Thursday, October 27, 2005

Tender Morsels

So NPR ran a story on Morning Edition this morning about how chimps are selfish bastards. Apparently this study was done where there were chimps in cages that shared walls. One chimp had two ropes it could pull. Rope one would feed him banana chunks. Rope two would feed him AND his neighbor banana chunks. The results showed that out of the tested chimps, only 40% of food releases came from pulls to the second rope, in spite of the chimps in the neighboring cages begging and pointing to their mouths going “Ahh, ahh!” So, even though they had nothing to lose the chimps still wouldn’t help their neighbors out. After the initial story ended another scientist protested that he’s seen kindness among chimps and that maybe they were just really excited about the banana. Well, I hear that.

But this scientist must not have cable because my buddy Steve watched this documentary The Dark Side of Chimps or as Steve calls it, Chimps are Bastards the Movie. He told me that chimps in their natural state eat monkeys and baby monkeys most particularly as they are more tender and delicious. So when the monkey’s habitat got destroyed and they left/died off, the chimps went for the next best thing, human babies, which are also tender and delicious.

The moral of the story: watch out for Steve.

No comments: