Apes, dude, not monkeys.

Make a mistake like that in a monkey bar, and you're likely to get your face bit off.

No, it's the apes that bite your face off, monkeys just try humping the back of your head. Hopefully the back anyway.

When the article says "reason", does that mean "reason" as in "two trainloads of violent chimpanzees leave Philadelphia for Chicago at 9:00 a.m. The first train is travelling West at 100 miles per hour..." Or does it mean "reason" as in "OH GOD, THEY'RE KILLING ME! MY BALLS! AARRGH! NOT MY BALLS!"

In the Corner, they (well, really just Jonah Goldberg, cuz he's weird like that) had several posts about the relative strength of chimps compared to humans. It's pretty incredible stuff.

Apparently their tissue is so much more dense than humans that their muscles per pound are probably around 10 times stronger than an adult man.

"Consequently, full grown chimps can easily overpower a man without really even trying that hard, and can often do it by accident."

Let's hope a Fox executive doesn't see that. Otherwise, we'll no doubt be treated to "Celebrity Ape Boxing" very soon.

...

...On second thought, let's hope a Fox exec DOES see that.

These are the same types of people who would want to reason with: Hitler, Hussein, Bin Laden, Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid . . .

Ace,

I know there's a cool Planet of the Apes/Charlton Heston joke in there; but, I can't manage to fit it in. Perhaps someone of your comic genuis can skillfully quote: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape!" . (In good taste of course)

Ace:

I hate to quote from Cecil Adams again (author of the Straight Dope column) because he's pretty liberal. But unlike most lefty libs this guy's pretty damn smart, witty and persuasive. Well, as a Straight Dope fan for many years, Cecil did an amazing story on chimpanzees as pets and the stupidity of the idea. The column is funny, well researched and lethal in its logic. With that, here's the column (http://www.straightdope.com/classics
/a1_001b.html):

The question:

Dear Cecil:

The other day I told some friends a story about how when I was 14 and living near Washington, D.C., I saw this 90-pound monkey at a carnival who could literally pick a grown man up and toss him out of a boxing ring. A crowd of people listened to a man (probably the trainer) dare anyone to stay three minutes in the ring with what appeared to be a large chimp. There was a fee to try your luck and a $100 reward if you stayed in the three minutes. Well, I'll tell you, I saw these big guys get in there with this monkey and get tossed right out. It seems the trainer had this whistle and whenever he felt inclined he would blow it, which was the signal for the chimp to do his thing. It was a delightful experience (to watch, at least). Anyway, I don't think my friends believed me. So you have to back me up, Cece: isn't it true that a 90-pound chimpanzee can throw a full-grown man through the air? --Tom M., Chicago
P.S.: Their great strength notwithstanding, is it possible to keep chimps as pets?

Cecil's Response:

Dear Tom:

Chimpanzees look mighty cute trucking around on their roller skates, wearing funny hats, and going "ook, ook," but when roused they are vicious little bastards and not to be trifled with. Blessed with a muscle structure considerably superior to that of Homo sapiens (if not nearly as fetching in a bathing suit), chimpanzees can handle almost anything that comes along. Three drunks at a carnival would be no sweat.

It's a lot easier to get a chimp in roller skates than it is to get him to pump iron--hence, most of the data on chimp strength is anecdotal and decidedly unscientific. In tests at the Bronx Zoo in 1924, a dynamometer--a scale that measures the mechanical force of a pull on a spring--was erected in the monkey house. A 165-pound male chimpanzee named "Boma" registered a pull of 847 pounds, using only his right hand (although he did have his feet braced against the wall, being somewhat hip, in his simian way, to the principles of leverage). A 165-pound man, by comparison, could manage a one-handed pull of about 210 pounds. Even more frightening, a female chimp, weighing a mere 135 pounds and going by the name of Suzette, checked in with a one-handed pull of 1,260 pounds. (She was in a fit of passion at the time; one shudders to think what her boyfriend must have looked like next morning.) In dead lifts, chimps have been known to manage weights of 600 pounds without even breaking into a sweat. A male gorilla could probably heft an 1,800-pound weight and not think twice about it.

As you might deduce, therefore, the word on keeping chimps as pets is a big negatory. Chimpanzees can never be fully domesticated; they're aggressive by nature and sooner or later they'll start to threaten their keepers in subtle ape ways that the untrained eye won't recognize, until one day--blammo.

But maybe you're thinking, I'll just keep the little beast until it starts to act tough, and then toss it back into the jungle. Wrong. A chimpanzee brought up in captivity won't be accepted by its brothers in the wild. Shunned, the citified chimp will either starve to death or be set upon by a simian hit squad. No matter how you look at it, keeping a chimp as a pet is dangerous and inhumane.

--CECIL ADAMS
Column dated September 10, 1976

I think this column is as pertinent today as it was 29 years ago (give or take a few months). The thought of people believing that they can become self-taught chimp or primate experts just because they've raised them all of their lives are fooling themselves.

I am not trying to aver that the poor fellow that got attacked deserved it; indeed, I feel horrible for the man. But this column does resonate pretty well. And it's short and sweet.

I hope this adds something of value to the topic and discussion.

Best regards,

KCTrio

I'm waiting for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to chime in on that last piece...

"But . . . but . . . my chimpanzee understands me!"

My thought: the chimp did understand him and got sick of the human fucker saying "suck my balls" to him.

Interesting thing in the other thread, though about how in the wild there are chimp "gangs" that go and terrorize (& even kill) neighboring groups.

So much for simian solidarity

If he knew anything about monkey behavior, he would have known to consider them adversarial unless or until they presented him with a gift of feces hurled directly at his face.

Reminds me of liberals trying to reason with radical Islamists. The US trying to reason with Chavez. The Israelis trying to reason with the extreme right-wing Settlers in Gaza.

Sometimes you just get to a point of having to conduct diplomacy by other means.

I have no doubt that St. James Davis was a Democrat.

Nah, what kind of Democrat would have "Saint" for a first name?

Which pretty much puts to rest this silly-ass lefty poem, which has often been set to music:

"And here's another thing you'll never see -
A monkey build a fence around a coconut tree.
Letting good coconuts go to waste
While forbidding all others to come and taste.
Why, if I built a fence around a tree,
Starvation would force you to steal from me."

Yeah.
The monkey speaks his mind!

"And here's one more thing a monkey won't do -
Go out at night and get on a stew.
Or use a gun, or club, or knife
To take another monkey's life.
Yes, man descended, the worthless bum.
But brothers, from us HE DID NOT COME."

Yeah.
The monkey speaks his mind!

I knew that these idiots who got attacked didn't look at chimps as the wild animals they are.

Later,
bbeck

Yikes. I did a post related to this subject, i.e., the utter stupidity of thinking of wild animals as friendly, about a year ago: http://dogblog.typepad.com/running_at_the_mouth/2004/01/theres_somethin.html. It's always the people who fancy themselves "experts" on wild animals that get mauled by them, proving that they're just the opposite.

Big thanks to KCTrio, by the way, for that terrific piece on simian strength.

KCTrio - THE VIRGINS resent your characterization of chimps as:

"Blessed with a muscle structure considerably superior to that of Homo sapiens (if not nearly as fetching in a bathing suit).

To other chimps and Moslems, they are very fetching.

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