Chimpanzee
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Google partners with Jane Goodall to capture Tanzania's chimp heaven
Google has joined forces with the Jane Goodall Institute to bring Street Views of Gombe National Park and its numerous chimpanzees. Using portable Trekkers, Google's intrepid photogs captured thousands of 360-degree images in the jungles where Goodall first started her research. Some of the Institute's favorite highlights include a chimp called "Google" swinging on a vine (above), the slopes of Gombe, a group of chimpanzees fishing for termites and the interior of Jane's house. To head down the trails or up into the tree canopies yourself, hit the source -- there's a monkey around every corner.
Social networks key to understanding chimpanzee civil war
A long-standing mystery about a chimpanzee civil war might have finally been solved, thanks to social networking. Back in 1971, a group of chimpanzees in Tanzaina's Gombe Stream national park suddenly split into two factions and spent the next four years trying to wipe each other out. Researcher Jane Goodall, who has monitored activity in the park for the last 50 years was at a loss to work out what had caused the violent shift in the group's dynamic. Now, however, Joseph Feldblum at Duke University in North Carolina analyzed the data as if it was a social network, identifying which members of the group spent time with other and looking at the connections.
The Daily Grind: Do you think MMOs should be harder?
For every person I see cheering the rise of accessible games, I see another lamenting the "dumbing down" of MMOs. And while I've always liked a good challenge, it seems to me that "challenge" is usually conflated with "tedium" -- most MMO "challenges" test my patience, not my skill. I can understand not wanting a game to be a faceroll, but I'm also glad that we don't have to be professional e-sport champs to participate in this hobby. Still, there's plenty of room between those two extremes for upping the difficulty of combat and crafting without resurrecting obnoxious mechanics like corpse runs and experience loss. What do you think -- should MMOs be harder? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Chimpanzee plays Ms. Pac-Man, gets eaten by ghost
There are a plethora of reasons for teaching a banana-munching mammal how to play a classic game such as Ms. Pac-Man. A plethora. The prime one, of course, being that it's an excellent and completely unpredictable strategy in obtaining complete world domination. The world's defences would have little choice but to collapse in the face of an army of chimpanzees highly skilled at traversing mazes, collecting various fruits and evading ghosts. Evil dictators and mad scientists would be well advised to watch the YouTube clip (embedded after the break) and see exactly how it's done.Another reason could be to provide commentary on the game's depth (even a chimp can play it!), the chimp's intelligence (he pwn3d my high score!) or the sheer irritation caused by a backseat gamer fingering your screen and telling you which pellet to go after. Whatever the reason, we're glad someone did it. Next week: Hedgehog plays Sonic the Hedgehog, researcher loses eye.[Thanks Franco!]
