1. Mississippi named most religious state – The latest Pew Forum study showing the religious demographics of each state found Mississippi to be the most religous with 82% of the population. Apparently, it placed number one in worship attendence, frequency of prayer, and belief in god. My own home state of New Jersey was fortunately way down the list at #30, though I wish it were dead last at #46 (because of several ties), an honor that was reserved for both Vermont and New Hampshire. So congratulations to Vermont and New Hampshire for being the most godless states in the union! You guys rock!

Yes, I know these aren't chimps

2. Chimps have near-human understanding of fire -

The use and control of fire are behavioral characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals. Now, a new study by Iowa State University anthropologist Jill Pruetz reports that savanna chimpanzees in Senegal have a near human understanding of wildfires and change their behavior in anticipation of the fire’s movement.

3. Top 10 scams of 2009 - All I can say is that this should be required viewing for everyone. Click the link.

4. Illinois comptroller candidate vandalizes atheist sign – Now granted, I don’t much care for the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s (FFRF) sign either. I believe it’s the same message verbatim that they used in Olympia, Washington last year that I thought was way too divisive for its public venue. But conservative candidate William J. Kelly has now violated the law and arguably has committed a hate crime by diliberately trying to turn the atheist sign in the Illinois Capitol building in Springfield upside down in protest. He was quite public about his desire to have it taken down prior to this, which makes it a premeditated action. Upon seeing him in the process of trying to pull off his stunt, police escorted him away.

Dan Parker of the FFRF knocked it out of the park with his response:

“We atheists believe that the nativity scene is mocking humanity,” by suggesting that those who do not believe in Jesus will go to hell, Barker said. “But notice that we are not defacing or stealing nativity scenes because we disagree with their speech.”

via

Download AI URL: http://www.imgcapture.com/?p=1456

Material description:

Elements of the previous one is very similar to chimpanzees, but the head wear pink headset, as well as a plan and only a pistol.

Although a pistol, but the impression is more terror. Pink color rendering is more like the blood flowing. That the exaggerated violence and wild cold-blooded.

I have just finished watching the BBC series “Last Chance To See”, featuring Stephen Fry and conservationist Mark Cawardine. I had recorded the episodes when the series was broadcast back in the autmun but only got around to working through them in the last few weeks. As with most programmes featuring Stephen Fry, they are beyond brilliant: Excellently filmed, informative, touching and, perhaps most importantly, imperative.

20 years ago, the late, great Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” and an extremely clever man accompanied Cawardine on a trip to see some of the rarest animals on the planet. Originally slightly skeptical of the process of chasing down a flightless parrot in New Zealand or sitting up all night to catch sight of the ugly Aye-Aye on Madagascar, Adams was a total convert to the cause of wildlife conservation from then on.

The result of the trip was a radio documentary series and book of the name “Last Chance To See”, not to mention many lectures delivered by Adams who supported wildlife causes such as the WWF in the guise of someone who was definitely NOT of the sandal-wearing, tree-hugging ilk, but an intelligent, respected and authoritative voice from the world of “celebrity”. His status as an iconic author gave the causes he supported added weight among the generation who grew up reading his work, hanging on his every utterance.

The word “untimely” is often chucked in front of the word “death” when someone dies young, often with little thought for the weight of that word. In the case of Douglas Adams, his death at the age of 49 on FA Cup Final day in May 2001 was untimely indeed. I remember the day vividly. I was ensconced in the sitting room of a boarding master at school with several other Liverpool-supporting friends, watching Michael Owen snatch the cup from under the nose of Arsenal, when the news headlines scrolled across the screen. I had only that year read the entire Hitchhiker trilogy of five and fallen in love with the silly science, brilliant wordplay and parody, fantastic intergalactic landscape and sheer imaginative freewheeling which resided in the pages of Douglas Adams’ books. His name and the words “dead at 49″ struck me very deeply as being untimely – how could he be dead when I’ve only just discovered why his life is so precious to us?

He was the voice for the computer age, championing the Apple Mac. He was the voice for science and intelligent debate with religion. He was the suit of armour which many endangered species would be donning in the new millenium. He was Stephen Fry without the television exposure, more reserved and less flamboyant. I admire Stephen Fry greatly and I think Adams and he were certainly kindred spirits, sharing many passions and interests, as well as enormous intellectual and literary abilities.  I have no doubt that, were he alive now, Douglas would be right up there with Stephen, tweeting from the pantheon of internet gods, worshipping the iPhone and educating us with incisive and engaging broadcasts, be they on television or radio or from the lectern.

