Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above the terrified citizens, a government mission to board the craft is executed only to find the strange beings living in disease and desperation. A decision is made to save their lives and relocate the aliens to the city's outskirts. In that moment, what seemed to be a compassionate action develops into an outdoor prison reminiscent of the worst crimes of colonialism. Imprisoned, literally in the shanty town that is created for them and figuratively within a society that shuns them, the aliens are forced to accept a life of dependency where every action to better their conditions is treated as dangerous and subversive. Eventually, given no other choice, violent conflicts become inevitable. The city may be Johannesburg, South Africa, and the slum dwellers may look like a cross between a grasshopper and a lobster, but this is a story that has been played out in countless regions from the North American frontier, to Australia to Palestine and Johannesburg itself at various periods in human history. Colonialism knows no nationality and, as District 9 suggests, the desire for dignity and freedom is truly universal.

Human beings around the world honor their dead and the memories of their relatives. We have enacted special rituals related to the handling of human remains from the sacred funeral pyres of India to the professionalized aseptic embalming practices of the United States. Even more so, the treatment of the dead by outsiders is something that can generate outrage. Consider the media controversy when Al-Jazeera aired footage of coalition soldiers who had been killed by Iraqi militants or the hanging of the burned corpses of Blackwater mercenaries in Fallujah. Such treatment of "our" people by "their" people led to impassioned condemnations and outrage.

That was the sentiment expressed last night by Jisgung (Nika Collison) from the Ts'aahl Eagle Clan of the Haida Gwaii Nation of British Columbia. Jisgung presented a letter dated October 26, 1897 from anthropologist George Dorsey to his colleague Charles Newcomb (who was working for the American anthropologist Frans Boas):

Will you kindly send me more information about the totem pole you wish to dispose of -- also about any duplicate specimens you may be willing to sell. Have you any skulls or skeletons that you will sell or exchange?

The administrators announced the news yesterday at Schemes and Memes:

Nature Network turned three last month. During our early years, we've enjoyed thousands of illuminating, entertaining and sometimes controversial posts from our diverse pool of bloggers. Now, exciting new changes are afoot.

From tomorrow, Nature Network's blogs will have a high-profile new home on the Nature.com Blogs site, where they'll feature alongside Nature Publishing Group's highly regarded blogs, such as The Great Beyond, Nautilus and The Sceptical Chymist. In other words, all the blogs hosted by Nature will be brought together in one scintillating web site.

Links to new blog posts, recent comments and popular posts will still appear on Nature Network's blogs page as ever, but the real meat - the words, pictures, videos, maps, thoughts and theories of our bloggers - will now appear at blogs.nature.com.

The effect of Hermann's financial maneuvers earns few applause in Liberia. In that African democracy, diplomat Winston Tubman tells us what he would say to vulture fund operators, "'Do you know you are causing babies to die all over Liberia?'"

That's strong language, but in Liberia, we see the effects of the threat of losing over $20 million from this desperately poor nation's budget. In the village of Demeh, I meet Howa Murvee. During Liberia's recent civil war, her grandfather was beaten to death in front of her. Every home in the village was destroyed. Now, with money from selling donuts at a rural bus stop, she has raised the $100 need for materials to rebuild her mud-and-thatch home.

[Watch the report below]

      Artist rendering of Darwinius.
        Image: Julius T. Csotonyi

According to Brian's Op-Ed in the Times of London:

Over the past two years they have worked with Atlantic Productions to launch a media blitz heralding Ida as one of our early relatives. With a scientific description in the journal PLoS One, a book, two documentaries, a website and even a Twitter feed prepared beforehand, Ida burst onto the scene as the "holy grail" of evolution, the "ancestor of us all".

Ida is undoubtedly a spectacular fossil. A nearly complete fossil primate, with a body outline and stomach contents, she is the sort of discovery palaeontologists dream about. It may come as a surprise, then, that Ida does not change everything we thought we knew about human evolution. Indeed, she may tell us more about the origins of lemurs than our own species.

Now, researchers at Duke University, University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Chicago have demonstrated that Ida is in fact more similar to other fossil strepsirrhines, the primate group that includes lemurs and lorises.

For example, a few years ago The Independent published some facts and figures concerning vivisection in the UK:

This is an extremely complex and difficult issue and can generate a lot of heated emotions on all sides. Several years ago my mother was diagnosed with cancer and the chemotherapy treatment she received had been developed and tested using primate models. At the same time my work in primatology has revealed to me the joy that a baby monkey or ape clearly experiences when protected in their mother's embrace. So I'm fully aware what a difficult topic this is both for researchers and the general public alike.

