MetaFilter posts tagged with monkeys

But what about Monkey Polar Express?

supercres — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:54:33 -0800

The uncanny valley effect (too many previous posts to list) has been blamed for poor acceptance of human-analogue robots (YT) and computer simulations (not to mention the box office results for The Polar Express, Beowulf, and other computer-animated movies). But did you know that humans are not the only primate species to experience this "too close for comfort" effect? A recent behavioral study in macaque monkeys suggests (pdf) that the uncanny valley may be hardwired into our brains at a deeper level (i.e., earlier-evolved) than previously thought.

Gene Therapy for Color-blindness

spitefulcrow — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:58:23 -0800

"But after five months, something clicked. The monkeys picked out red and green, again and again." UW researchers use gene therapy to give squirrel monkeys trichromatic vision. “Not only might we be able to cure disease, but we might engineer eyes with remarkable capabilities. You can imagine conferring enhanced night vision in normal eyes, or engineering genes that make photopigments with spectral properties for whatever you want your eye to see.”

Play That Monkey Music

mygothlaundry — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:22:00 -0800

Monkeys react to music composed specifically for them, using monkey calls. Cellist David Teie, working with psychologist Charles Snowdon, has created music based on monkey calls that successfully affects the emotional state of tamarinds. Turns out that they don't like human music, except possibly Metallica. What can you do with this information? Well, you could buy - or, hey, create - music for your cat.

Mark Helprin vs The Mouth Breathing Morons

shoesfullofdust — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:56:15 -0800

The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn. A review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism : A Writer's Manifesto. This is an insanely long review of Helprin's book by Lawrence Lessig. You can read Helprin's 2007 NYT editorial, the impetus behind all of this, here. [previously]

Sign of the time, so out of line

Joe Beese — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:35:33 -0800

National Geographic's photographic history of monkeys in space.

Snow Monkeys bathe in hot springs

Joe in Australia — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:34:54 -0800

Japanese snow monkeys in Yamanouchi have developed a neat trick - they bathe in the region's hot springs. Here's another gallery. There's even a webcam! I love these guys. They're really cute. And this time I searched for monkeys, hot springs, hot tubs, and every other relevant keyword I could think of. I really hope nobody's posted this before, but with my luck it will appear as, oh, "oriental primate immersion within caloric effusions".

Animal behaviour: Grape expectations

kliuless — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:10:32 -0800

Revealing how we are just a bunch of monkeys... (via) Franz de Waals and Sarah Brosnan

...trained brown capuchin monkeys to give them pebbles in exchange for cucumbers. Almost overnight, a capuchin economy developed, with hungry monkeys harvesting small stones. But the marketplace was disrupted when the scientists got mischievous: instead of giving every monkey a cucumber in exchange for pebbles, they started giving some monkeys a tasty grape instead. (Monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers.) After witnessing this injustice, the monkeys earning cucumbers went on strike. Some started throwing their cucumbers at the scientists; the vast majority just stopped collecting pebbles. The capuchin economy ground to a halt. The monkeys were willing to forfeit cheap food simply to register their anger at the arbitrary pay scale.

in other words, it could be up to our kids to replenish our trust networks... BONUS GRAPES

Hey Cat!

ooga_booga — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:29:18 -0800

Look at This Cat! Not to be confused with look at this dog, look at this muppet (wat a donut...), robots and donuts, monkeys and robots, monkeys on stilts, twin monkeys, koala twins, or celebrities without makeup. [via mefi projects]

Mini Monkees

vronsky — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:34:35 -0800

Mini Monkees Of Brazil

Mail-Order Friends: The Comic Book Squirrel Monkeys

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:50:19 -0800

Mail-Order Friends: The Comic Book Squirrel Monkeys

"I very seldom tell anyone what I actually do, because you just don't know who you are talking to."

fearfulsymmetry — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:14:22 -0800

"The Guardian has been granted exclusive and unfettered access to one of the most controversial research facilities at a British university." Caring or cruel? Inside the primate laboratory. Audio slideshow. A necessary evil - Colin Blakemore. Wise monkeys - Gill Langley.

