"We'll learn more about why baboons actually love grapes."

Says the lady newscaster in the purple dress as a baboon, smiling, gropes her breast.

RELATED: What happens when you teach a gorilla sign language?

Looking for the war protest. Part 2: The video.

Meade and I approach the Capitol, here in Madison, Wisconsin, on a Saturday morning, thinking if there's going to be action, it will be here. This is before Obama emerged to say that he was going to ask permission from Congress. This is a 10 minute video, but it's edited and moves quickly, I think. Look at the tags below to get an idea of what's in store:

"What the sex lives of female monkeys may tell us about women."

Front-page teaser for a WaPo article that — on clicking — is headlined "Lust, monkeys and the science of human desire."

Now, I'm not interested in monkey sex at all. The science I want to know about is the journalism of the web. Why was the front page, the page that invites you to click, all gendered up with "female monkeys" and "women," but the title at the site of the article is sex neutral, with "monkeys" and "human desire"? There are 2 other differences that suggest that the front page was intentionally skewed toward women: 1. Omission of the word "science," and 2. Substituting "sex lives" for "lust."

(What's stereotypically female about "sex lives" for "lust"? "Lust" is about the urge and it's also the name of the sin, whereas "sex lives" implies that one's whole existence comes into play. "Lust" is racy and emphasizes the motivation to seek release, but "sex lives" speaks of sex as an integrated element of personal well-being that permeates one's body, mind, and relationships with others.)

I suspect that different readers get different teasers on the front page and WaPo knows I'm female and is therefore serving me the female teaser. (Search for "monkeys" on the WaPo front page and let me know what title you get.) But the text of the article justifies the female-oriented headline, not the neutral one. It's about research that —"[l]ike lots of current research on human and animal sexuality" — upends the conventional notion that the male is the aggressor in sexual relations.

The author of the article, Daniel Bergner, says the conventional notion "may be soothing for society." I'd say that challenging that notion is also "soothing." In modern day America, over and over, I've seen a preference for reporting scientific research in a manner that promotes the female. So, if the conventional notion is that the male is dominant, vigorous, and successful in acquiring many sex partners, there is an eagerness to perceive that the opposite is true.

"Isn’t it odd that the true enemy of society turns out to be that guy in the office down the hall?"

John Hawks extracts a juicy bit from that NYT article about the anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon.

Hawks (who's a paleoathropologist) also has nice closeup of a museum reconstruction of Homo erectus (who seems to be an unusually nice person with lovely skin).

And: A story about a monkey midwife:

I think this is cool not because it shows that monkeys need midwives (they don't) but because it shows that the behavioral flexibility that may have enabled midwifery in early humans is very extensive among primates. A delicious placental incentive may seem inventive, but humans are mystifyingly strange in being among the few mammals who don't regularly consume the placenta after birth.

Note: don't regularly. Not: don't ever. I have Googled it. I know what people do.

"A minor war has broken out south of Qunfudah in the village of Kiad where large groups of hungry baboons from nearby valleys are attacking residences..."

"Hussein Al-Barakati, a resident of Kiad, said that he feared for his mother’s safety as she lives alone near the valley...."

Adel Medini, from the town of Helli, has his own take on the recent scourge of baboons: “It’s a daily game of hide and seek. The baboons are targeting empty houses and are well aware of what they are doing. The assault on the village is not random, as some believe. They proceed according to studied plans. That’s why their attacks do not fail. For example, imagine a resident who is absent from their home for a period of time. Even though it’s just one day, he is surprised to return to find his home in disarray. Some people in this situation thought that thieves had broken into and ransacked their houses … The problem is that the village’s houses are old and non-roofed, and our daily guest is hungry.”

Salem Al-Barakati said that the main reason that the baboons are difficult to stymie is because of their high intelligence. They easily match wits with those out to drive them away.

Via Walter Russell Mead:

It’s not just in Saudi Arabia that baboons see human beings as a prey animal. At the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, there is a parking lot for tourists coming to see the beautiful wild landscape where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. Baboons lurk on the edge of the parking lot, watching tourists come and go. They look for car doors that aren’t locked, windows that are left opened, absent-minded tourists carrying food....

[T]he baboons in that parking lot... clearly felt only contempt for their squishy, soft, clawless and short toothed cousins. You could see it in their hard and glittering eyes.

They easily match wits....

"A mob of wild monkeys has gone on a rampage in a village in eastern Indonesia..."

"... entering houses and attacking residents.... It's unclear why the monkeys, which are usually afraid of humans and flee when they hear human voices, emerged [from the forest] and attacked."

Iran sends a monkey into space.

And — it says — "returning its shipment intact."

In 2010, Iran successfully sent a rat, turtle and worms into space. But an attempt to send a monkey up in a rocket failed in 2011.

Did this new monkey return alive and in good shape? Can't tell from "shipment intact" (which may be a translation).

Quite aside from concerns about the monkey, Iran's space program may be part of developing a delivery system for a nuclear bomb.

"Tiny monkey in a little coat runs amok in IKEA store..."

Notes Drudge, with tiny pic:



Linking here:

The primate's owners, who had been shopping in Ikea, came forward after the incident. They now face $240 fine for having an illegal pet.

The rhesus macaque species is not endangered but it is against the law to keep the animal in Ontario....

Yes, it's cruel to keep it in Ontario.

News of a monkey in a coat visiting Ikea quickly went viral on social networks. On Twitter, #Ikeamonkey trended and there are least two parody accounts. There is also an Ikea Monkey page on Facebook.