Sunday, October 10, 2010

Creature Feature: Chimpanzees.

Wait. What are chimpanzees doing here? Those aren't weird, they're adorable! Everybody knows them as cute monkeys that are inches away from being people!



Heh. Heheheh. Oh, you poor souls.

Yes, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are pretty darn close to people. No, they did not 'evolve into' people; it's closer to the separation between a wolf and a coyote than that. The main difference in our evolution became the specialized brain. Chimps are stronger physically than humans to make up for the relative lack of brainpower, but they're still pretty darn intelligent.

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. As soon as we found this out, we immediately started studying them and found a crapload of similarities. They use tools. They are self-aware. They contract many of our diseases and vice-versa. If raised with humans, they try to mimic our spoken language. Whereas it's pretty darn sad when our President resembles a chimpanzee, a real chimp for President is hilarious.


Actually, this somehow looks more serious than our last President of the U.S..

They are also one of the most terrifying animals on Earth because they are so much like humans. Similarity does not necessarily equal cute. For example, some of us have probably noticed the most obvious difference between humans and chimps: They have more hair than we do.



Holy mother of Magikarp...WHAT THE F*CK IS THAT?! That is not a chimp. That is Smeagol/Gollum from Lord of the Rings! Any minute now, it's gonna take my jewelry!


My...precious...

Chimpanzees do worse than steal jewelry. In chimpanzee communities, it is not unusual for them to not only declare war (possibly with poo involved) but commit war crimes to go with it. They rape, abuse their spouses and are certainly not vegetarians. (Bonobos are a different cup of tea entirely- they prefer to make love, not war.) Other small primates are part of their diet...including younger chimpanzees.


Was I the only one reminded of a Vietnam War video?

Oh, but surely humans are special. There's no way the chimpanzees would ever attack humans, the Mary Sues of the animal world...right?



Oh, wait. Chimpanzee attacks happen all the time.

Chimpanzees are, as I said earlier, a lot stronger than humans. They can tear each other apart; you stand no chance at all. The guy up there had bananas - we can usually bribe or outsmart humans, but these chimps were having none of that. The humans were intruders and the chimps reacted in kind. No BS like money or bananas.


Just hand over the bananas and nobody gets hurt. I don't even need this gun.

They can also eat your babies.
Your baby is a small primate; if chimps are willing to eat babies from their own species, what makes people think that they will not eat human offspring? There is one particular line that I would like to select from another article detailing the same attack:

"I don't think chimps mistake a human baby for a monkey. They're far too smart for such a mistake."

If this is true, there are a number of ways to interpret it. Either the chimps are dumber than you think they are, science guy, or they are deliberately going after human babies. They know that the squirming little primates are human (or, well, not chimps), but, just like the rest of nature, they don't give a fuck. We usually jail people like that, but chimps are not only not people, they are just too darn cute for most people to put behind bars.


You try jailing this face.

Also, remember that the last thing so famous for eating babies was the dingo, which came over to Australia with humans. The most familiar things are often the most dangerous.

1 comment:

  1. Naturally, the baby is 'just' one of those smelly naked non-chimp apes. They probably don't even have feelings or anything, they're just ANIMALS!

    (hey thats pretty much how WE act, I don't see why chimps would differ all that much lolol)

    People are pretty much just as bad aside from the fact that we USUUUAALLY do not eat our young. the raping and torturing and eating everything else in sight though, we're all about that.

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