I went to the zoo today. Buuuuut, I’ve just now left my camera in my car (which is parked about three miles from my apartment) so you won’t get to see any pictures until tomorrow. There will be lots of sleeping animals and empty cages for you to stare in awe at, but also some really cool photographs, like the one-month-old giraffe, and the elephant, and the alligator, and the black bear. Also, one of the chimpanzees took a shit in its hand, flung some of it at another chimp and then ate the remainder. A group of schoolchildren started screaming in horror. I kind of wanted to join in with them. It was surprisingly awesome to watch. In the meantime, let’s talk about some other non-chimps-eating-shit things.
So, what’s new with me? Oh, now I remember…I have no money and everything sucks. Yeah, that’s the general feeling around these parts. It’s one of those blue moods, I guess. It happens one or two nights a month. Watching a chimpanzee coax a shit out of its asshole with its hand and then eat it kind of helped, but still…
Elsewhere in the world… — all right, I guess it’s time to admit I’m going to devote today’s entire entry to this story about the animal eating its poop.
According to the Internet, chimpanzees are members of the Homindae family, along with gorillas, humans and orangutans. The two chimp species are the closest living relatives to humans. Males can grow to three or four feet in height and weigh anywhere between 75 and 155 pounds. Females are shorter and weigh less, but that’s to be expected because females of any species are weak and generally a bit pathetic. Chimps usually left past the age of 40 in the wild, but have been known to reach 60 years of age in captivity. The oldest known chimp in the world is actually the star of Tarzan, and he’s straight chillin’ at 75. Even with all those similarities I guess that, unlike humans, chimps aren’t above eating their own excrement.
Which begs the question, how exactly is an animal that willingly eats its own shit really the closest living relative to humans. I mean, I’ve been to Georgia and Florida, and even the people who live there are smart enough not to eat their own shit or throw it at their friends and relatives. Are chimps really the most human-like species on the planet? Are we sure this judgement isn’t based solely on looks? Dolphins are pretty smart, why can’t they be the most human-like species on Earth? If it has to be something that bears a physical resemblance to a person, isn’t there some sort of furry, humanoid-looking thing out there in the forest that behaves more like one of us than a dirty stinking animal? A Sasquatch? Maybe it uses a calculator. Maybe it wears a little visor, types on a typewriter, and uses public restrooms, and doesn’t pop squats and drop deuces into its own outstretched, expectant hand in front of a busload of children.
Other than the physical likeness, the thing about chimpanzees is that they possess some basic knowledge. They make tools and use them to acquire food. In Senegal, chimps have been found to use spears for hunting. Before this discovery, it was believed that humans were the only species to make and use tools. Unfortunately for the chimps, there’s a pretty big gap between creating a spear and creating a working plumbing system for waste removal purposes. It doesn’t help that they’re operating with lower levels of intelligence than most humans.
Another interesting, human-like feature of the chimpanzee is its altruism. Recent studies show that chimps do nice things to each other. Like hurl handfuls of fresh, still-steaming-and-moist shit at one another, I guess. I mean, my family has been known to throw shit at one another, but we usually resort to the metaphoric kind of shit-slinging, not actual shit slinging.
And the last, most-human trait of the chimpanzee, is its use of language. Apparently they converse with one another through hollers and laughter. Some have been taught to communicate through sign language. Over the course of 51 months, two scientists instructed a chimpanzee to learn 151 different signs. Over a longer period of time, the chimp learned over 800 signs. Just who it could communicate with when placed back in the wild is unknown, but the fact that it could learn sign language is impressive.
At the end of the day, though, what it really boils down to, is that a chimpanzee isn’t very human-like at all. And if you put a gun to my head and forced me to admit that chimps are the most human-like creatures on the planet, I would tell you this: Okay, fine. Chimps behave and look sort-of like deaf, hairy backwoods hicks. They can learn to sign, they’re definitely covered in hair, and they believe that eating its own shit is socially acceptable. Maybe in Alabama that conduct would go unnoticed, but in the real world (okay, so Los Angeles isn’t exactly “the real world”), those fuckers would need a whole lot of etiquette classes before I’d dare to be seen with them in public. And it would take a hell of a long time before I felt an ounce of kinship towards even one of them. Their babies are kind of cute, though…
I think now is a good time to state that if you knew that the image at the top of this entry was from the Twilight Zone episode “Eye Of The Beholder”, I owe you a Coke.