So it was entirely appropriate that Stephen Fry attempted to fill the massive void left by Adams by taking up the challenge set by Cawardine, to retrace his journey with Douglas two decades on. They tracked down the Amazonian Manatee, the Northern White Rhino, the Aye-Aye, the Komodo Dragon, the Kakapo and the Blue Whale. Fry points out that these are a mere six of more than 4,500 endangered species across the world. They encountered many others along the way and came across the remains of some already long gone. I found myself in tears as I watched the re-union of two rescued chimpanzee babies with their own kind. The primitive link between them and us, the joy of seeing a child being saved, the thought that our closest relation in nature is slowly being killed off, touched a nerve.

But perhaps what most caught my attention was a moment in the final episode when, on the trail of the blue whale, Cawardine pointed out that he and Douglas had actually tracked the Yangtze river dolphin on their original travels but, while planning this new series, the animal had been declared functionally extinct.

While I was in primary school in the mid-nineties, the giant panda, the orangutan and the Yangtze river dolphin were the figureheads of endangerment and names casually tossed at us by teachers during classes tentatively called Nature. At that age, most children are susceptible to the calling to “Save The Animals” and many lose that enthusiasm as time passes. I could not quite grasp the enormity of what it all meant back then. But, with my more adult worldview, I was shocked to hear that the freshwater dolphin which became a familiar figure in my early childhood was from now on only to exist in photos.

It is rather like being told that Santa definitely doesn’t exist or seeing a grandparent die or losing your virginity. In that moment, a massive upheaval in whatever life you have lived before takes place. You have lost something childlike but gained some new knowledge. It is that transition from innocence to experience. Hearing that something which existed in my childhood as a living symbol of our natural world which ought to be cherished and saved was now, actually, beyond saving…that stuck in my throat.

What it did was what the purpose of this programme was, I feel. It made me realise that we human beings, we almighty rulers of the planet, we who are so bloody ingenious, aren’t quite as clever as we thought. We may think we are the most advanced creature around but that does not apply insofar as our savage abuse of the planet, its resources and our cohabitants demonstrates our destructive capabilities. Not only that, but the notion that that we are able to do anything is rubbished by the evidence of these programmes, by the death of the Yangtze river dolphin: We have singularly FAILED to save creatures we all knew we were eradicating.

If one steps on an earwig, fine, it happens, we may not have seen it and there are plenty of earwigs to go around. We might hit a badger crossing the road – again, sad, but not disastrous. But when some of us cut swathes through ancient rainforests, others pour bile and poison into our oceans, still more spew fire and brimstone into the clouds and the rest sit idly by and do nothing – that is a travesty. It’s all very well for us to KNOW that the Yangtze river dolphin or the rhino or the tiger are endangered, stare at pictures in books or at our flickering television screens and say “Dear me”. It is very much a different thing for us to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

In this month when the world is coming together in Copenhagan to try and solve the problem of climate change, it strikes me as baffling that the only concern – certainly in the media coverage of the summit – seems to be for the implications for humanity. The whalers still whale; the rainforests still fall; the rhino and elephant still sacrifice their lives and the medals of our vicious regime are struck in their ivory. It’s times like this when you want to pull your hair out and scream “Fuck trade agreements and quotas and targets and pussyfooting around multinational companies! They’re killing the planet, killing the animal kingdom, killing beauty.”

I’m in danger of sounding very sandal-wearing and tree-hugging myself. I’m not going to go vegan or stop wearing leather – I understand how nature works and we are, even in our technological way, part of that. But there was no need for hundreds of companies to pour pollutants into the Yangtze and knowingly do away with the dolphins. There is no need for the hunting trade which cuts through hundreds of species across our planet purely for sport. There is no need for the deforestation which will kill the tiger and the panda and the orangutan and the gorilla and many more. “Last Chance To See” was, I said at the start of this blog, an imperative piece of television. It said “Look. Now act.” Very simply, we must act now and not just throw words and cliché at the problem. Otherwise Cawardine and Fry may, in twenty years time, have nothing left to see at all.

