Sep
08
On Tuesday, 38 lab chimps were allowed outside for the first time in thirty years. Taken from Africa, their mothers slaughtered, they had been locked in cages and were victims of a terrible series of experiments in an attempt to find a cure for HIV. This program achieved absolutely nothing. Hooked up to machines and pumped full of …
Oct
08
Charlie the smoking chimpanzee died of a heart attack on Wednesday and it wasn’t smoking that killed him. The average chimp lives to 40 and Charlie lived to 52. Charlie was one of the first things I posted about on this blog, way back in 2005, and I stand by what I said then: Smoking …
May
11
Apr
27
pic nicked from here Chimps seem to have a similar reaction to the death of a group member as humans. No, they don’t all put on black ties and get drunk around the corpse. Rather, they comfort the dying and then appear to experience trauma. Some chimp mothers even refuse to let go of their …
Feb
27
Many people find it cruel to allow a chimp to smoke and drink. If someone was shipping Johnny Walker and Marlboros into the wild and selling them to the chimps, I’d agree. But when a captive ape takes up smoking and drinking, I cheer it on. Sending said ape to rehab is cruel. A caged …
Sep
04
chimpanzee fetus on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.
Jul
15
While I’m busy messing around with all the new features on my blog, a new scientific discipline is being created: Primate archaeology. This will focus on the use of tools and its history not just in humans but in all primate species. We now know that we’re not the only animals who use tools. So …
Apr
30
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8p72wmR5H4&feature=related]
Feb
18
Travis the chimp is getting a bad rap. While he did maul a woman and attack the police before being shot to death, it’s a bit unfair to say he went berserk. If a human did that, sure, he went berserk. But a chimp? You might as well get angry at a German for eating …
Jan
26
Researchers have discovered that being nice is the key to chimps becoming powerful alphas. Between a bully who does not return grooming and a smaller ape who is an obsessive groomer, the smaller ape wins control of the group and his pick of the female population. This shows what I’ve often suspected. All of that …
Sep
24
Researchers have discovered that chimps can identify members of their group by their bums. In the test they were able to correctly match an ass with the correct face. And not once did they get all angry and say: “My ass, your face.” Nor did they express a desire to “tap that ass.” One can …
Jan
31
Now that the economy is going into the shitter, it’s time to ask that age old question: What would a chimp do? (W.W.C.D.) Chimps like to trade services. Their whole economy is based –literally– on “you scratch my back and I scratch yours.” Even primitive jerks like macaques (some chimps have –I’m serious– been known …
Jan
27
No one likes a tourist and chimps are no different. Eco-tourists and scientists who gawk at these great apes have been giving them colds. Colds kill chimps. The only question is whether the tourism saves more chimps than it kills. Half the members of habitated groups of apes are dying because of human-passed respiratory illness. …
Jan
09
It’s been well known for a while that chimpanzees have culture. What has been recently discovered is how they transmit it. Turns out they’re a lot like people. Chimps use role models and, even more interestingly, these role models must be fellow apes. Humans can imitate anything. We can use chimps as role models, if …
Dec
13
A few weeks ago chimps beat humans on a memory test. This was big news because we’re an incredibly arrogant species. Anyone who has read anything about chimps would not be terribly surprised. They’re better at us at certain mental tasks. A lot of animals are better than us at a lot of things. Let’s …
Dec
21
Being a fan of Papa Joe, I have to admit that I’m not very surprised that he wanted to create an army of super-apes. Who doesn’t? I would love an army of apes and so would you. Don’t lie. You know you would. What does surprise me, however, is just how stupid people in the …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
