A Planet Without Apes?

[amborin]

Fearing A Planet Without Apes

By JOHN C. MITANI

Published: August 20, 2011

Ann Arbor, Mich


.......roughly seven million years ago, apes really did rule the planet. As many as 40 kinds roamed Eurasia and Africa between 10 and 25 million years ago. Only five types remain. Two live in Asia, the gibbon and orangutan; another three, the chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla, dwell in Africa. All five are endangered, several critically so. All may face extinction.
A decade ago, Congress stepped forward with a relatively cheap but vitally important effort to protect these apes through innovative conservation programs in Africa and Asia that combined taxpayer dollars with private money. But attempts to reauthorize the Great Apes Conservation Fund have gotten stuck in Congress and may become a victim of the larger debate over the national debt.

snip

But as the human population expands, ape numbers continue to dwindle. In previous versions of the “Planet of the Apes” films, greed and consumption by humanlike apes threatened the world. In reality, it is these all-too-human traits that imperil apes.

Habitat destruction because of human activity, including logging, oil exploration and subsistence farming, is the biggest concern. Hunting is another major problem, especially in West and Central Africa, where a thriving “bush meat” trade severely threatens African apes. Poachers are now entering once-impenetrable forests on roads built for loggers and miners. Recently, periodic outbreaks of deadly diseases that can infect humans and apes, like Ebola, have begun to ravage populations of chimpanzees and gorillas.

The Great Apes Conservation Act, enacted in 2000, authorized the spending of $5 million annually over five years to help protect apes in the wild. The act was re-authorized in 2005 for another five years. The program matches public with private dollars to maximize the impact. Since 2006, for example, $21 million in federal dollars spent by the Great Ape Conservation Fund generated an additional $25 million in private grants and support from other governments.
The federal money may not sound like much in this era of “big science.” But those dollars have gone a long way to protect apes in countries that are desperately poor and politically volatile. The money pays for protecting habitat, battling poachers and educating local populations about the importance of these apes.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/fearing-a-planet-without-apes.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

[mike_c]

1. one of the great apes is currently in no imminent danger of extinction....

The author of this piece shows pretty profound ignorance of primate classification. There are two families of apes:

1. Hylobatidae contains the gibbons (four genera and sixteen species, including the lar and the siamang). They are the lesser apes.

2. Hominidae are the orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans. These are the great apes. One of those is no immediate danger of extinction.

So while there are indeed five groups of great apes, they don't include the gibbons at all and they do include humans, which the article omits.

on edit-- this is not meant to detract from the seriousness of the article's main thesis, that the wild apes are critically endangered. I just hate to see humans misclassified as somehow "not apes."

[amborin]

2. thnx for the info; yet all but one (not including humans) is in danger of extinction.......

[Piltdown13]

4. Considering that the author is a primatologist...

I'm going to go with "dumbing down for the non-specialist audience" rather than profound ignorance. (And I'd guess that the mention of gibbons might have been intended to bring some attention to them, even though they're not "great" apes.)

It's also worth noting that there's quite a bit of debate still as to just how the apes should be classified below the superfamily level.

[mike_c]

5. probably right....

I was just going on the snippet in the OP, so I didn't pursue the author's name. I assumed it was a science reporter. Still, when an anthropologist omits humans from Hominidae it's kind of disconcerting!

As far as I'm aware, the debate you allude to does not extend to the phylogeny in question, only the nomenclature, i.e. whether to apply a cladist perspective which MUST include humans with the other apes or whether to allow paraphyletic classification of the apes solely to "separate" humans from them nomenclaturally, but not phylogenetically. Well, except among creationists, LOL.

[Piltdown13]

6. I agree, it's a bit disconcerting, but considering the point of the essay

I can see why he would have been OK with some editorially-imposed oversimplification. (Don't know Mitani personally; just speculating!)

As far as the taxonomic debate goes, there really isn't any debate over whether humans are apes, either in terms of phylogeny or nomenclature -- we've been placed within superfamily Hominoidea (the apes, broadly defined) for many decades. And the phylogeny *is* fairly broadly agreed upon (though of course with the cladist approaches there's always going to be error associated with any proposed cladogram, as well as disagreement over character weights, etc.). The problem does come in when we try to impose the classification system on the proposed cladograms and phylograms; the fact that we don't even have completely agreed-upon definitions for each level of classification doesn't help.

The debates I'm referring to actually have more to do with what should be done, taxonomically speaking, with the variability present among the African apes (pretty much everyone agrees that the gibbons are the outgroup within Hominoidea, and that the orangutan is an out-group within family Hominidae...assuming that they've given up on family Pongidae for the orangutan). The closer the relationship gets between genus Pan and genus Homo, the more nervous we paleoanthropologists get, because if chimps ever end up in our genus, basically *all* currently recognized hominin genera are toast. Even now, with the differentiation just below the tribe level, the classification throws up yet another source of doubt as to the validity of all the recently-identified fossil genera. (Sorry for the lengthy mini-rant; I just taught this stuff last spring, and it was some of the more frustrating material for the students -- lots of data, and basically no "right" answer.)

[mike_c]

7. I'm an entomological ecologist...

...so genus level revisions within Hominidae are WAY outside my expertise, which begins to fall apart at Vertebrata, LOL. :rofl:

I know this isn't the topic of this thread but you've gotten me thinking about the delicious consequences of merging Pan and Homo when I'm supposed to be finishing up my entomology and ecology syllabi for classes that begin, um, tomorrow morning! :spank:

Have a great fall semester!

[Piltdown13]

9. To be honest, the probable consequences of that delicious merger

rather give me indigestion. :rofl: Though I am a bit more of a lumper than a splitter (at least in that I suspect that at least a couple of the new hominin taxa announced in the past decade or so will eventually be sunk into older taxa) so I guess a Pan-Homo merger would at least be good from that standpoint!

Good luck w/the syllabi (lucky me, I've got another week), and have a great fall semester yourself! :hi:

[The Straight Story]

3. We are getting along fine without dinosaurs, why do we need apes?

:evilgrin: (trust me, this would appear on facebook seconds after I post the link.....)

[Odin2005]

8. Technically, as long as humans are around there will be apes because we ARE apes.