NeopetsValley has exclusive information that you can only get here. So we`ve got some well-based news about upcoming Webkinz pets!

- Signature Dutch Bunny (visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_rabbit to learn more about Dutch Bunnies)

- Tree Kangaroo (visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_kangaroo to learn more about Tree Kangaroos)

- Signature Pig (visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig to learn more about Pigs)

- Beaver (visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver to learn more about Beavers)

- Old English Sheepdog (visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Sheepdog to learn more about Old English Sheepdogs)

Some new KinzClips, too!

- Tie Dye Frog

- Irish Setter

- Chimpanzee

- Spotted Leopard

- Key Lime Dino

- Black Poodle

- Pink & White Cat

- Chicken

And that`s it! We`ll let you know as soon as we know more about those releases.

For passionate people like me, dangerous propoganda perfectly timed for sabotage is infuriating! As I listen to tidbits of media this week from NPR to Fox, I am appalled that the left has once again bought into this Divide and Conquer manipulation!

If there was ever a time to stop being sucked in to this manipulation and take the high road, the time is now. The time is now to REFOCUS on the COMMON GROUND we all share. We need to insist that our leaders and media spokespersons move away from expending energy on deflecting these distractions and that they insist on one direction only: strategizing towards WIN-WIN solutions!

Regardless of what anyone thinks about “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”, below are the talking points we should be focusing on during the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, because these points all effect the outcome that yes, does relate to the increase in global warming; but most importantly, these points are the ones that are without a doubt, effecting our planet and need immediate attention:

* Overuse of plastics and non-recyclable plastics have produced oceanic waste in the magnitude of the infamous “plastic island” in the Pacific Ocean. This waste is not only threatening ocean species of all types, it is threatening humans through the food chain, increasing carcinogenic compounds in the fish we ingest. When plastic waste turns up in the carcasses of whales and other animals, fish, and birds, we need to start preventing this for everyone’s sake, no matter what a person’s country, political or religious preferences, we can all agree that a whale filled with plastic waste and oil sludge warrants regulation and preventive measures across the board. Plastic comes from oil, needs processing, produces pollution in the air, water, and land sources all throughout the life cycle. WE NEED REGULATION TO REDUCE  PRODUCTION OF PLASTICS AND NON-RECYCLABLE PLASTICS to PREVENT THE SPREAD OF TOXIC WASTE THROUGH LAND, WATER, SKY, AND FOOD SOURCES. If companies have not done this voluntarily up to now, we all know it won’t happen without regulation! CAP AND TRADE IS JUST A NIMBY SOLUTION THAT STILL EFFECTS THE WHOLE!

* When a company mines, or drills for oil or other natural resources anywhere in the world, regulations should be universal to prevent the poisoning of land, water, and air for the surrounding residents, workers, and the planet as clouds filled with toxins travel across the globe. WE NEED UNIVERSAL REGULATION OF TOXIC SUBSTANCES PRODUCED BY NATURAL RESOURCE EXTRACTION AND MANUFACTURING TO PREVENT THE HEALTH RISKS TO SO MANY POPULATIONS, WHICH USUALLY END UP BEING LOW-INCOME POPULATIONS THAT CANNOT ADVOCATE FOR THEMSELVES. We can all agree that this is not correct or good business in the eyes of any religious leader, God, or whomever. Coal ash, while regulated to reduce the effect of “global warming”, becomes another toxin through land and water sources. We need consistent regulation of toxins throughout the life cycle, not piecemeal shifting from one place to another.

* TRASH IN ALL FORMS NEEDS GLOBAL REGULATION SO WASTE, ELECTRONIC OR OTHERWISE, IS NOT HAULED OFF TO POLLUTE ANOTHER COUNTRY AND ITS CHILDREN.  (Sending carbon under the ocean to make it seemingly disappear will come back to haunt us somewhere down the road, perhaps through aquifirs.) Third world countries handling the waste from industrialized countries once again will continue to be the victims as long as a global criteria is not created. These countries often burn this hazardous waste, which travels through the sky, polluting each one of our bodies in time, regardless of what planetary warming effect it may have. It is toxic and needs regulation!

