It Was Only a Matter of Time

When I was a rug-rat growing up in the windy plains of the Texas panhandle, one of our principle joys as kids was to go to my grandfather’s drive-in theater, watch the parents set up the window speaker, sit through the cartoons, and then, when the actual movie started, jump out of the car and run up to the projection booth. There were several reasons that we did this. The best and fore-most reason was that my Grandfather made the best chili pie in the entire south. He would cook this chili con carne dish of his forever, and when we showed up in the booth, he would slit open a small bag of Fritos and top it off with his chili, and I could literally eat my weight in this stuff. When he thought I was about to be just too full, why, he would send me back to my parent’s car with a box of candy and let my parents worry about the results.

This was in the 60’s, and this was way out in the country, so the best of the best movies we did not get to see for a while after they had been officially released, but, oh my, there were some movies that could take even a kid’s attention away from the chili pie, cotton candy and milk-duds.

It was there that I saw Raquel Welch in her fur bikini in “One Million Years BC”. Granted, I did not appreciate her fur bikini as much as I did the stop-action monsters until I was older, but I still have a clear memory of that movie. “Creature from the Black Lagoon” was another that made me pause from forcing chili pie down my throat long enough to be scared of the guy in the green wet-suit. I could list several others that made their way into my twisted psyche, but few could compare to “Planet of the Apes.” Charlton Heston, in his leather rags, talking to an ape with the voice of Roddy McDowall, just about made my little brain flat-line. Who would have guessed that intelligent apes would have a pronounced English accent? My kids today think that the special effects came from an Xbox 360 at the best, but at the time, it did not matter as much that their mouths did not move naturally. I loved that movie, and I still do, even though my tastes are not quite as innocent as they are now. I just knew than, and I am certain now, that apes of the non-homo species would someday start acquiring the habits of the modern Homo-sapiens. After all, even as a kid I knew people that were far less sophisticated than Dr. Zaius.

"Come give Daddy some sugar...."

Now we have proof of these phenomena.

According to our friends at the Times On-Line, there is a group of Orangutans in Borneo that have not only learned how to swim, but they have also learned how to spear-fish. Now swimming was once thought to be impossible for these great apes. I am not so impressed by that myself. I have taught babies how to swim by throwing them in the lake……

NO.

Not really, I would not do that. However, I have taught dogs how to swim and older kids how to swim by gradually bringing them in to deeper and deeper water. No, it is not the swimming that impresses me, it is the spear fishing.

For the love of Nova, they can learn to spear fish? Now, THAT impresses me. I cannot spear fish well enough to stay alive, and yet these apes learned this behavior: “Other apes introduced to the island were seen trying to spear fish with sticks after watching fishermen using rods.” That was not the only human behavior that they learned:

The naturalists also noted that the apes quickly worked out that it was even easier to steal fish from unattended lines used by the humans on the island. The unexpected behavior has been captured in photographs published in the book Thinkers of the Jungle — the Orang-utan Report, by Gerd Schuster, Willie Smits and Jay Ullal, of the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Association.

Now, I am pretty sure that having a slave-ape that can swim and spear fish in my own household would not be particularly useful. However, I have known other occupations where that level of intelligence would work nicely. Some of the DBA’s I have worked with come into that category, and there are other places. Have you every tried to watch a McDonald’s employee try to count out change if you add an extra two cents to the bill to round out the change? There are places that an intelligent Orangutan would easily replace the average convenience-store flunky. For that matter, there are seats in Congress that could use an intelligent Orangutan. After all, as seen from the preceding example, they HAVE learned to steal, and that seems to be a pre-requisite for being a government official. Are we closer than ever to the entire “Planet of the Apes” scenario becoming a real place in history?

"Why didn't we stick to spear-fishing? WHY WHHHYYY WHYYYYYYYYY?"

Perhaps, and perhaps it does not. I think it bears close scrutiny, especially if they progress from stealing fish to TAXING fish. At that point I will resign to welcoming our new Ape Overlords.