The theme for today's blog post is: really, really good articles about monkeys. Bear with me.
The first is probably my favorite magazine article of all time: Swingers, from the New Yorker.
The second is going to jump right up that list very soon: Rise of the Ape Movies, by Chuck Klosterman.
For most of my life, my experience with monkeys, apes and chimps was limited to one time I shared an unusually meaningful glance with a massive caged gorilla at the National Zoo. I was on my way to the bat cave and the apes struck me as vaguely creepy; they were just human enough to be threatening and sad at the same time.
Since coming to India I've had a lot more experiences with monkeys, and I've learned that they are vicious beasts. Two years ago, I was robbed by a monkey in an Indian temple town. I was heading up a series of stone steps cut into a foothill of the Himalayas. I was carrying a bag of fruit in one hand. Out of nowhere, a monkey appeared and started snarling and swatting at the bag of fruit. I panicked, dropped the fruit, and ran - meanwhile, the monkey made off with the fruit to some unknowable lair.
This did not increase my religious feeling at all, and instead of standing in the glorious weak sunshine off the Himalayas and thanking God for my good fortune, I spent several minutes asking the uncaring heavens: Why, why did you create monkeys?
Another time, I witnessed a full-scale monkey takeover of an alley in Connaught Place, near central Delhi.
In one of the ancient Hindu epics, the Ramayana, King Rama comes to a river he can't cross. Thankfully his faithful monkey companion rounds up a bunch of other monkeys and the simians make a bridge of their bodies between the two shores. Rama literally crosses a river on the backs of monkeys.
The point of bringing up this story is to prove that monkeys are clearly capable of premeditated collective action. Unfortunately, today's humans are nothing like the righteous King Rama, and our monkeys have experienced a similar decline in character. There's an alley behind Connaught Place where several fruit and vegetable vendors gather, and I used to cross this alley on my way to work. One day, as I was passing through the alley, I heard a piercing shriek. I looked up and saw a single monkey standing on top of a nearby wall. He pumped his upraised first like a smaller, hairier Che Guevara, and the alley exploded with monkeys. Monkeys rushed from the trees and the cracks in the walls. The fruit vendors screamed and swatted at the monkeys, but the monkeys were prepared with gangrenous fangs and yellowing nails. They also had the advantage of surprise.
By the time the ten-second furor finished - more like a guerrilla attack, really - half the fruit was gone.
I know you doubt this story. But I was there.
Klosterman gets it dead right when he says: "Why do people assume chimps are almost human when we don't even think that way about other humans?" (Read the whole essay; it makes even more sense in context.) My point is, we can all be struck by the similarities between humans and apes. I was, that time in the zoo. But when we are, we're usually struck by how monkeys appear to display reason and kindness. By that token, monkeys must also be capable of profound meanness. There is no reason to like monkeys any more than we like our fellow men.
Interestingly, monkeys are probably the single most crucial animal species in the entire Ramayana. The monkeys in the Ramayana scheme, murder, love and talk. Nowhere does Valmiki - the author - suggest that talking, feeling monkeys that follow human social patterns are anything other than the norm. The Ramayana was written in the 4th century BC, which means our obsession with the so-called humanity of monkeys predates both Christianity and the theory of evolution.
People love the idea that chimps, apes and bonobos can teach us something about ourselves. And perhaps they do; that we can delude ourselves endlessly. It's tempting to think of the evolutionary tree like a family tree, with clear relationships between one generation and the next. That's not the case, though. Our relationship with apes - with whom we share, it's true over 90% of our DNA - is tantalizing because it's so close and yet so far. What exactly does it mean to be human? It will always be a mystery; monkeys notwithstanding.
The first is probably my favorite magazine article of all time: Swingers, from the New Yorker.
The second is going to jump right up that list very soon: Rise of the Ape Movies, by Chuck Klosterman.
For most of my life, my experience with monkeys, apes and chimps was limited to one time I shared an unusually meaningful glance with a massive caged gorilla at the National Zoo. I was on my way to the bat cave and the apes struck me as vaguely creepy; they were just human enough to be threatening and sad at the same time.
Since coming to India I've had a lot more experiences with monkeys, and I've learned that they are vicious beasts. Two years ago, I was robbed by a monkey in an Indian temple town. I was heading up a series of stone steps cut into a foothill of the Himalayas. I was carrying a bag of fruit in one hand. Out of nowhere, a monkey appeared and started snarling and swatting at the bag of fruit. I panicked, dropped the fruit, and ran - meanwhile, the monkey made off with the fruit to some unknowable lair.
This did not increase my religious feeling at all, and instead of standing in the glorious weak sunshine off the Himalayas and thanking God for my good fortune, I spent several minutes asking the uncaring heavens: Why, why did you create monkeys?
Another time, I witnessed a full-scale monkey takeover of an alley in Connaught Place, near central Delhi.
In one of the ancient Hindu epics, the Ramayana, King Rama comes to a river he can't cross. Thankfully his faithful monkey companion rounds up a bunch of other monkeys and the simians make a bridge of their bodies between the two shores. Rama literally crosses a river on the backs of monkeys.
The point of bringing up this story is to prove that monkeys are clearly capable of premeditated collective action. Unfortunately, today's humans are nothing like the righteous King Rama, and our monkeys have experienced a similar decline in character. There's an alley behind Connaught Place where several fruit and vegetable vendors gather, and I used to cross this alley on my way to work. One day, as I was passing through the alley, I heard a piercing shriek. I looked up and saw a single monkey standing on top of a nearby wall. He pumped his upraised first like a smaller, hairier Che Guevara, and the alley exploded with monkeys. Monkeys rushed from the trees and the cracks in the walls. The fruit vendors screamed and swatted at the monkeys, but the monkeys were prepared with gangrenous fangs and yellowing nails. They also had the advantage of surprise.
By the time the ten-second furor finished - more like a guerrilla attack, really - half the fruit was gone.
I know you doubt this story. But I was there.
Klosterman gets it dead right when he says: "Why do people assume chimps are almost human when we don't even think that way about other humans?" (Read the whole essay; it makes even more sense in context.) My point is, we can all be struck by the similarities between humans and apes. I was, that time in the zoo. But when we are, we're usually struck by how monkeys appear to display reason and kindness. By that token, monkeys must also be capable of profound meanness. There is no reason to like monkeys any more than we like our fellow men.
Interestingly, monkeys are probably the single most crucial animal species in the entire Ramayana. The monkeys in the Ramayana scheme, murder, love and talk. Nowhere does Valmiki - the author - suggest that talking, feeling monkeys that follow human social patterns are anything other than the norm. The Ramayana was written in the 4th century BC, which means our obsession with the so-called humanity of monkeys predates both Christianity and the theory of evolution.
People love the idea that chimps, apes and bonobos can teach us something about ourselves. And perhaps they do; that we can delude ourselves endlessly. It's tempting to think of the evolutionary tree like a family tree, with clear relationships between one generation and the next. That's not the case, though. Our relationship with apes - with whom we share, it's true over 90% of our DNA - is tantalizing because it's so close and yet so far. What exactly does it mean to be human? It will always be a mystery; monkeys notwithstanding.
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