THESE THREE TALKING POINTS, WE CAN ALL AGREE NEED REGULATION AND SOLUTIONS.

JOBS ARE NEEDED TO CLEAN UP ALL OF THESE TOXIC MINE FIELDS FROM THE RIVERS OF TENNESSEE TO AFRICA, LATIN AMERICA, AND INDONESIA. These jobs can replace the ones that are polluting the planet!

Regulations to address these toxic threats to humanity that we can ALL agree on will also have the effect of reducing global pollution.

NEW AND EXISTING ENERGY PRODUCTION NEEDS REGULATION TO PREVENT THE ABOVE PROBLEMS, whether it be PREVENTING ASTHMA for a CHILD LIVING CLOSE TO THE LOS ANGELES HARBOR or preventing contaminated DRINKING WATER IN APPALACHIA OR INDIA, UNIVERSAL REGULATION TO REDUCE ALL POLLUTION from ENERGY, NATURAL RESOURCES, AND MANUFACTURING PRACTICES WILL BE A WIN-WIN FOR ALL by LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD. This will PREVENT THE systematic MIGRATION OF TOXINS TO ANY OTHER COUNTRY AND PREVENT ANY LOCAL ECONOMY from BECOMING A STATISTIC due to the CURRENT STATE of UNREGULATED GLOBAL INDUSTRIES! 

THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA IS THE NEXT COUNTRY POISED FOR RAMPANT POLLUTING INDUSTRY BY CHINA AND INDIA IF WE DO NOT STOP THIS NOW!

LET’S START WITH WHAT WE CAN ALL AGREE ON AND GO FROM THERE AND STOP BUYING INTO THE DIVIDE AND CONQUER TACTICS THAT ARE JUST A DIVERSION FOR THESE DEEPER ISSUES THAT NEED GLOBAL SOLUTIONS AND REGULATIONS SIGNED BY ALL COUNTRIES NOW!

 World Leaders, please take the high road! Our children are depending on you to do so!

Granny Pants

Never let it be said that I don’t find the highest quality entertainment on the internet and bring it to your attention.

This is a video of a chimp on a segway.

But wait wait wait, watch the whole thing, because he learns how to use it. If you skip to about 3 minutes in he gradually gets the hang of it. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s a moment in there in which this stops being a mildly entertaining clip from a bonkers japanese tv show, and becomes really scientifically important.  Man discovers fire, chimp learns Segway. See? Yeah?

Recognition that children are the way to protect the great apes is becoming more and more apparent.  However, these children, even though they swear that they want to protect the apes have almost all eaten gorilla and chimpanzee.  Subsistence level living pushes people into the bushmeat trade.  With an easy food source that can also be sold what is to stop these children’s fathers from hunting our closest relatives?

Gorillas are killed and eaten on the believe that their meat confers strength to whomever consumes it.

Bushmeat is both consumed in Africa by locals as well as sold to other countries looking for exotic meats.

Read more here

Alright, so it’s a chimpanzee!  These were taken at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, KS. 

It’s a little hard to stare at something in a cage that is so close to what we are.  He looks very thoughtful in this picture, but in the next few that I took, he has his tongue out and mouth open!  Haha!   For more SEPIA SCENES, click here!

I don’t think this is the same fellow, but it’s too good to not put up!

Chimp sans pipe 

This one reminds me of a James Dean picture, although, I don’t think he had celery in his mouth!

Thanks for stopping by!

I’m not usually susceptible to “cute” but…

Click on the picture to see more.

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION
There are people resemling one another, at least seven according to sources.
If some such people, of different ages, are arranged in a row, we will be tempted to believe that they are related to each other.
The casual similarity of the outline of east coast of America and the west coast of Africa, was enough to jump to the conclusion that, one broke away from the other, as if these are ice blocks!
There is the Kennedy rock hill, which looks like the profile of the ex President of the USA, when viewed from a particular point.
A scientific theory must be subjected to the same hair splitting analysis, as is customary in a criminal case. A single evidence against the prosecution theory will, if the evidence is admitted in the court, enable the culprit to get away with it.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
If survival is the aim of evolution, plancktons, grass and cockroaches are better evolved than mammals, many species of wich have been totally wiped off from the earth. Man is extremely vulnerable.
If the resmblance in behavior is studied, asian elephants are much more similar to us, than the chimpanzee. It was in the news that a female elephant, of a circus company, was eloped by a wild elephant. Savitry, the circus elephant, returned after some months in the forest, carrying a baby in its woumb! Did they love each other as cildren, before Savitry was caught by men? Otherwise why did its lover pick her for mating?
 My father used to tell us about an elephant which could write 51 letters of Malayalam in sand, using a stick.

