A few years ago. four female mountain gorillas （大猩猩）left home, abandoning not only their mate — a sick alpha silverback — but their infants （幼崽），which were barely old enough to Iced themselves. Most mammals abandoned by their mothers risk an early death, and researchers worried about the young gorillas.

Instead, the scientists got a heartwarming surprise. The young gorillas’ uncle, a male gorilla named Kubaha, began to take care of them. He let them sleep in his nest and climb all over him like a jungle gym.

Kubaha’s willingness to be a foster dad turns out to be surprisingly common in mountain gorillas. An analysis on mountain gorillas at the Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda has revealed that when young mountain gorillas lose their mothers, they do not have a greater risk of dying or losing their place in the social hierarchy because the rest of the group buffers them from the loss. The social group has evolved to protect the infants from the ill effects of losing their mothers.

The researchers confirmed this assumption by focusing on data on 59 gorillas between the ages of 2 and 8 who lost their mothers or were orphaned （成为孤儿）before they were fully mature. They then compared the survival of these animals across their lifetimes with the survival of 139 nonorphaned gorillas. They also compared their reproductive success and social rank as adults — and tracked who the infants spent the most time with.

Not only were the orphaned and motherless gorillas at no greater risk of dying, they also suffered no long-term effect on their ability to reproduce or on their social rank, the team reports today in eLife.

The findings suggest such altruistic behavior is not unique to humans — and that dads play an important role in primate youngsters' lives, says Duke behavioral ecologist Susan Alberts, "Nonhuman primates often are really good dads," she says. 'This shows that paternal care goes very deep in our primate lineage."

When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know we care.

I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues(纸巾), until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and pain. Now I just listen.   When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.

This simple thing has not been that easy to learn. It certainly went against everything I had been taught since I was very young at school. I thought people listened only because they were too timid to speak or did not know the answer. A loving silence often has far more power to connect and to heal than the most well-intentioned(善意的)words.

The scientists are digging for fossils（化石）. Fossilized bones tell the story of dinosaurs and animals that were once living creatures and appeared on Earth some 225 million years ago. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for 150 million years, much longer than people have existed.

Dinosaurs came in many shapes and sizes. The smallest dinosaur was less than 3 feet long. The largest were plant eating giants called Sauropods longer than a city bus.

Their weight closes to 50,000 pounds. To sustain its enormous body, it would endlessly grab branches and leaves and swallow them down a 20-foot throat. That is a neck as high as a two-storey house. With each step a weight greater than an eight ton ball would hit the earth. Despite their large size dinosaurs' share some characteristics with modern animals. Like today's reptiles（爬行动物）most, not all dinosaurs laid eggs. Its mate probably brought food to the nest like birds do. The mother tended her eggs and like a bird she placed them into a circle. Many plant eating dinosaurs lived in groups probably to defend themselves against the meat-eating or the dinosaurs who hunted them.

But 65 million years ago something happened that brought a sudden end to the dinosaur age. No one knows exactly why the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared. Most scientists think the killer came from outer space. A large object from outer space hit the earth causing a lot of dust in the atmosphere. The earth became dark and the dinosaurs died off. But scientists believe their descendents（后代）may live on. The skeletons（骨骼）of some dinosaurs are similar to modern birds. The common ancestor of these birds was probably a small two-legged meat-eating dinosaur. As the digging and research continues, each new find may help prove the dinosaurs did not really disappear after all. The birds are in fact living, breathing and flying dinosaurs.