Cartoon Monkeys go BOOM

carsonb — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:49:40 -0800

Enjoy 10 variously attributed^* vintage Monkey Cartoons and more courtesy STWALLSKULL and BOOM!
Also available for your viewing pleasure, an itemized list with embeddable links: These are all located at the first link above, but here they are again for your convenience: The Monkey Sword Masamune (1930)
森のお医者と白衣の勇士 (Doctor of Forest and Brave Warrior of Sanitary Gown)
Sankichi the Monkey in The Storm Troopers (1934)
The Monkey Fleet (1936)
Betty Boop with Henry, the World’s Funniest American (1935)
Art Gallery (1939)
Pipe Dreams (1938)
Monkey Melodies (1930)
Happy Harmonies: Good Little Monkeys (1935)
The Peanut Vendor (1934) I find that STWALLSKULL and Steven Stwalley have been lovingly featured before, and recently.

Pyow-pyow

chuckdarwin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:42:28 -0800

A troop of putty-nosed monkeys in west Africa has been found to use a rudimentary language.

The art of Laurie Hogin

homunculus — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:11:04 -0800

Monkey Portraits: Allegories of Brand Loyalty, by Laurie Hogin. [Via Right Some Good.] Hogin was previously mentioned here and here.

Animal Planet investigates alcoholism in monkeys

finite — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:32:42 -0800

"Significantly, the percentage of monkeys and humans who avoid alcohol is the same." [YouTube]

Illustrations of primates

salvia — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:31:35 -0800

Look at that tail! Stephen Nash has illustrated the most endangered primates (image gallery: part 1, part 2) -- so faithfully over the years that one now bears his name. The just-released "Primates in Peril" report has full profiles of each animal, along with all of Nash's illustrations (including those replaced by photos in the gallery above -- don't miss the sumatran orangutan!).

Pan homo culture

svenvog — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:07:00 -0800

I laughed, I cried, and I welcomed our new Pan-Homo Culture From the always edumataining TED talks. Now Dawkins free.

Portraits of Apes and Monkeys

Kattullus — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:57:35 -0800

Incredibly expressive portraits of apes and monkeys by photographer Jill Greenberg whose pictures of crying babies raised heckles last year.

A touch, I do confess it.

dersins — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:11:50 -0800

Notes towards the complete works of Shakespeare [pdf] by Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan. (About the authors.) Documentation. "Making of" video. [previously discussed, but never actually linked]. From the same people: Carbon Life Form, a small Mac application that will die of starvation unless you feed it files.

Brazilian Blogger Bash

vacapinta — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:35:05 -0800

Brazilian Blogger Bashing! The respected Brazilian newspaper Estadao decided to promote its new online presence by jokingly producing a series of ads with obvious misfits and asking such questions as "Is this the guy giving you dating advice?" and a video (youtube) comparing bloggers to monkeys. Bloggers are outraged "Why would you read a newspaper that compares bloggers to monkeys?". In today's newspaper, Estadao offers no apology but instead dryly recounts the facts. Meanwhile, the resulting controversy, with thousands of blogs weighing in, has driven a lot of traffic to their new site.

Custom Monkey Drawings & More

jonson — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:24:26 -0800

Illustrator Apelad has many various projects & flickrsets, including the fairly well known Laugh Out Loud Cats & the Hodgman inspired Hobo Names project, but some of the lesser known ones are awesome as well, including this set of images created for common HTTP Errors, this Alphabet of Monsters, and a personal favorite, Monkey!, wherein users send in a monkey description and receive in return a drawing.

Affected by Digg Effect

Burhanistan — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:35:25 -0800

DailyHub - "Social Content for Business Geeks". A Digg-esque aggregator that purports to be grown up.

All things are joyful to a monkey

homunculus — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:21:25 -0800

Mr Monkey's World of Hats ! [Via.]

Apes of Wrath:

P-Soque — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:28:59 -0800

Apes of Wrath In October, they gained similar rights to humans, now it seems monkeys are plotting to take over the earth. Their bid for global domination has been happening right before our eyes; it's just a matter of connecting the dots. Check out this ominous timeline of escalating monkey aggression, drawn from real news reports. The evolution will not be televised.

Animal Accents

pracowity — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:19:48 -0800

We're Schleswig-Holsteins, darling. (Ah, from the Low Countries.) Cows have accents. Some other animals with accents: birds, otters, frogs, monkeys.