 Man is envious. Other creatures exploit species, different from their own. Man exploits his own brothers, making them slaves either directly or by giving wages.
Today, he is making a large number of nulear power plants, without a thought about future generations, who will curse us, after we have left the scene.
All through history he has done only one thing kill ) to the pwer of billion billion !

1. Mutant genes ‘key to long life’ -

There is a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that prevents cells from ageing, researchers say.

Scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the US say centenarian Ashkenazi Jews have this mutant gene.

They found that 86 very old people and their children had higher levels of telomerase which protects the DNA.

They say it may be possible to produce drugs that stimulate the enzyme.

2. Atheist billboard goes up in San Diego – It’s gotten some great publicity here and in this CNN video. As always, there’s someone in the video claiming that the billboard is attacking people, which perfectly illustrates the level of delusion we’re dealing with here as the ad simply says, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

3. Right-Handed Chimps: Clues to Language Origin -

Most of the linguistic functions in humans are controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere. A study of captive chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Atlanta, Georgia), reported in the January 2010 issue of Elsevier’s Cortex, suggests that this “hemispheric lateralization” for language may have its evolutionary roots in the gestural communication of our common ancestors. A large majority of the chimpanzees in the study showed a significant bias towards right-handed gestures when communicating, which may reflect a similar dominance of the left hemisphere for communication in chimpanzees as that seen for language functions in humans.

4. Westboro Baptist Church shifts focus from gay-bashing to Jew-bashing – Why do I continue to report the antics of these media whores when I know all they care about is getting attention? Because they are my favorite religion ever. They illustrate what is wrong with religion perfectly and get called lunatics by mainstream religious folks despite the fact that they share nearly identical positions. The only difference between Pat Robertson and the WBC is that says gays are evil on TV before an audience of millions while the WBC has to get creative in order to get their audiences.

The shirts read, "I'm not with stupid."

I don’t watch television so I didn’t see the Oprah show that so many people saw–the one featuring a woman mauled by a chimpanzee. I heard the story from a fellow ENS sufferer who had watched the show. The revelation came at the end of a long conversation late at night. A woman had been mauled by a chimpanzee last February. The chimp had ripped off her face and hands. She had shown her “face” on the Oprah show.

“Oh my God,” I said. I was traumatized just by the hearing. More than that—I was changed. The woman had no eyes. She had no nose, no lips. No hands. I watched my own hands flutter before my eyes. How beautiful they appeared. Like Michelango drawings, animated by life force. Bone and blood and joints tracing feelings in the air. How, I wondered, does a person live with such a loss? I had so many questions: “How is she?” “Does she want to live?” “How old is she?” “Was she attractive?” The last question is pretty dumb. Of course she was, compared to now.

“Look it up on the Internet,” my friend said.

“No. No,” I said. “I don’t want to see.”

When I got off the phone, I sat staring into space. How could anyone live through that? How could anyone live without a face? Without hands?

I looked it up on the Internet, afraid of what I might find. Her name is Charla. Here is a photo of Charla’s face. She says she’s still the same person she was before this happened to her. She just looks different. She’s looking forward to getting “better and stronger.”

I believe that a lot of people who arrive at my site are suffering from Empty Nose Syndrome. I thought maybe Charla’s story would inspire you, as it does me.  I am humbled.

I am not going to stop writing about Empty Nose Syndrome because it is a form of needless suffering, and thus, something can be done about it.

But I am going to remember Charla.

Eagles Coach Andy Reid watches in disgust as Donovan McNabb throws for a touchdown on third down instead of calling a timeout and allowing Akers to kick a field goal.

When a team has nine more passing first downs, and 131 more total yards than its opponent, and its quarterback throws for 450 yards, generally one would assume that team would be the victor. But when you’re the Philadelphia Eagles, none of that matters.

