Thinking Clearly .

Today we were looking for a new code name for an internal project, and I realized that it’s also Monkey Monday and we owe the blogosphere a post about monkeys. Putting these two needs together, we started looking for an interesting monkey to talk about and, perhaps, to find a name to steal.

A night monkey (aka owl monkey) is the only nocturnal monkey, has freaky big eyes (more rods than cones), excellent night and spatial vision:

(Thanks to UW’s National Primate Research Center—damn, I wish these guys needed some SemWeb goodness!)

The genus name is aotus, which we decided makes an excellent SVN repo name.

Two articles for Monkey Monday.

Science Daily summarizes an interesting study which compares the frequency of positive Darwinian selection in the development of the human and chimpanzee genomes since we diverged from a common ancestor 6-7 million years ago. One could interpret this to mean that chimpanzees are more advanced (or at least are more evolved) than their naked ape cousins. Full text of the journal article is made available by one of the authors.

This article appearing in the American Naturalist sates my interests in both great apes and infectious disease outbreaks. The report details observations of potential ape to ape (sometimes inter-species) transmission of Ebola, based on exchange of bodily fluids and the primate habit of inspecting carcasses of peers and rivals. Fascinating stuff, also available in a much abridged form.

And before someone points out that apes aren’t monkeys and don’t satisfy the requirements of Monkey Monday, here’s a bonus link, a beautiful male diademed sifaka, courtesy of the Duke University Lemur Center. The species is native to eastern Madagascar and is endangered.

So at least two C&P people have something of an obsession with the great apes and lesser monkeys; I’m ready to grant them semi-legal rights, in fact. They’re as smart as very young human children and there’s little reason beyond mere speciesism to not treat them as at least quasi-persons. (But, eh, I’ll leave the rest of the lecture about the rights of the great apes for another, more appropriate time.)

That being said, I also love nothing more than a commercial featuring a chimpanzee in a business suit with a laser pointer…Oh, the irony.

I’m hereby inaugurating a new C&P weblog feature: Monkey Monday—one of us ape obsessifs will post something of interest about monkeys or apes every (okay, most) Mondays.

This week it’s a nice article about chimps hunting with spears and living in caves.