First, a bit of trivial nonsense (like this is somehow different from the rest of the content.) When creating these ‘Just Once’ posts, I used to determine what photo to look for in the thousands that exist in the blog library alone by right-clicking to download and seeing what name it wanted to save as; this is now impossible since I disabled right-clicking at the server level. I could always go back into the folders for 2017, when this first appeared, and skim through the only-hundreds of images therein, but I’m lazy, plus I had some ideas. So I simply put a few terms into the media library search field within the blog admin pages themselves. The first was, naturally, “squirrel,” since you undoubtedly recognized this as a black-capped squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis,) but that did not turn up this image. Then I tried “beseech,” since I vaguely remembered using that to describe the actions of the monkey, but that didn’t work either. Then I tried, “please,” which pulled up the photo, since it’s titled, “PleaseSah.jpg.” I’m lousy at remembering people’s names, but I can dredge up shit like that.
Anyway, this squirrel monkey was in the Brevard Zoo in north Melbourne, Florida, sometime in 1999. This was back in the days of film and I was switching out rolls when the monkey spotted the film can and desperately wanted it, seeming to recognize it. I did not offer the can, but took advantage of the pose, perhaps rather crassly. Nowadays, this image puts me in mind of someone running for office from prison, don’t ask me why…
There’s something odd that occurred to me as I considered this photo for the post, and I’m not sure if it’s only me. Smaller primates like this don’t stir much ‘social recognition’ or ‘fellow feelings,’ despite being a primate that’s closer to us than most other animals; they don’t look much like us or even act in such ways, unlike gorillas and chimpanzees for instance. But we (or I, at least) get stronger feelings of such ‘communication’ and even ‘family’ from cats, and I’m sure others do for dogs, despite the fact that they’re very much different from us in appearance and behavior and have far less recognizable expressions, much further than the monkeys. Is this because we’re so used to domestic animals and have conditioned ourselves to their traits, or is it because the monkeys behave too radically, often hyperactive and a bit manic? Or is it a variation of the ‘uncanny valley‘ effect, where ‘close but not close enough’ makes us distinctly uncomfortable? There’s a paper in there somewhere, at least if I’m not the only one, but it probably should be written by someone edumacated…