Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (122778)	1/5/2004 1:46:57 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

re: howler monkey feces hurling: I'm reading Jane Goodall's "The Chimpanzees of Gombe, Patterns of Behavior". That's where my info came from; it's the first book I've read of primate behavior. I've never read (or said) anything about howler monkeys (a more distant relation of you and me). Different primates have different habits, I suppose. The basic commonalities between chimpanzee and human behavior, from what I've read so far, are: 1. territoriality 2. dominance hierarchies 3. grooming/touching/sex to reinforce social bonds 4. violence, to enforce control of females, territory, or status

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (122778)	1/9/2004 4:17:25 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

Hawk, getting the crowd to react can be done in different ways. It's not just the people who want action. I watched a bored-looking large male chimp in Regents Park zoo in 1981 sitting up on a limb of wood in his cage. The crowd was gathered expectantly, to gawp at a reflection of themselves and wonder about their antecedents and life in general. As the chimp passed a motion, he reached around and caught it as it came out, then holding it like a banana and looking the crowd in the eye he started eating it. The crowd went totally ape! They hooted, hollered and jumped around and generally put on what must have been an amusing show for him. He didn't seem to abhor the faeces. Neither did he throw it. I forget the denouement. I can't recall whether he finished eating it. I was amused that he was obviously jerking the crowd around while he was bored out of his brain with nothing more interesting to do. In New Zealand, we give them a uniform and put them in charge of customs to ask tired arriving passengers stupid questions about where they've been, what was the highlight of the trip and blah blah blah before sending them down the chute to be scrutinized more closely. I was all in favour of low-level violence but unfortunately lacked the means to do something about it [meaning ignore them and just walk unimpeded through]. I'd have put the customs officer back in his cage and left him to eat poop. Still, I had some fun while waiting - stirring up the crowd and generally preparing for re-entry into the suffocating little society that is New Zealand, where the sheople obediently comply with the most inane bossy-britches nanny-stating from the witches coven running Helengrad. If the USA wants lessons in Homeland Security, come here! The population is cowed and compliant. A terrorist can hardly breathe here, let alone move without being seen. Beijingese are free as a bird by comparison. Mqurice PS: I've just asked Google who says it's coprophagy, [eating excrement and that's an abnormal behaviour] <Coprophagy has been seen in wild mountain gorillas (Harcourt & Stewart 1978) but is rare and only occurs during periods of poor weather. Coprophagy is, therefore, not strictly an abnormal behaviour, at least for gorillas. It is however, undesirable in captive apes because of the potential for disease transmission. >http://www.awionline.org/Lab_animals/biblio/aw1-279.htm Also: animalwelfare.com I have no idea about the origins of the expression "shit-eating grin" in human primates but there is a large body of scatological verbal and behavioural activity in human primates. Bottom jokes are especially popular among young human primates [and increasingly, with digital rectal examinations now popular in middle-aged and older human males having prostate cancer screening - no, the doctor does not want to marry you].