Album di Famiglia

Ci risiamo. Ogni tanto, una equipe di studiosi, avanza l’ipotesi che il nostro album di famiglia, se lo estendessimo oltre le solite tro o quattro generazioni, dovrebbe includere, ai primordi, qualche primate.

Stavolta è il turno degli scimpanzè.

Secondo il Planck Institut di Leipzig, in Germania, questi simpatici animali proverebbero gli stessi sentimenti di lutto e dolore alla morte di un loro parente.

Inoltre gli scimpanzè muoverebbero la testa con le stesse intenzioni di noi umani (per dire un “no” in certi casi ed in altri un “sì”).

Certo la teoria dell’evoluzione è molto affascinante.

Come credente riesco a conciliarla anche con la creazione divina.

Però un dubbio mi rimane: ma perchè loro son rimasti primati e noi li abbiamo superati di milioni d’anni nella scala evolutiva?

Per saperne di più:

“Last week scientists reported how chimps in a Scottish zoo grieved after the death of an elderly ape, and even moved their bedding out of the enclosure where she died. 

Christel Schneider, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, in Germany, spotted the head-shaking after studying videos of great apes such as chimps and bonobos – pygmy chimpanzees – at six European zoos.

‘In bonobos, our observations are the first reported use of preventive head-shaking,’ she told the BBC.

The sequence with Ulindi and Luiza was captured at Leipzig Zoo.

 Great apes such as bonobos are known to nod, bow and shake their heads while communicating.

Bonobos also shake their heads to encourage other apes to play with them.

But the study, published in the journal Primates, is the first to record an ape shaking its head to mean ‘no’.

The German researchers saw four different bonobos shaking their heads in this way on 13 different occasions.

Bonobos are closely related to common chimpanzees and are native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Along with common chimps, they are the closest relatives to humans in the animal world. The researchers believe the apes developed head shakes to help them prevent physical conflicts.

The discovery may also shed light on human head-shaking.

‘If future research can confirm the use of preventive head-shaking in our closest living relatives, the bonobos and chimpanzees, then this would raise the question of whether these gestures reflect a primitive precursor of the human “no” head-shake,’ said Miss Schneider.

However, head-shaking is unlikely to be hard-wired in human brains.

In some parts of the world, such as Bulgaria, a shake of the head can mean yes, she said.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1273279/Aping-Chimps-shake-heads-mean-just-like-humans.html#ixzz0n9y7zfnT