The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the San Diego Chargers 31-23, and while many would conclude that the Birds are making a downward spiral with their second-straight loss, there are many beams of optimism to take away from this game.

Thanks to Jeremy Maclin’s 5-yard touchdown reception 48 seconds into the fourth quarter, the NFL Philadelphia Eagles have scored a touchdown in the red zone for the first time in over three years.

“When it got to that third-and-goal situation from the five, I tried calling a timeout so we could kick a field goal,” Eagles Coach Andy Reid said. “But I guess Donovan [McNabb] couldn’t hear me and the referees didn’t signal it.  I was afraid that if we went for it on third down, we might fumble the ball or thrown an interception, but we got lucky.”

A  1-yard run by McNabb against the Cowboys on October 8, 2006 gave the now 5-4 team its last successful conversion. The Eagles scored three more touchdowns after the quarterback sneak for six, but the scores came on an 87-yard reception by Hank Baskett, a 40-yard reception by Reggie Brown and a 102-yard interception return by Lito Sheppard.

Ironically enough, none of those players are currently with the team (A player must average at least 1/8 of a catch per game to be considered; hence, Reggie Brown does not meet the requirement).

Reid elected to kick the ball on an earlier occasion after the Green Birds squandered a first-and-goal opportunity from the Chargers’ 1-yard-line. But late in the game, some of the coaches questioned Reid’s decision to kick the ball on third down early in the fourth quarter.

“We were only down by 19 at that point, and could have made it a 16-point game if Akers connected,” the two-time NFL Coach of the Year methodically explained. “That means we would have been six field goals away from taking the lead, which is much more manageable than seven field goals had we turned it over.”

Overall, Reid’s decision making has been superb this season, despite the team’s 5-4 record. The only area where fans and coaches criticized him was regarding his questionable play selection by having an overload of passing plays.

There were no complaints today, however, as the Eagles ran the ball a season-high 13 times and only threw the ball 56 times.

“Balance is essential to our team’s success,” Reid said during the post-game press conference. “I’m not sure what the average pass-to-run ratio is, but I do know that passing the ball on 81 percent of our plays is as close to the NFL average as it’s going to get.”

Game Notes:
The Philadelphia Eagles’ 13-9 loss to the Oakland Raiders on Oct. 18 is not a misprint. We called the NFL Headquarters, ESPN, CBS Sportsline and Michael Vick, all of whom are spectators throughout the season to confirm the details.

About a week ago, Oprah featured a woman named Charla Nash (see part 1 of the video here). She came on the show behind a black veil, guided by Oprah into her chair. The story that brought her to national television happened in February, 2009. Nash received a call from her friend, Sandra Herold, asking help to get her 200-lb pet chimpanzee, Travis, back into his cage. Upon Nash’s arrival, the chimp suddenly attacked her and started to rip off her nose, eyes, and upper jaw. By the time the police arrived, Nash’s face and fingers was almost completely gone. Travis went for a police, and was subsequently shot and killed.

Humans have a desire to be in control. Our technology gives us the ability to manipulate our surroundings, which only adds fire to the appeal of conquering nature. The romanticized idea of being in control of a wild animals is present in stories throughout history, real and fictional. Being the proud owner of a vicious animal is looked upon with admiration. But bringing a wild animal to one’s home as a pet will only cause trouble on both sides, and Nash’s story is just another reminder of that fact.

As renowned primatologist Jane Goodall said in this opinion piece, “a chimpanzee can never be totally domesticated”. Wild animals are called wild for a reason: they have primal instincts that can’t be nurtured away. In Travis’ case, the chimp had done commercials as a baby, wore humans clothes, and entertained himself with TV. However, even living a life in captivity couldn’t erase the violent nature of the animal. Because of his captivity, the abilities Travis should have had, like knowing how to interact with other chimps and finding himself food, had been replaced by human traits such as being toilet trained and eating from a table. This results in the chimp losing the life it could’ve had in is natural habitat, and instead, received a life of confinement and forced adaption. No matter how good we are at using nature to our advantage, there are some things that we just can’t change.

Sometimes the wild should remain in the wild.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-november-12-2009/jane-goodall

Watch this hilarious video of Jane Goodall’s appearance on The Daily Show with John Stewart!

