Monkey walking

[scrumfish]

LINK to article on monkey walking uprightQuote:Natasha, a small five-year-old black macaque monkey at the Safari Park next to Tel Aviv, began walking exclusively upright on two legs after a stomach ailment nearly killed her, zookeepers said.Has anyone else heard about this? I haven't had (taken) time to see if I could find out any more about this, or even verify it with a second mention somewhere. I probably will when finals are over, but that won't help me to understand the actual significance of it since I have only recently started to learn anything about evolution. So, science and biology buffs, what does this mean?

[RickU]

I read the article on msnbc.com here's the link...www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5479501/According to the article the monkey started walking upright after a serious illness. They aren't sure exactly why it's happened but one possible culprit would be brain damage. In Vino Veritas

[Mr. P]

I saw this the other day. Kinda kooky! And cool!Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.I came to get down, I came to get down. So get out ya seat and jump around - House of Pain

[Jeremy1952]

It was on television here, I missed it but my wife was telling me about it. It certainly gives an interesting possibility to bipedalism, which has never been well explained (yea, yea, I've heard the stuff about looking over the new grasslands and holding babies while travelling on the ground... every explanation I've heard to date struck me as an implausible stretch, a fancy way of saying we don't know).So maybe the real skinny on bipedalism is that it began as a genetic mistake, and persisted because... who knows? Maybe animals prone to that disease also had some other advantage? Maybe the walking upright ones were the ones who survived a plague? If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

[tarav]

I wonder if this walking behavior will spread to other monkeys that Natasha comes in contact with. If she gains some advantage by walking upright, others may mimic her. Also, she may try to teach younger monkeys, or her own children(if she ever has any)to walk in that way. If anyone hears anything more about this interesting monkey, please post about any articles.

[CSflim]

Before you start jumping to conclusions, bear in mind that this monkey is not unique because she is walking upright.What makes her unique is that fact that she is walking upright exclusively. ___________________Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?-Douglas Adams, Last Chance To See

[Mr. P]

That I understood.Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.I came to get down, I came to get down. So get out ya seat and jump around - House of Pain

[RickU]

Excellent point CS...many of her breed walk upright..just for limited periods of time. In Vino Veritas