An Arizona Republican is trying to force Creationism back into science classes - Friendly Atheist

[cab67]

6. Give us a choice?

I choose New World monkeys (platyrrhines). They have much better dispositions than Old World monkeys (cercopithecids). Old World monkeys are greedy, ill-tempered, and just all-around unpleasant creatures to be near.*

That said, I know I don't have a choice. We're related to cercopithecids.

Neither does this legislator.


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* useless trivia - the vast, vast majority of monkeys shown in movies are platyrrhines. The film could be set in Africa or Asia, but the monkey will usually be some sort of capuchin, the white-faced capuchin being the most common. These are the stereotypical organ-grinder monkeys. The monkey that supposedly carried a hemorrhagic fever from Central Africa to California in the 1995 movie Outbreak was a white-faced capuchin. They're from Central and northern South America.

The only movie set in Asia that actually depicts Asian monkeys I can think of is Apocalypse Now, and that's only because there happened to be a bunch of macaques where they were filming the river scenes in the Philippines.

I've asked a couple of primatologists I know, and they tell me that capuchins are just much easier to train and handle than baboons or macaques.

Maybe you can win some money on Jeopardy with this information. Or not.