Nicholas Parsons taking the time to visit Living Links between his shows and recording ‘Just a Minute’ at the Festival Fringe. Here he takes his place in My Primate Family Tree with Professor Andy Whiten, Scientific Director of the Centre.
Month: August 2012
66.6666666…% of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd visit Living Links.
Fresh from their recent run at the Edinburgh Fringe ‘Festival of the Spoken Nerd’ musical comedian Helen Arney and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker take time out to visit Living Links and pose in our ‘Primate Family Tree’ mural. We also twisted their arms to record something suitable for the young audience that gathered!
See Helen in ‘Voice of an Angle’ at the Underbelly, Edinburgh now until 26th August.
Researchers in Training Week Two
Edinburgh Zoo’s Science Summer School students have been working at Living Links again. Our second group of science summer school students decided to study how the capuchins were using the magnificent new Scots pine trees recently supplied by the Forestry Commission. These trees are much taller than the original trees in the enclosure.
After some dedicated data collection and analysis, the students concluded that the capuchins used the original trees more. They believed this to be so due to the number of horizontal branches on the old trees in comparison to the new ones – something that will change when the installation is completed by the new horizontal sections. However, there are many other possible reasons, such as the position of the trees, and the old habits of the monkeys! The monkeys certainly have more choice and a larger volume to explore now!
The trees going in and the monkeys first experience of them:
Researchers in Training
From July 30th to August 10th RZSS Edinburgh Zoo runs a Science Summer School for teenagers aged 15-16yrs old. It is a week long introductory course into zoo and wildlife sciences. This year we have students studying the behaviour of our East group of Capuchins.
The students from the first week did focal studies on Kato’s (periphery male) and Popeye’s (alpha male) interactions with the rest of the monkeys.
Here are their results,
As expected Popeye had many interactions whereas Kato the periphery male did not, however in the future we would hope that Kato would interact more with the rest of the monkeys as he is a very important individual in the captive breeding programme.
To find out more about Science Summer School, watch the video below
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