Kazakh zoo feeds red wine to monkeys

A zoologist in central Kazakhstan has confirmed what many people already suspected. Red wine is good for you. 

Red wine is medicinal says a zoologists in Kazakhstan who feeds it to her monkeys

By James Kilner, Almaty

(The Telegraph) It’s so good for you, in fact, that Svetlana Pilyuk, the chief animal specialist at Karaganda zoo in central Kazakhstan, feeds red wine to her monkeys to ward off winter colds.

"We give the monkeys wine because in the winter it protects them from respiratory infections," the AFP news agency quoted Ms Pilyuk as saying.

“You could say we douse them with wine to ward off flu.”

Karaganda lies in the middle of the vast Kazakh steppe and in winter it is one of the coldest places on earth with temperatures regularly hitting - 22F (- 30C). The monkeys, though, live inside where the temperature is closer to 80F (27C).

But not all the monkeys are allowed a daily ration of wine. Pregnant and baby monkeys are barred from wine, Ms Pilyuk said.

Still, most of the monkeys apparently appreciate their daily tot of red wine which Ms Pilyuk prepares by adding fruit, sugar and hot water.

"After all, primates are just like people. They enjoy drinking an alcoholic drink, they like it. Some of them even abuse it, coming up to the drinking trough several times," she said.

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Grandpa the spider monkey picks Speaker Newt Gingrich to win N.H. primary

Staten Island simian has no taste for front-runner Mitt Romney

By Barry Paddock / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

The psychic spider monkey at the Staten Island Zoo picked Newt Gingrich as the top banana in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, even though he’s languishing in the polls.

And the soothsaying simian completely rejected front-runner Mitt Romney in Monday’s electoral challenge set up by the Daily News...

The 40-year-old monkey has a good record when it comes to athletics: he picked the Super Bowl champions and six of nine U.S. Open tennis winners.

When he entered the rain-forest exhibit on Monday, he was confronted with six bananas nestled in hay, each one bearing the name of a GOP candidate.

Without hesitation, he lunged for the Gingrich banana, then grabbed the Jon Huntsman banana in his other hand.

But the former House Speaker held more sway than the ex-Utah governor over Grandpa. He gobbled up Newt first — then picked up the Rick Santorum banana.

Next went the Rick Perry banana before he finally developed an appetite for Huntsman.

Romney’s win at the Iowa caucus and his first-place finish in the latest polls didn’t mean a thing to Grandpa.

His banana was eaten by a female companion — just like the one for Ron Paul, who is running a distant second in the New Hampshire polls.

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Yousef the monkey checks out of zoo – and swings by hotel

By CLAIRE GARDNER

PERHAPS he had been hoping his final destination would be a land flowing with nuts and bananas.

So being tranquillised on the rooftop of an Edinburgh hotel was probably not the ending this escapee monkey was hoping for when he made his break for freedom...

Not content with scaling an electric fence and exploring the zoo grounds, the four-year-old male decided to indulge in a bit of monkey business.

Leaping from lamppost to lamppost, the monkey, whose breed experts say poses no threat to the public, also negotiated Saturday morning traffic along busy Corstorphine Road...

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Monkeys experience joy of giving, too, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Monkeys can experience the joy of giving in much the same way as humans do, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Tests in capuchin monkeys showed the animals consistently chose to share food with another monkey if given the option, suggesting they are capable of empathy, the team at the Yerkes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta found.

"They seem to care for the welfare of those they know," Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes, said in a statement.

His team tested eight female brown capuchin monkeys in pairs. They could choose a token that gave only themselves a treat or an option that rewarded both of them, called a prosocial option.

Either way, the first monkey got the same amount of food.

"Subjects systematically favored the prosocial option provided their partner was a) familiar, b) visible, and c) receiving rewards of equal value," De Waal's team wrote in their report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The fact the capuchins predominantly selected the prosocial option must mean seeing another monkey receive food is satisfying or rewarding for them," said de Waal...

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