#sci comm

IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE NO LESS

This is from a study just published a few days ago by Lepeco et al. (2025).

Hell ants (subfamily: Haidomyrmecinae) are super cool ants that possessed vertically closing jaws.

Below is a model of the ant's body/anatomy generated via micro-computed tomography

Vulcanidris cratensis is a new species discovered in Brazil. It dates back to the lower Cretaceous, and at the time of writing, is now the oldest known ant to science!

Somewhere on the middle of the island continent of Laramidia 67 million years ago, A female Tyrannosaurus uses her elbows to slowly lift herself off the ground from a resting position.

This is a pet peeve of mine in sci comm ESPECIALLY because many well respected scientific institutions are insistent about apes and monkeys being separate things, despite how it's been established for nearly a century that apes are just a specific kind of monkey.

Nearly every zoo I've visited that houses apes has a sign somewhere like the one below that explains the supposed distinction between the two groups, focusing on anatomy instead of phylogeny.

(Every time I see a graphic like this I age ten years) Movies even do this, especially when they want to sound credible. Take this scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes:

This guy Franklin is presented as the authority on apes in this scene, and he treats James Franco calling a chimpanzee a monkey like it's insulting.

But when you actually look at a primate family tree, you can see that apes are on the same branch as Old World monkeys, while New World monkeys branched off much earlier.

(I'm assuming bushbabies are included as "lorises" here?)

To put it simply, that means you and I are more closely related to a baboon than a baboon is to a capuchin.

Either the definition of monkey includes apes OR we can keep using an anatomical definition and Barbary macaques get to be an ape because they're tailless.

"I've got no tails on me!"

SO

Why did all this happen? Why did we start insisting apes are monkeys, especially considering the two words were pretty much interchangeable for centuries? Well I've got one word for ya...

This the attitude that puts humans on a pedestal over other life on Earth. That there are intrinsically important features of humanity, and other living things are simply stepping stones in that direction.

At the dawn of evolutionary study, anthropocentrism was enforced by using a model called evolutionary grades. And boy howdy do I hate evolutionary grades.

Basically, a grade is a way of defining a group of animals by using anatomical "complexity". It's the idea that evolution has milestones of importance that, once reached, makes an organism into a new kind of thing. You can almost think of it like evolutionary levels. An animal "levels up" once it gains a certain trait deemed "complex".

You can probably see the issue here; that complexity is an ephemeral idea defined through subjectivity, rather than based off anything truly observable. What makes walking on 2 legs more complex than walking on four? How are tails less complex than no tails? "Complexity" in this context is unmeasurable, therefore it is unscientific. That's why evolutionary grades suck and I never want to look at one.

For primates, this meant once some of them lost their tails, grew bigger brains, and started brachiating instead of leaping, they simply "leveled up" and became apes. Despite the early recognition that apes were simply a branch of the Old World monkey family tree (1785!), the idea of grades took precedent over the phylogenetic link.

In the early years of primatology, humans were even seen as a grade "above" apes, related but separated by our upright stance and supposed far greater intelligence (this was before other apes were recognized tool users).

It wasn't until the goddamn 1970s that it was recognized all great apes should be included in the clade Hominidae alongside humanity. This was a major shift in thinking, and required not just science, but the public, to recognize just how close we are to other living species. It seems like this change has, thankfully, happened and most institutions and science respecting folks have accepted this fact. Those who don't accept it tend to have a lot more issues with science than only accepting humans as apes.

And now, we come to the current problem. Why is there a persistent idea that monkeys and apes are separate?

I want to make it clear I don't believe there was a conscious movement at play here. I think there's a lot of things going on, but there isn't some anti-monkey lobby that is hiding the truth. I think the problem is more complicated and deals with how human brains and human culture often struggle to do too many changes at once.

Now, I haven't seen any studies on this topic, so everything I say going forward is based on my own experience of how people react to learning apes (and therefore, humans) are monkeys.

First off, there is a lot of mental rearranging you have to do to accept humans as monkeys. First you, gotta accept humans as apes, then you have to stop thinking in grades and look at the family tree. Then you have to accept that apes are on the Old World monkey branch, separate from the New World monkeys.

That's a lot of steps, and I've seen science-minded zoo educators struggle with that much mental rearranging. And even while they accept this to an extent, they often find it even harder to communicate these ideas to the public.

I think this is a big reason why zoos and museums often push this idea the hardest. Convincing the public humans are apes is already a challenge, teaching them that all apes are monkeys at the same time might seem impossible.

