Friday, July 13, 2007

The Power of the Chimpanzee

While there are many natural and manmade elements that endanger the survival of the chimpanzee, a threatened species on our planet. There is one man, Carmen Presti, who is training his chimpanzee self=defense training. The chimpanzee is named Charlie, and has his own website. Charlie does have a resume, nicely chronicled, I might add which probably makes him not only the first chimpanzee to master the English language, but also typing and HTML code---take that Koko (although to be fair, Koko was a gorilla).




There are really few other life lessons that a chimpanzee requires, except maybe learning how to navigate through all 50+ Google utilities and balancing his/her checkbook.
But on a slightly more serious note, there is a wonderful presentation by Jane Goodall on TED.com, or you can view it below, where she elegantly talks about world issues, the environment, and the startling similarities between humans and primates. Many times we forget that we are indeed, and among other things, animals.