For the first time, contagious yawning has now also been found in a species that roams its territory mostly in solitude and is less frequently engaged in social interactions: the orangutan. Publication in Nature Scientific Reports by an international group of scientists with lead-author Evy van Berlo, psychologist at Leiden University.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are sister species that diverged around 1.8 million years ago as the Congo River formed a geographic boundary and they evolved in separate environments. Now, a whole-genome comparison of bonobos and chimpanzees reveals the gene pathways associated with the striking differences between the two species' diets, sociality and sexual behaviors.

With only 1% difference, the human and chimpanzee protein-coding genomes are remarkably similar. Understanding the biological features that make us human is part of a fascinating and intensely debated line of research. Researchers at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the University of Lausanne have developed a new approach to pinpoint, for the first time, adaptive human-specific changes in the way genes are regulated in the brain. These results open new perspectives in the study of […]

By four months of age the cognitive performance of ravens in experimental tasks testing their understanding of the physical world and how they interact with other ravens may be similar to those of adult great apes, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Pandemics will emerge more often, kill more people than COVID-19 and do even more damage to the world economy unless urgent steps are taken to address risk drivers such as deforestation, warns a major new report on biodiversity and pandemics.