I believe the other big reason people cling to the "apes-aren't-monkeys" idea is that it still allows for that extra bit of comforting anthropocentrism. Think of it this way; anthropocentrism puts humans on a pedestal. When you learn that humans are apes, you can either remove the pedestal and place humans with other animals, OR, you can place the apes up on the pedestal with humanity. For those that have an anthropocentric worldview, it can actually be easier to "uplift" the apes than ditch the pedestal.

Too make things worse, monkeys are such a symbol of a "primitive" animal nature that many can't accept raising them to the "level" of humanity, but removing the pedestal altogether is equally painful. So they hold tight to an outdated idea despite all the evidence. This is why there's often offense taken when an ape is called a monkey. It's tantamount to someone calling you a monkey, and that's too much of a challenge to anthropocentrism.

Personally, I think recognizing myself as a monkey is wonderful. Non-ape monkeys are as "complex" as any ape. They make tools, they have dynamic social groups, they're adapted to a wide range of environments, AND they have the best hair of all primates.

I think we should be honored to be considered one of them.

made for wikipedia

@spider-xan I wanted to elaborate a little more on this but my reply busted the character limit.

I was born into and raised in a family of education and outreach workers during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, and hold a diploma in biomedical sciences and did some bioethics training regarding clinical studies so can elaborate on the diseases thing and racism a little.

The majority of research and pharmaceutical development driven by the global north is for-profit, meaning that funding and research is focused on diseases that are endemic to populations in the global north and thus have “reasonable profit returns”; increasingly, these are diseases associated with lifestyle (e.g. cardiovascular disease, hypertension from UPF dietary staples) and diseases of age like dementia, Alzheimer’s etc). The only reason that neglected tropical diseases (Guinea worm, leishmaniasis, Chagas' disease, yaws, dengue, West Nile virus) are neglected and communicable diseases like TB are are endemic to populations in the global south is because it benefits the medical industrial complex of the global north to invest in treating these diseases, which often require several months of multidrug therapy and/or aggressive short term intervention and supportive care rather than spending time and money to eradicate them.

Also, a population reliant on medical aid because of drug patents, brain drain, lack of access to precursor chemicals needed in pharmaceutical manufacturing etc., is a population that is easier to exploit. A good example is what’s currently happening with PEPFAR in Malawi and Tanzania.

This is the 11th annual International Polychaete Day, a day that celebrates the diversity of these incredible segmented worms, and also the people who study them, including Dr Kristian Fauchald who was born July 1st and dedicated sixty years of her life to the study of polychaetes.

I've included shots of some of my favorite local polychaete finds:

Top Left: Tomopteris pacifica, the gossamer worm, a midwater worm that spends its whole life swimming. These worms have a beautiful yellow bioluminescence. Top right: Serpula columbiana, the red trumpet calcareous tube worm, a filter feeder that puts on a fabulous display but that can rapidly retract into its tube to avoid predators.

A Look Inside a Brain Cancer Cell

This isn't just a pretty picture; it's a map of how a brain cancer cell thrives.

The luminous cyan web is the actin cytoskeleton. It's the cell's scaffolding and its engine, constantly remodeling to push the cell forward through the brain's delicate tissue.

The fiery red network is the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Think of it as the cell's intensive production and logistics hub, synthesizing proteins and managing the intense stress of rapid, chaotic growth.

I've had a wonderful exercise in class today doing analytical imaging of specimens. Here's some pieces of taxidermy (and a rock) photographed under UV (ultra-violet) lighting - a blacklight.

First up: a peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Using a hand-held UV lamp first, my partner and I saw the legs, face and underside of the wings fluorescing. Unfortunately our photo setup did not allow us to showcase the underside of the wings, but that could have been attempted with a different plan - and would have, if we were only photographing the one specimen. I do not believe the specimen has been painted, but that's a commonly used trick in bird taxidermy, as skin tends to lose its colour as it dries. The fluorescence can also potentially stem from pesticides or other chemicals used in conservation, such as glue (the flourescence under the wing is most certainly glue), but it would require further testing to say for certain.

Next up: the Atlantic wolffish (Anarhichas lupus). This is quite frankly a beautiful mount of the fish! It's lost its colour over the years, but the UV-flourescence completely distracts from that fact. Our lecturer suspects it may be coated in a form of tree sap-based varnish, since this tends to flouresce blue-green as it ages. If you look closely on these images, you can see metal tacks holding open the fins, and ventrally along the tail you can see a seam for closing the skin around the form.

Finally: calcite. And what a finale it is! UV fluorescence is a common ID-trick for minerals as some shine really brilliantly, and this chunk of rock really shows how that works. In daylight (this photo is lit only from one side, to better show the surface texture) the mineral is a plain white colour, but the UV-lighting brings out a red and purple shine from deep inside it. We were joking that it looks like a video game asset as we set up the photo! I've used UV for geological specimens before, but only in microscope slides.