Dear Editor:
Scientists are always trying to determine just what separates animal apes from human apes. Once they thought language set an unbridgeable gap between us–but it has been proved that apes (and whales and other species) communicate in their own idiom. Okay, tools. Aren’t we the only tool-using ape? No. Chimps crack nuts with stones and will poke a stem of grass into a hole in the ground, draw it out carefully and snack on the termites clinging to it.
Okay, well, sex: isn’t it true that females of lesser orders do it only in estrus, while Homo Erectus is ready all the time? Uh uh. Nope. The Bonobo apes of W. Africa, as laid-back as a bunch of hippies, spend their hours in endless orgy under fruit-laden trees; shocking with their inventiveness, the missionaries and their uptight wives who first peeped through the foliage at them.
Then how about music? How about art? Well, the Bowerbird devotes days decorating his love nest with bright bits of tinfoil or glass scrounged from far and wide. These he arranges artistically to impress that tough critic, the skeptical female. And locally, lusty birds in Springtime sing their vain little hearts out hoping like all artists to be noticed.
There is, however, I submit, one activity peculiar to Homo Boobus alone: picking his teeth with a little sliver of wood after he eats. Show me the monkey who does that.
T. Weed