It's often difficult for the humanities and the sciences to find a common ground and achieve mutual understanding (and Cthulhu knows we've had some intense arguments about the role of biology vs. culture in human life). But after four years I can honestly say that, if not for her, I wouldn't have understood evolution's role in human behavior as well as I do because I never would have been forced to challenge my own assumptions. And I certainly wouldn't be where I am today. I've never mentioned Erin in my blog before (and she doesn't know I'm doing this now) but as she sleeps in this morning I just wanted to share my nostalgia and express how grateful I am for life's little accidents. I would also issue a warning against asking someone to watch your bonobo videos on a first date. In a different context I think they might get the wrong idea.

The Primate Diaries has also been selected in the categories of Research Blog of the Year and Blog Post of the year for my piece: "Does Taking Birth Control Alter Women's Sexual Choices?"

It's often heard during award season that it's an honor just to be nominated, and this has never been more true than in this case. My fellow finalists represent the absolute best science writing on the net and I'm thrilled to be in their company.

Out of more than 400 nominations, a panel of judges selected these top blogs (and the many more that I haven't listed). To vote for the winner you need to be registered at Research Blogging so head on over to sign up and vote. To read some of my earlier research blogging click on the tag above or visit my Research Blogging profile here.

My piece for The Huffington Post has just gone up concerning the latest incidents involving neuroscientist Dario Ringach and the targeting of his children by animal rights extremists. For more on this see Dr. Free-Ride, PZ, PalMD, Scicurious, MarkCC, Nick Anthis, Drugmonkey and Orac.

Dear ALF,

I address you not because your organization is directly behind these latest abuses, but because your organization is emblematic of the radical approach that some animal rights activists have been inspired to take. I want you to know that I support your goals at the same time that I oppose your tactics. Vivisection, or what in polite society is merely called animal experimentation, is a barbaric practice that has led to some necessary medical breakthroughs but has mostly served to profit multinational pharmaceutical and cosmetic corporations. I agree with the researchers who published in the British Medical Journal in 2004 that:

Clinicians and the public often consider it axiomatic that animal research has contributed to the treatment of human disease, yet little evidence is available to support this view.

I am also sympathetic to your frustration that, despite mounting evidence that little is gained from this research, its use continues and even grows. This is especially troubling where it comes to primate vivisection. When Jane Goodall wrote the forward to the 2006 report "Next of Kin" (pdf here), put out by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and the European Council to End Animal Experiments, she had no more illusions about its use than I do:

Not only are many experiments on nonhuman primates unethical, many are unnecessary, and their results may be misleading. . . The evidence in the BUAV's report reveals the true level of suffering of many primates used in animal experimentation, and the scientific pitfalls of using primates to study human diseases and drugs.

Read on here.

UPDATE: For a continuation and an expansion on this letter please see my post Animal Rights and Human Rights.

The creationists have done it again, first it was bananas and now it's peanut butter. It seems they do all of their heavy thinking while shopping for groceries. Ray Comfort saw mutant bananas forged through artificial selection as evidence of God's presence (little did he know that wild bananas are inedible to humans). Now creationists seem impressed that pasteurization works. If this is the sort of thing that can persuade people, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that so many in the United States aren't able to understand the science of climate change.

     Image: Henri Gervex (1852-1929)
     Doctor Preau Operating at the St.
     Louis Hospital.Honoured SIR and MADAM,

In researching the history of science one often comes across bizarre claims about the natural world that reveals the limit of knowledge available to researchers of the past. However, sometimes a case comes up that seems to be a genuine mystery even today. Such is the case for this eighteenth-century woman who was afflicted for two years with what her doctor referred to as "hairy crustaceous substances" that were voided in her urine.

On July 16, 1733 a Mr. John Powell of Pembroke, Ontario wrote a letter to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (the most esteemed scientific journal of the time) outlining this curious medical anomaly. As my background is in natural history, not medical history, I'm at a loss as to what this could be. If anyone has any thoughts I would appreciate your input (though I would encourage you not to read the description during lunch).

   Bonobos retain juvenile traits related
   to tolerance and cooperation.
            Image: Vanessa Woods

Brian Hare and colleagues have just released a video (see below) showing a bonobo juvenile voluntarily helping another individual out of their cage to share a few delicious treats. In their study, to be released March 8 in Current Biology, the Duke researchers wanted to see if bonobos would choose to share with an unrelated individual even if they didn't have to.

Bonobos have long intrigued researchers for their unusual (except for us) propensity to cooperate and share with others, a trait not found to the same degree in our close cousin the chimpanzee.