Charla Nash, la mujer a quien le arrancaron su vida por un chimpancé revela cómo su rostro esta realmente desfigurado, en el programa de Oprah.

Nov. 12, 2009: Woman whose face was destroyed in chimpanzee attack shows her face on Oprah

The Will to Live

For some people who make headlines, the 15 minutes of fame come and go and life eventually returns to normal. But for others, like Charla Nash, the painful process of picking up the pieces lasts long after the news cameras have gone away. Nine months after the terrifying attack that put her in the headlines, Charla Nash is speaking out for the first time.

On February 16, 2009, Charla went over to the Stamford, Connecticut, home of her friend and employer, Sandra Herold. According to news reports, Sandra called Charla because Sandra’s 14-year-old pet chimpanzee, Travis, escaped and she needed help getting him back inside.

When Charla arrived, Travis savagely attacked her. Sandra called 911, and when police arrived, they found Charla in a devastating state. “I would never have imagined that an animal could have done that,” emergency worker Andrea Repko says. “[Her hands] honestly looked like they went through a meat grinder.”

Against all odds, Charla survived the brutal attack though the chimp broke most of the bones in her face and ripped off her nose, lips, eyes and hands. A large portion of her scalp is missing, she only has one thumb, and doctors have created a hole in her face for her to get fluids through a straw.

For the past nine months, Charla’s been recovering at the Cleveland Clinic. On her 56th birthday, she opened up to Oprah. “I’m getting stronger and healthier,” Charla says. “I’d like to put across to people’s minds that these exotic animals are very dangerous and they shouldn’t be around.”

Charla says she can’t remember anything from the day of the vicious attack, and she’s glad for that. “I don’t want to remember, because I couldn’t imagine what it was like,” she says. “I want to get healthy. I don’t want to wake up with nightmares.”

One thing Charla does remember, though, is that Travis the chimp had always been scary. “One time he was running around the yard and swinging off the trees of the house, and he jumped on my back and he pulled a big hunk of hair out of my head,” she says. “I had tears in my eyes and [Sandra] was laughing and I told her, ‘It hurts.’”

When Charla awoke in the hospital after the attack, she says she couldn’t at first understand what had happened to her. “I do remember I kept saying that, ‘Well, one of these days I’m going to see.’ And then the doctors said, ‘No, you’re never going to see again,’ and I’m like: ‘Well, I don’t know. They don’t know what they’re talking about,’” Charla says. “But the eye doctor came in a couple weeks ago and said that it’s a shame they had to remove my eyes, and that’s when I really knew.”

Despite her extensive injuries, Charla says she is not in any pain. She wears a veil in front of her face daily, but more for the sake of others than herself. “[I wear it] so I don’t scare people,” she says. “Sometimes other people might insult you, so I figure maybe it’s easier if I just walk around covered up.”

For the first time in public, Charla agrees to lift her veil. She has been keeping her face secret because she knows the tabloids having been angling for a picture of her. There has even been an armed guard posted outside Charla’s door to protect her privacy from anyone who might want to photograph her. However, Charla says she isn’t really worried about the public reaction to the destruction that has occurred to her face. “People are going to say what they’re going to say,” she says. “I need to move forward and get better and stronger.”

Though Charla says she’s still the same person she was before the attack, there are things she misses. “I’m just sorry I can’t spend more time with my daughter,” she says. “I know she misses me. I miss her too.” Seventeen-year-old Briana is a senior in high school and is living with friends in Stamford while her mother is in Ohio.

When Briana visits her mother, Charla says they just enjoy being together. “We lay next to each other and we hold each other and we talk about things—what she does at school or with her friends.” Next year, Briana will be heading off to college, which Charla says she’s excited about. “I want her to have the best. I always wanted everything good for her.”

Despite her setbacks, Charla has dreams for her own future. “I’m not a candidate for a hand transplant because I have no eyesight,” Charla says. “I’m hoping somewhere along the line I’ll be evaluated and that maybe when I get a face transplant. The hand transplant will be done with it because they have to be done at the same time from the same donor.”

These days, Charla is working on getting up and walking around. “If I don’t feel good, I still push myself to walk during the day,” she says.

