geekent’s stuff’n things

Jesus, no wonder these monkeys are endangered.

National Geographic takes a look at Japanese macaques. This species of monkey have become accustomed to the human society and the edible handouts they’re given. Now living without the need to hunt and forage for food, these primates have developed their own leisure activities and unusual peculiarities. They have games they play with stones and they now wash their food, a trait passing down through the generations.
(via Circadian Shift)

Retrocrush, the fine site for adult rememberances of past causes of joy (be it cartoons, action figures, or pin-up girls) has set up a list of the Top 50 Monkeys of all time.
YEAH!
‘Bout time someone did this.

not sure what’s happening in the streets of new delhi? well, it’s just the usual racket: rhesus monkeys tormenting government officials and foreign visitors. along with the cattle, monkeys are effectively given free reign throughout india, mostly due to their resemblance to the god hanuman.
of course, the main cause of the monkey influx into cities is deforestation, so the easiest way to keep the monkeys out is to preserve the forests they live in.

the eternal divide between robots and monkeys keeps ebbing and flowing. some days, you think they can co-exist beautifully. other days, you expect a full-out war.
let’s see where the battlelines are as of late.
progress: monkey brains used to control robotic arms. researchers at duke university medical centre were able to implant a mechanism in a monkey’s brain that allowed the primate to move a robot arm using its thoughts. this could lead to a breakthrough for paralyzed people….or evil monkey cyborgs.
retreat: primate ignores swooning robot. scientists at waseda university in japan had built a robot with explicit facial features such as large eyes and swarthy eyelashes in an attempt to have a monkey bond with it. however, the monkey was visibly bored and uninterested in connecting with this robot, setting the cause back substantially.
this impasse is not large, but every day feels as though the gap between monkey-robot relations becomes wider.

from Chud

GREEN MONKEYS ON THE SCREEN
9.30.03
By Andrew Sweeney
Contributing sources: THR
Among the hallowed halls of animation, names like Groening and Bird (Brad, not Big) are common. Slowly making his way into those halls is Gabor Csupo, one of the creators of the Nickelodeon animation block, post-DangerMouse and Bananaman. Csupo is responsible for Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys cartoons on Nick, and apparently is fairly good at his job. He’s taken home an Emmy or two for his work, at any rate.
Csupo is striking out on his own now, with a feature film about a pair of green monkeys who believe themselves to be human. All Darwinian humor aside, Green Monkeys is based on a comic strip called, aptly, Green Monkeys. The strip has run in Dan’s Papers on Long Island for a couple of years, and the film will be penned by the same folks who do that, Mickey and Betty Paraskevas. Those names should look familiar, as the pair also write for Nickelodeon’s Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. If you don’t have kids, chances are that you’ve never heard of these people, which is all right as well.

the wisconsin regional primate research centre is reporting a shortage of rhesus monkeys for testing purposes. the rhesus macaque’s physiology is most similar to humans, but the shortage may affect AIDS research.
glum as the prospect of being test subjects is, at least they’re not chimps or bonobos from the congo where the peace after civil wars means monkey meat is back on the menu, along with other wildgame animals.