Word: chimp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chimps getting sick? To learn more, WHO researchers last month began studying chimpanzees in the remote Tai forest of the Ivory Coast, where the virus is known to have struck the animals twice since 1993. The scientists plan to scrutinize any changes in chimp behavior or eating patterns during the midyear rainy season, when the earlier outbreaks occurred. Already local workers are building platforms high in the forest canopy to trap creatures that might serve as a conduit between the infected animals and people...
...inducing scene (remember the cute old couples describing their romantic history in "When Harry Met Sally?") takes the camera into her past to show us what she's talking about. There it explores Gwyn's relationship with her then boyfriend Matt (Gil Bellows), a sensitive chimp researcher...
...what was above the neck, the skull confirms earlier constructs based on fragments: A. afarensis had an apelike face with a forward-thrusting jaw and an overhanging brow. The brain was no bigger than a chimp's, but it is now clear that Lucy and her kin were hardy enough to adapt to changing environments and thus to survive for some 9,000 centuries. And unless older hominid fossils are found -- always a possibility -- they will retain their distinction as the first evolutionary step that began to distinguish humans from other animals...
...final clue that Lucy was the missing link came when Johanson's team assembled fossil fragments, like a prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, into a fairly complete A. afarensis skull. It turned out to be much more apelike than human, with a forward-thrust jaw and chimp-size braincase. These short creatures (males were under five feet tall) were probably no smarter than the average ape. Their upright stance and bipedal locomotion, however, may have given them an advantage by freeing their hands, making them more efficient food gatherers...
Psychologists concoct some absurd situations to plumb the depths of chimp insight. For instance, one experiment has the apes observe two handlers deliver cups of juice. One accidentally spills juice on the floor; the other overturns the cup deliberately. When asked to choose a handler to deliver their next cup of juice, chimps prefer the clumsy person, suggesting that they are aware they are better off with a klutz than with a helper with evil intent. Again, in analogous experiments capuchin monkeys appear to be less shrewd. The animals will, pitiably, continue to put their trust in a human helper...