked
Stromberg to whistle basic patterns to see whether Bonnie could copy them. It turned out to be easier for
the ape than for the human — Stromberg isn't a great whistler — so the researchers kept it simple.

"I would give a long whistle, and would she then in turn imitate me? Or if I do a short whistle, would
she do a short whistle? And she would," Stromberg says. "She was pretty good at following what I was
doing. I think what makes it significant is that she decided to do it on her own. Something made her want
to whistle, or at least try it out. And so to me, she was challenging herself to do something else."

Jessie Cohen/NZP

Bonnie, an orangutan at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., has learned how to whistle, a feat zookeepers say she learned by being around humans.

Celebrity Pet Photographer Lori A. Cheung and Bernie, the Bassador