Ape Shit the zine for primates

newscientist.com'Oddball' test lets us glimpse how monkeys see the world | New ScientistCompared with humans, macaques are more likely to miss the bigger picture, but are also less confused by flipped images

"This might be because these agile creatures are more used to seeing familiar objects from a range of angles. 'They are swinging across stuff, and sometimes they’ll hang upside down.' " PAYWALLED

aldf.orgThe Long Fight Behind Efforts to Save Bow, the Last Solitary Pet Chimpanzee

A deeply creepy woman named Aya Katz has the last known “pet” chimp in the US (in Missouri) and has been selling “members only” YouTube access to people who pay $49.99/month to watch chimp Bow groom her.

The @animallegaldefense.bsky.social is trying to get the feds to intervene and send Bow to sanctuary, much like PETA did with Tonya Haddix & Tonka of “Chimp Crazy.” But will the feds act without pressure from a major documentary on them? We’ll see…

NYT and NPR fighting it out for the dumbest headline. "Germophobia" is an ABNORMAL fear, not a rational response to avoiding contagion. Let's give poop-avoiding monkeys some credit... and someone tell the NYT that humans are primates. Based on: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Important advice from Leonore Brandt (Cincinnati Children's Zoo) in _Monkeys as Pets_, 1951

@pissvortex.gorillaradio.show

In the 1920s, Hollywood was all-in on “educated” chimps and orangutans; capturing images of them in human poses and in clothing was box office gold. Shown here: Toto, an infant chimp (1922)

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Pissvortex

Have you ever thought: "My life as a quadriplegic combat veteran would be better if I were being tormented by a monkey at all hours of the day?" Then Helping Hands is the perfect 501(c)(3) for you! We're joined by Carrie McLaren to discuss Ape Sh*t, the zine about primates.

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Pissvortex

@pissvortex.gorillaradio.show

Infatuated by these gibbons’ reaction to shredded paper

Turf wars continue japantoday.com/category/nat...

open.spotify.comGorilla Radio ShowPodcast · Gorilla Radio Podcast Network · Podcast about primates featuring a primatologist and maybe some other guys, Jane Goodall estate please don't sue us. www.patreon.com/gorillaradioshow

Excellent Gorilla Radio show episode, I must say

Sen. Pumpkin Gogurt@ugarles.bsky.social

and here's a link to my guest spot on @gorillaradio.show, where I fun talk with the GRS team about litigation around the world to give zoo apes personhood rights open.spotify.com/show/3Twwaj3...

This day in history, 1957, from Hopewell (VA) News. #CAPUCHIN #RESISTANCE

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Reuters

@reuters.com

In the jungles of Indonesian Borneo, a rehabilitation center is taking in more orangutans as the country's worst wildfires in a decade sweep through the forest home of the critically endangered animals. reut.rs/4B87JSn

Wait... What? (from 1925 NYT)

This is going to haunt my dreams

english.nepalnews.comMonkey attacks leave 40 injured in NepalgunjKATHMANDU: Residents of Nepalgunj are facing a growing threat from monkeys, with numerous reports of the animals entering homes and shops to attack locals. The surge in monkey-related incidents has ca...

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

OR Books

@orbooks.bsky.social

Brooklyn-based zinester and media critic, Carrie McLaren (@monkeywire.bsky.social) published Stay Free! from the early ’90s through the 2000s. Now she’s back with a new zine, Ape Sh*t!

theguardian.comPlanet of the apes: the ‘bizarre’ and tortured history of monkeys and humansApe Sh*t, a new zine by writer and designer Carrie McLaren, looks at the ways monkeys and apes have communicated to humans that they’re individuals too

Great piece by Matthew Cantor

Until recently, the group formerly known as Helping Hands - now Envisioning Access - stopped posting pics of its caged monkeys to Facebook for about a year. Perhaps someone there realized that using captives to fundraise on behalf of disabled people degrades both?

Whatever the thinking here, idoicy triumphed and Envisioning Access is back to using monkeys to raise dough. Looking at the images, it's hard not to notice that the monkeys are themselves disabled, with their teeth removed, causing their tongues to dangle pathetically.

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Kim Kelly

@kimkelly.bsky.social

incredible mail day

Support independent book stores and get free shipping today! bookshop.org/p/books/ape-...