After her horrific ordeal, Charla says she is counting on the support of her loved ones. “Before I was really independent, wanted to be alone,” she says. “One thing I’m noticing now is I want to be independent, but I don’t want to be alone anymore. It’s scary. I don’t want to be out somewhere and somebody’s stalking me and I don’t know it. I don’t want to get on the wrong bus somewhere or lost in a store. It’s just not the same.”

The resolve that has helped Charla with her recovery isn’t new to her, she says. “I’ve always known that I’ve been strong,” she says. “If I couldn’t do anything, I just took my time, took a breath and then tried it again.”

When the accident first took place, Charla says she thought about giving up. “In the beginning, I was unhappy,” she says. “[But] my brothers made it easy. It made me realize how much I needed them.”

Though vanity has to be put aside when someone faces a tragedy like Charla’s, she says she was never a vain person. “I was like a bag lady,” she says. “I’d wear my snowsuit, my winter coat and my ski hat on my head. Every once in a while I’d get dressed up and nobody knew it was me.”

Charla says she really can’t be concerned with what other people think about her looks now. “I’m the one who has to like this,” she says. “Not them. So it doesn’t matter what they say.”

The people who love Charla know that she’s the same person she always was, and she says that’s the most important thing. “I just look different,” she says. “Things happen in life that you can’t change. It’s a tragedy.”

The Nash family is suing Sandra Herold for $50 million. Though Herold had no comment regarding Oprah’s interview, her lawyer issued a statement. “All of Sandy’s hopes and prayers are with Charla and her daughter in this challenging time. Sandy has always tried to help Charla and wished her the best. When Charla lost her job, it was Sandy who provided her with employment and a place to live. Sandy hopes and prays for a full and speedy recovery.”

Science reports:

The ability to communicate through spoken language may be the trait that best sets humans apart from other animals. Last year researchers identified the first gene implicated in the ability to speak. This week, a team shows that the human version of this gene appears to date back no more than 200,000 years–about the time that anatomically modern humans emerged. The authors argue that their findings are consistent with previous speculations that the worldwide expansion of modern humans was driven by the emergence of full-blown language abilities.

The researchers who identified the gene, called FOXP2, showed that FOXP2 mutations cause a wide range of speech and language disabilities. In collaboration with part of this team, geneticist Svante Pääbo’s group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, set about tracing the gene’s evolutionary history.

They sequenced the FOXP2 genes of several primates–chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and rhesus macaque–as well as that of the mouse, and compared them to the human sequence. Since the last common ancestor of humans and mice, which lived some 70 million years ago, there have been only three changes in the protein’s amino acid sequence, the team reported online in Nature on 14 August. And two of these changes have occurred in the human lineage since it split from that of chimps roughly 6 million years ago.

The team estimated how recently the human version of FOXP2 became “fixed” in human populations–that is, when all humans harbored the last amino acid substitution. Although the date cannot be pinpointed, the team concluded that the fixation was 95% likely to have occurred no more than 120,000 years ago, and virtually certain to have occurred no earlier than 200,000 years ago. And statistical tests further indicated that the gene has been favored by natural selection.

Charla’s family has filed a notice November 4th, with the state’s Office of Claims Commissioner in Connecticut asking for permission to sue the state for $150 million, saying officials failed to prevent the attack. Nash’s family earlier filed a $50 million lawsuit against Herold, saying she was negligent and reckless for lacking the ability to control “a wild animal with violent propensities.” The chimp which was shot and killed by police, had also escaped in 2003 from his owner’s car and led police on a chase for hours in downtown Stamford. No one was injured.

The 200-pound (90-kilogram) chimpanzee named Travis went berserk in February when his owner, Sandra Herold, asked Nash to help lure him back into her house in Stamford.
You see in the video, the chimp chewed off Nash’s hands, nose, lips and eyelids. Police fatally shot the 14-year-old chimp when he tried to attack an officer responding to the assault on Nash on Feb. 16

Charla Nash, also known as the “Chimp Lady” did an interview on Oprah and revealed her face as well. The attack happened mid- February 2009 and it has severely affected Charla Nash as now she is without her hands, nose, lips, and sight. She now drinks her meals with a straw through a small hole where her mouth used to be. Heres a little snippet of the interview:

Charla remains in stable condition at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and doctors said that the only way she could get back to her normal life is with a face transplant.

” I want to get healthy. I dont want to wake up with nightmares.”- Charla Nash