Friday, March 04, 2005

This "little people of Flores" story

really is crazy and amazing. Here's the latest, in the NYT: "In a study of the shape and contours of its tiny braincase, the 18,000-year-old adult female, who was barely three feet tall, was found to have anatomical attributes suggesting a capacity for higher thinking processes, a significant memory bank and ability to plan. Not bad for a species with a brain one-third the size of a contemporary human's."

What I would love would be to see a pygmy elephant...

I still have this totally unhelpful & unethical fantasy of having a pet monkey. It was my heart's desire when I was a kid--I was obsessed with Jane Gooddall--I sponsored an elephant shrew at the zoo for $10/year, and it was my great pain that I didn't have the $800 you needed to "adopt" a chimpanzee instead. The shrew was the only primate I could afford. I don't think there are any monkeys that the animal protection folks would think it was ok to import and/or house in a NY apartment. But there is a slight, slight chance that if I ever ended up in an academic job in a tropical climate with low real estate costs that I could have a sort of mini-jungle in a conservatory and have a little monkey or two there--obviously the pet stores that import exotic pets are mostly insanely irresponsible and it's probably illegal to import monkeys as pets anyway and all that, but I can't shake the idea--even just a little spider monkey or something....

What I need is a trip to the zoo.

No comments:

Post a Comment