Apes have feelings too
Okay, I really need to point this out, because it's just too sweet not to.
I decided to have a look at this one article in Time (issue: Feb. 20, 2012) about Animal Friendships. Of course we've seen them with cats and dogs, etc. But as I started to read the first paragraph, the description of these two chimpanzees that have become friends. You tell me, Merlin fandom, if this sounds vaguely familiar at all:
(Typing this straight out of the mag; article written by Carl Zimmer)
(I won't do it in italics, unless i'm suppose to? let me know--things in bold are my emphasis)
Since 1995, John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, has been going to Uganda to study 160 chimpanzees that live in the forests of Kibale National Park. Seventeen years is a long time to spend watching wild animals, and after a while it's rare to see truly new behavior. That's why Mitani loves to tell the tale of a pair of older males in the Kibale group whom the researchers named Hare and Ellington.
Hare and Ellington weren't related, yet when they went on hunting trips with other males, they'd share prey with each other rather than compete for it. If Ellington reached out a hand, Hare would give him a piece of meat. If one of them got into a fight, the other would back him up. Hare and Ellington would spend entire days traveling through the forest together. Sometimes they'd be side by side. Other times they'd be 100 yards apart, staying in touch through the foliage with loud, hooting calls. "They'd always be yakking at each other," says Mitani.
Their friendship--for that's what Mitani calls it--lasted until Ellington's death in 2002. What happened next was striking and sad. For all the years Mitani had followed him, Hare had been a sociable, high-ranking ape. But when Ellington died, Hare went through a sudden change.
"He dropped out," says Mitani. "He just didn't want to be with anybody for several weeks. He seemed to go into mourning."
[/end beginning bit in magazine]
So, who else is thinking that Hare = Merlin and Ellington = Arthur?
(And Merlin and Arthur as chimps? I'd read that)
I decided to have a look at this one article in Time (issue: Feb. 20, 2012) about Animal Friendships. Of course we've seen them with cats and dogs, etc. But as I started to read the first paragraph, the description of these two chimpanzees that have become friends. You tell me, Merlin fandom, if this sounds vaguely familiar at all:
(Typing this straight out of the mag; article written by Carl Zimmer)
(I won't do it in italics, unless i'm suppose to? let me know--things in bold are my emphasis)
Since 1995, John Mitani, a primatologist at the University of Michigan, has been going to Uganda to study 160 chimpanzees that live in the forests of Kibale National Park. Seventeen years is a long time to spend watching wild animals, and after a while it's rare to see truly new behavior. That's why Mitani loves to tell the tale of a pair of older males in the Kibale group whom the researchers named Hare and Ellington.
Hare and Ellington weren't related, yet when they went on hunting trips with other males, they'd share prey with each other rather than compete for it. If Ellington reached out a hand, Hare would give him a piece of meat. If one of them got into a fight, the other would back him up. Hare and Ellington would spend entire days traveling through the forest together. Sometimes they'd be side by side. Other times they'd be 100 yards apart, staying in touch through the foliage with loud, hooting calls. "They'd always be yakking at each other," says Mitani.
Their friendship--for that's what Mitani calls it--lasted until Ellington's death in 2002. What happened next was striking and sad. For all the years Mitani had followed him, Hare had been a sociable, high-ranking ape. But when Ellington died, Hare went through a sudden change.
"He dropped out," says Mitani. "He just didn't want to be with anybody for several weeks. He seemed to go into mourning."
[/end beginning bit in magazine]
So, who else is thinking that Hare = Merlin and Ellington = Arthur?
(And Merlin and Arthur as chimps? I'd read that)