Interspecies communication, Part 2: The Interspecies Internet

While Koko the Gorilla, Kanzi the Bonobi, Peter the Dolphin, Nim the Chimpanzee and Alex the Parrot are already chatting away at their human language teachers and researchers (mostly about “Give me food”, “Take me away from these ugly apes” and “I am bored.”), there are dozens if not hundreds of species out there who might have something to say to their human captors, eh, co-habitants.

Luckily, Research, Commerce and Art, those muses of our day and age, put their heads together and  and came up with a proposition to at least enable a more reciprocal communication between “them” and “us”, that is: human and non-human animals. An Interspecies Web: http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/28/the-interspecies-internet-diana-reiss-peter-gabriel-neil-gershenfeld-and-vint-cerf-at-ted2013/

While I am kind of interested in how this furthers research with animals and over all an evolution of human-animal-ethics, I think it strange that this account ends once again with the wish to be able to call up ET and his conspecifics. Isn’t understanding what a possibly malicious dolphin really wants when he/she bumps you under water enough for a scientific revolution?

More News of Saddam: Beware, Local Beer Makes You Eat Babies.

Something has been going really wrong in the 1990s for chimps in Uganda. Maybe the local banana beer has the same effect on them as ‘bath salts’ have on humans (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/face-eating-cannibal-attack-latest-bath-salts-incident/story?id=16470389)? In any case: yes, it pays not to leave your under-five-year-old unattended. In any country. Or it might just eat a snake (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9044599/Toddler-chews-head-off-snake.html).

Many thanks to Christine’s untiring research work: The above pretty much sums up a good month in our old office.

Saddam, the baby-eating chimpanzee

I cannot decide if I am more intrigued by the fact that this New York Times article was put in the section “Lives”, when Chimp-Saddam so clearly lost his after ending those of a fair number of little children, or by the riddling pointlessness of the related story (boy goes to Africa, plays at shooting ape, does not succeed, goes home, ape eats more children and is killed), or by the collection of guileless comments below the text. My favorites: The Exculpation Via Emotional Stress: “I think it shows an intelligent emotional animal who responded in the only way he could to his heartbreak and solitary existence” ( Susannah); The Random Observation: “If the 18-month-old girl had lived, she would be now about the same age as the writer when he was in Uganda…” (J); or, The Aspiring Honesty: “I get paid really good money to both write and read critically” (LarryAt27N).

SZ Magazin: Planet der Affen

After a longer absence from popcultural apings (work, work, work makes my mind go round) the silence is now dashingly broken with Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin: A whole magazine, ape and monkey themed. Ever wondered whatever happened to Michael Jackson’s pet chimp Bubbles? Or if King Kong, Gollum and Planet of the Apes protagonist Caesar are in fact the same man? Or if Indiana Jones just made that culinary monkey brain scene up? Here you go!

Thank you for making me aware, how much I’ve neglected my daily newspaper intake as well as my blog: Christine.

Chimpanzee Artist Wins $10,000 Prize, Naps.

Aaaah, artists, tss, tss, tss. Think it to be postmodern to paint with their tongue instead of a brush and if you hand them the canvas to deal with it as they please, they might just mistreat it in their cage/studio and never give it back to their caregiver/gallerist.

Thanks for sending me this: Florens.

Twenty Apes Later

This one I really love, since everybody told me I should watch this movie because of my guilty pleasure in Zombie movies but nobody told me, that it starts right off with caged and enraged chimpanzees and makes quite a point about animal rights activism and animal testing, simultaneously: Be careful what you let out of that cage, dearest, it might be more than a usually aggressive, traumatized, vengefully blood thirsty chimp, it might just be the end of humankind…