Christine O’Donnell vs. The Chimps…Who Is Smarter?

First of all, I like monkeys and apes of all kinds.  They are my favorite animals to watch when I go to the zoo, my favorite TV programs are Escape to Chimp Eden and Monkey Island, and I read every article I see that talks about how amazingly human-like their intelligence and their social structure is.  For the life of me, I can’t understand why those fundamentalists who worship ignorance are insulted to think that we are on the same branch of the evolutionary tree.

What is the deal with these ignorant teabaggers?

Would they rather we were evolved from birds? dogs? snakes?

Anyway, Bill Maher keeps bringing up embarrassing stuff about Christine O’Donnell.  Her latest unbelievably stupid statement is “if evolution is real, why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans.”  Something like that.

Of  course, there is the obvious flaw in logic.  Wingnuts do not seem to understand the whole quantum difference in time scales thingie.  It’s the same with global warming.  They don’t understand the difference between 10 years and 10 million years, probably because they don’t get the 10 million part.

It’s a big number.  I’ve noticed that when I try to teach my young son math and I say what’s 2×2, he gets it, but when I say what’s 2 million times 2, he freezes.  He’s 7, he’ll get past it.  But adults who still haven’t grasped that concept never will.

But I’d like to address this from another angle.  I think it’s possible that chimps actually ARE evolving.  We know now that they use tools, that they can communicate, up to a couple hundred words, using sign language, and just recently I read an article about how they have learned to dismantle snare type traps which were set for them.  Not just to avoid.  To dismantle.  They learned it through analysis, not trial and error (which could be fatal), and they teach the technique to other chimps.

Now, there are two possibilities.  The first is that they have always been smarter than we thought and we’re just discovering it now, although the traps thing would seem to belie that.  The other is that they actually are evolving.

Unfortunately, people seem to be going in the opposite direction.