Animals, Bizarre, Media

Perils of the Press VII: Monkeying Around With The Media

We have yet another addition to our series on the perils of the press. We often train young lawyers to maintain their composure in tough situations, but this young reporter shows particularly impressive focus in this report with a frisky baboon. A real frisky baboon. In our series, animal mishaps feature prominently in interviews gone wrong. (here and here and here and here).


This is precisely why some performers refuse to work with children or animals.

I expect this to be the last interview of this particular subject.

27 thoughts on “Perils of the Press VII: Monkeying Around With The Media”

  3. Ok… So Gene what’s the new trick with YouTube and WP…. Any assist would be appreciated…

  6. Dredd,

    How dare you beseech Obama like that…. But I know your comment wasn’t meant to be racist… Lol…

  9. seamus, I think the baboon adheres to the motto, “more than a handful is wasted.”

  11. Gene: “I used to have a cat named Chmee.”
    *

    Lol, excellent! A perfect cat name. You know that cats, if they had opposeable thumbs (a video in another thread) they wouldn’t (as a race) come for our milk- they’d rise up, grab the knives off our counters and slit our throats as we slept. You were wise to give your cat-master the respect s/he deserved with the name. It’s probably the only reason s/he let you live.

    From Wikipedia:
    “Speaker-to-Animals (or later Chmeee) is a fictional character in the Ringworld series of books, written by Larry Niven.

    In Ringworld, Speaker-to-Animals is a junior diplomat who is trained to deal with other species without reflexively killing them. He is recruited by Nessus, a Pierson’s Puppeteer, as a member of an expedition to explore the Ringworld.” ”
    [emphasis mine, but relevant when cats are discussed]
    *

    If you have managed to never read “Ringworld” (and “Ringworld Engineers”, its sequel) by Larry Niven give it a go. Big adventure, big ideas, big fun!

  12. Elaine, Right, there have been a couple of attacks like that. There isn’t enough money to get as close to a baboon with its fangs as that newsreader was. At one time removing the canines (at the least) was common for animals/apes/baboons etc. in the entertainment industry. Yeah, that’s barbaric I know. We shouldn’t turn them into entertainment, we need to leave them alone and stay out of reach of their teeth.

  14. LK,

    Out of all the aliens in all the SF i’ve ever read, the Kzinti hold a special place with me. 😀 I used to have a cat named Chmee.

  15. That was a scary video and Gene is right, that wasn’t a “smile” smile. That encounter could have gone very, very badly.

    When I saw that I immediately thought “Kzin”, an alien race conjured up by Larry Niven. They’re big, warlike, aggressive and have a predators fangs and nails. They show their teeth as a challenge and a dominance display. When they smile at humans it’s really an insult. In Niven’s worlds they are feline-like but whenever I see a big baboon bare its fangs I think of the Kzinti race, and assume someone is (potentially) going to get hurt. Niven should have made the Kzin baboon-like IMO.

  16. Let’s not forget that this could have gone very very wrong.

    Baboons have hierarchical social structures where males will dominate females by not just grabbing them, but biting them as well. That “smile”? Was dominance behavior.

    Wild animals are not toys.

  18. For those who rant about males and their obsession w/ breasts, there you have it! The look on both faces says it all.

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