The Chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes) lives in humid deciduous forest in Africa.  They mainly eat fruits and leaves, however they are omnivorous, and will eat seeds, birds, flowers, bark, insects and smaller mammals.

Anthrax has never been recorded before in a tropical rain forest environment. One of the scientists working on the study, Fabian Leendertz, says there are two theories on how the bacteria arrived.

"They are speculating in a very old French newspaper that it may have come from the north, with cattle transport and so on," he said. "Second possibility is that it has always been there, but nobody has seen it, because, in the forest, you don't see when there are dead animals."

"These animals are already highly endangered," said Heinz Ellerbrok. "There is much more contact between ecological niches that have been well separated over ages. And now, people are going into the forest, and there is an exchange, or there might be an exchange of pathogens between chimpanzees, or in general, great apes and humans, and this can go both ways."

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COLUMBUS, Ohio – By examining the brain activity of moths, researchers have found that the behavior of these insects isn't ruled entirely by instinct. Rather, they can learn which odors mean food.

The findings are more than academic: The researchers hope to develop methods for using trained moths to detect odors of interest for defense industry and law enforcement – such as odors given off by biological and chemical weapons.

Animal behaviorists have historically argued that most insects have a programmed response to a variety of situations, such as knowing which odors signal the presence of food and mates.

But scientists are discovering that animals don't always instinctively know what to do. In these cases, they have to learn, said Kevin Daly, the study's lead author and a research scientist in entomology at Ohio State University.

He and his colleagues used tiny electrodes implanted in the heads of sphinx moths to continuously monitor the insect's neuronal activity and feeding behavior before, during and after training the animal that one odor meant food – sugar water – was on the way and another odor did not.

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