Gross Research in the News
Below are a few selected online articles and videos that report about our weird experiments...
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Monkeys keep their food clean, sort of"We all have our standards. For humans, it’s the five-second rule. For macaques, it’s “think twice before eating food off a pile of poop.” The monkeys have several ways of keeping their food (sort of) clean. And the most fastidious macaques, it seems, are rewarded with fewer parasites."
What grosses out a chimpanzee?"In 2015, researchers from Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute went to the Primate Center at the 'Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville' (CIRMF) in Gabon to test whether chimpanzees are grossed out by some of the same things as humans, particularly those that are sources of infectious disease."
Weird chimp experiments reveal their bizarre poop eating etiquette"Chimpanzees famously fling their own poop and have no problem picking seeds out of it, but scientists say our primate cousins may be a bit more hesitant about touching feces that isn’t their own. It may sound kind of obvious that they would be grossed out by a stranger’s poop, but disgust of another chimp’s biological goods hadn’t been observed in these animals before."
Scientists prank monkeys with fake poop for real research"Proving that there really is a job for everyone, scientists at Kyoto University have pranked monkeys with plastic made to look like poop, and got a paper published out of it [...]"
A sense of disgust in bonobos?"These primates, known for their liberal attitudes toward sex, are also generally open-minded when it comes to new foods -- as long as the grub is clean."
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In the dirt: do primates yuck?"Imagine living in an environment where pathogens and infectious diseases are everywhere. No hand sanitizer, no water purification tablets, no insect repellent, and potentially lots of infected mates. This is the scenario that most wild, social animals – including primates – have to cope with."
Is disgust a universal emotion?"She bought replicas of poop online from Barcelona, Spain, which has a scatological fixation. “When I arrived in Gabon, I had two bags – including one full of fake poops,” recalls Sarabian. “At the customs, they were stopping everyone to check the bags and I was like ‘oh nooo, what am I gonna say?’ I thought I may have to bribe someone for getting fake poops in the country, but by the time my turn came, they were checking one bag [per passenger] and luckily they chose the other bag.” Sarabian blogs about her fieldwork here."
Chimps will happily eat their own poop, but touching moist things grosses
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