Clever Monkeys

I haven’t posted here in a while, I was tempted several times to post my thoughts on some stuff that is going on, but I kind of lacked time or at least did not prioritize blogging very highly. Anyway, there’s something I need to get off my chest. I just saw the most amazing nature documentary of my life. It’s an episode of Natural World of the BBC with David Attenborough as narrator (just like Planet Earth, which is also rather awesome). And it is about monkeys. Clever monkeys.

I’ve always thought that it was very very very likely that we humans descend from monkeys, but I didn’t know -that- much of monkeys, a lot of stuff was new for me and rather mindblowing. This documentary could be seen as an all-out attack on creationism and it succeeds wonderfully. It shows how much humans and monkeys are alike. They go deep into monkey culture. Yes, culture. They show monkeys ‘farming’ (putting holes in a tree, to harvest it’s juice several days later) and different tribes contesting this resource from time to time as if it’s oil in the Middle East (or moons in EVE Online..). They show a ‘United Nations’ of monkeys, with completely different monkey races cooperating with each other and some of the monkey races being able to speak in different languages, constructing simple sentences with a rudimentary form of grammar. They show monkeys being capable of deception (which requires one to think how someone else would think and take advantage of it, a form of awareness), although that bit wasn’t new for me.

Then they go on to show Machiavellian power-politics of baboon tribe dictators and the lust for power that is part of their nature (and arguably also ours, of course), monkey societies with groups of hundreds of monkeys and how some monkeys set up traps for jaguars.

That’s not all however. In the ending they go on to show monkeys doing something that looks – very – similar to some scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey (best movie ever) with exactly the same music from that movie! Fucking brilliant.

I’m sorry for spoiling some of the highlights for people that are interested in watching it now, although I can assure you it’s still worth it. I just wonder how thing swould look if you’d fast-forward a few thousand years to see if the baboons would’ve ended up dominating the savannah. At the moment I also kind of wonder how long they’ve been there, couldn’t find it on wikipedia, but have they been there 6 thousand years already or are they rather new?

Anyway, trailer is here. Full episode torrent here (I’m sure the BBC is fine with it. ).

Also this TED talk on chimpansees I saw a while ago is mindblowing, those creatures are arguably just as empathic as us humans.