As many as 48 "mature, very big, agressive" exotic animals—including lions, cheetahs, tigers, apes, wolves and bears—have escaped from a Ohio farm whose owner was found dead earlier today. On the bright side, school's been cancelled tomorrow!
In what will surely be the greatest press release of ths week, the National Zoo offers a catalog of how various animals reacted to yesterday's earthquake. In it, we discover that the range of animal quake reactions is roughly the same as the range of human quake reactions, from startled shrieking to baleful hiding:
Gorillas play a tag-like game of punch-and-run, possibly to help hone a sense of boundaries and prepare young apes for grown-up social interaction and conflict. Just like college! (You may want to turn your sound down for the video.) [Guardian]
A decade-long study of chimpanzees in Uganda appears to show that chimps wage war and annex territory, assembling into patrols and killing chimpanzees from other groups. On the other hand, baby chimps are really cute.
To get an idea of how brutal chimp attacks are: the Connecticut woman who was attacked by an ape in February of 2009 has just been released from hospital. She "hopes for more reconstructive surgery."
Monkey Bar is Graydon Carter's Exclusive Lair of the Famous and Awesome. It's so exclusive, even NY Times dining critic Frank Bruni had a tough time getting in. You know who didn't? Levi Johnston. And two of his bodyguards.
Is this the end of monkey ads? The nonprofit Ad Council—which makes all those famous public service ads you see everywhere—has agreed not to use any more "great apes" in its ads. No chimpanzees or orangutans! Not only that, but the CEOs of dozens of major advertisers and ad agencies sit on the Ad Council's board, and PETA is promising to urge all of them to stop with the ape ads, too. Kiss your precious CareerBuilder monkeys goodbye!
