Holy Shit, Reston Virus!

Our story begins as many unhappy stories begin: in an animal testing facility in 1989. This particular facility is located in Reston, Virginia, which is within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. A group of Crab-eating Macaques decided to take their own way out and, rather than suffering at the hands of horrific drug testing...uh, suffered at the hands of a horrific hemorrhagic fever.

It was rough, and many monkeys died. Too many. It was starting to get suspicious. While locking down the source of the disease, a researcher from USAMRIID, who had been dispatched to investigate the infection, noticed a new filovirus in some of the samples he observed. Being somewhat knowledgeable in microscopic terrors, the shape of the new virus scared the ever-loving piss out of our friend the researcher. Because it looked like this:

That doesn't look too scary...

Which kind of looks like this:

Yeah, but it's just a couple of lines...

Which is fucking Ebola.

As of this writing, Ebola is kind of a big deal. There's an outbreak underway in parts of Africa that has many of the more paranoid among us donning their brown pants. Imagine how brown their pants would be if they saw the above under a microscope in a lab where almost 200 people had potentially been exposed to it.

The lab was locked down, and everyone who had been in contact with the Macaques was immediately tested for the new virus. These are people who had been out in the general public after handling infected monkeys. The general public of Washington, D.C. As it turns out, six of them were definitely infected.

I guess that's it, then. Pack it in, America. We had a good run.

By the time this was discovered, the monkeys were dying at a rate of about one or two per day. One third of the lab's population died by the end. Apply that to Washington D.C. and you've got yourself a recipe for disaster - albeit one that would rid us of a number of unpleasant politicians. But by a stroke of unimaginable luck, whatever mutations the virus had undergone between plain old Ebola and Reston Ebola rendered it almost completely harmless to humans. When this was determined, the quarantine was broken.

Before you feel too much better, know this: evolution happens over many, may generations, but viruses live out many generations in a short period of time. Reston virus has already evolved in the time between when it was discovered and today. It can now transmit from pigs to humans. All it would take is a small variation for it to suddenly become as deadly as any other strain of Ebola.

And as far as we know, there are people in America -- people even in our nation's capital -- who already carry it.

So try to show a little respect.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Donkey Kong!

In 1981, Nintendo was known primarily as a toy company that produced trading cards in Japan. In fact, they were barely known at all in the West. They began producing arcade games in the '70s, but they enjoyed limited success until Shigeru Miyamoto burst onto the scene.

He and Gaben are the patron saints of gaming nowadays.

Shigeru Miyamoto created Donkey Kong, and from there went on to become the single most influential figure in console gaming history. Donkey Kong started as a licensed Popeye game, but the licensing situation didn't work out. So the team had to come up with new characters. They called the hero "Mr. Video," a name which would change to Jumpman shortly afterward. When the Nintendo of America team was confronted with an angry landlord demanding their late rent, they averted his wrath by telling him they'd name their new hero after him. The landlord, Mario Segale, agreed to back down.

That name should be familiar to you.

The villain, they decided, would be a King Kong knockoff named Donkey Kong. The name basically came from a linguistic misunderstanding. "Donkey" is an obscure, archaic slang term for a stupid or foolish person. Miyamoto found that definition, coupled it with a word he understood to mean "giant ape," and called it a day. The American team thought it was hilarious, and the name stuck.

You know who didn't think it was hilarious? Universal Studios. As they understood it, they owned the rights to King Kong ever since they fought a court battle over the issue in 1975, and Nintendo was using a blatant knock-off character to reap enormous profits without paying them one red cent. Or even yen.

I'd like to believe this is the face the studio heads made.

So they took this little toy company to court. It had all the workings of a classic David and Goliath battle. There is speculation that Universal's legal department figured Nintendo would just settle to avoid a costly battle, but Nintendo's legal team had done its research pretty well. When they got to court, they made an elegantly simple argument.

King Kong is in the public domain. And what's more, Universal knew full well that he was. That's why they won the right to make a movie about him in the '70s. The judge ruled in favor of Nintendo, citing the ridiculousness of suing over a public domain character and the fact that Donkey Kong was different enough not to be confused with King Kong anyway.

I mean, the building he climbed wasn't even finished!

This was a massive, pivotal moment for Nintendo. It came on the heels of a massive crash in the home video game market, and it gave Nintendo the confidence to start pushing for a revival of the console. The very next year, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in America, and the console market has enjoyed increasing success ever since.

If it weren't for a linguistic quirk and a frivolous lawsuit, Donkey Kong would not have served as the springboard that relaunched the game industry. We have this abused, rampaging, kidnapping ape to thank for everything from Super Mario Brothers to Pokémon, and maybe a lot more.

Holy Shit.

Holy Shit, Monkey Language!

 ಠ_ಠ

Remember how I fucking love monkeys? Because monkeys are both adorable and intelligent, which is a winning combination in my book. How intelligent are they? Oh, rhetorical device, you always know just the right questions to ask! How would you like to hear an example of simian intelligence?

Let's talk about Capuchin monkeys. Capuchins are basically the quintessential monkey's monkey. They're a New World species, meaning they live in Central and South America, and they are the monkey that people usually picture when they hear the word monkey (unless they picture chimpanzees, in which case they're picturing an ape and should feel rather silly for making such an elementary mistake). They are the organ grinder monkey, the helper monkey, and the monkey that gave the most adorable "Heil Hitler" salute in cinematic history (shortly before a tragic rendezvous with some bad dates).

R.I.P., little Nazi. *sniff*

In the wild, Capuchins have an impressive ability to function as a community. They have the same social structure as most other mammals. The alpha monkeys get most of the grub and most of the tail, while the weaker ones have to settle for whatever the alphas don't want. Oh, and you know what else they have? Language. Bona fide language. It's not terribly complex, and it's certainly not the reason an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will eventually produce the Great Simian Novel, but it's there and it serves its purpose.

See, Capuchins deal with a lot of crap on a daily basis, and much of that crap wants to eat them. Their greatest defense is their agility, which allows them to get away at a moment's notice. If there's a snake, they need to climb trees. If there's a bird of prey, then need to hide in the brush. Their only problem is that their predators have learned to be rather sneaky. What's a Capuchin to do?

Develop language, that's what. They have a different screech for every type of danger. When a snake shows up, one of the monkeys in the troop will say "SNAKE!" But in monkey, so, "BAKADAKA BRAAAK!" Instantly, the entire troop takes to the trees to escape the danger. Pretty cool, huh? It gets better.

Let's say there's a lowly little Capuchin who finds an egg he wants to eat. Social rules say that he needs to give his delicious morsel to the alpha, but he's really hungry, and that Alpha guy is a real dick. He decides he wants to keep the egg for himself, but he has no hope of facing the alpha directly. Once again, what's a Capuchin to do?

The answer: become a filthy little liar. He screeches, "SNAKE!" and everyone but him hauls ass to the trees. With a little chuckle, he pulls the egg from its hiding place and chows down. Does that violate the trust of the troop? Yeah. But a monkey's gotta eat, right? See it in action:

Let's recap:

Monkeys can talk, but only in their language (holy shit!)

They use their power of speech to lie (holy shit!)

Which gives us pretty strong evidence that they have active imaginations. See why I love monkeys so much?

Seriously. Holy shit.

Holy Shit, A New Monkey!

I don't think you understand, I FUCKING LOVE MONKEYS. To avoid gushing, I'll just let the link do the talking this time.