Bookshop.org@bookshop.org

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

Today is also the day my zine is in book stores. Around here, Lofty Pigeon Books, a beautiful shop in Flatbush, Brooklyn, has 'em. Plus the well-named Awesome gift shop and, of course, Quimby's in Wmsburg. Not around here? Stores can order them from Ingram.

givingdayforapes.orgGiving Day for ApesGiving Day for Apes is today!

Today is the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries annual Giving Day for Apes. Help support their crucial work in setting a high bar for sanctuary animals and providing for them www.givingdayforapes.org

welcometohellworld.comThe Bizarre History of the Service MonkeyAn excerpt from Ape Sh*t: The Zine for Primates

Primate sanctuaries in particular serve an important role in combatting the illegal pet trade. If there is nowhere to place confiscated animals, they tend to stay in place, and people are freer to ignore laws on holding them captive.

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Luke O'Neil

@lukeoneil47.bsky.social

Happy to share an excerpt from the first issue of the new Ape Sh*t zine by @monkeywire.bsky.social out this week from @orbooks.bsky.social www.welcometohellworld.com/the-bizarre-...

Love how these pages from the Center for Great Apes Annual Report resembles my high school yearbook

CORRECTION: On page 52 in issue #1 of Ape Sh*t, the photo below is listed with other pics as examples of injuries from capuchin monkeys. This, however, was from a spider monkey. I regret the error.

Thanks to the crew at the very entertaining @gorillaradio.show for having me on. It was a lot of fun! The link here is to the video version but you can get it wherever you get podcasts www.patreon.com/gorillaradio...

We talked about, among other things, our earlier ~2001 listserv Monkeywire, a collaboration with Onion pal @joegarden.bsky.social and WMFU's Becky Ebenkamp (who writes Ape Shit's TV column). Archives still hosted at lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/mo...

aw, shucks "And then I came across this diagram "How to keep a terrible idea alive" and now I can’t help but see parallels between the ‘helper monkeys’ and AI 🤯. What a brilliant magazine!!!"

Marije van den Berg@marijevandenberg.nl

En toen kwam ik bij dit schema “How to keep a terrible idea alive” en nu kan ik inderdaad alleen nog maar parallellen zien tussen de hulpaapjes en AI 🤯. Wat een briljant magazine!!!

Ape Shit the zine for primates reposted

Marije van den Berg

@marijevandenberg.nl

In een vlaag van nieuwsgierigheid bestelde ik het eerste nummer van het magazine Apeshit @monkeywire.bsky.social, met daarin “The bizarre history of the service monkey”. Over aapjes als helpers voor mensen met een handicap, en hoe dat een ding was in de VS in de jaren zeventig.

I find images of apes in clothing grotesque, but there is just something about this one... (Reprinted in a 1942 primatology textbook by the funny but deeply racist Earnest Hooten, _Man's Poor Relations_)

FASCINATING if stomach-churning 2025 interview with researchers who helped expose online monkey torture rings. I’d been wondering if this subculture was connected to MAGA or other hate groups, but turns out it’s not so much MAGA-aligned as meth-aligned podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/g...

bbc.comGlobal network of sadistic monkey torture exposed by BBCA year-long investigation uncovers a sadistic abuse network stretching from Indonesia to the US.

Those who torture monkeys are also, surprisingly, not generally involved with other animal torture but rather enthusiasts of sexual sadism and abusive child porn. The sex piece was largely ignored in the BBC’s 2023 expose. www.bbc.com/news/world-6...

The medias' response was also v interesting. The BBC documentary was age-restricted by YouTube from the get-go, even tho BBC docs (inc one about child sex trafficking) almost never are. Expert Yardfish said the monkey doc was restricted not because it was graphic but because it criticized Youtube.

21 Sept

Harry Raven, who appears here as a boy, was the son of a Museum of Natural History curator. He told the NYT (6/5/2009) that he and his sister could play with chimp Meshi only when his father was shooting movies.

18 Sept

Hm, wouldn't be my first choice for acronyms ... (from PRIMATES, link.springer.com/article/10.1...)

18 Sept

After seeing her family slaughtered, Congo, once in captivity in the US, grew fixated on a mirror. Robert Yerkes interpreted her "infinite loneliness" as "mental deficiency," concluding that gorillas are inferior to chimps.

discoverwildlife.comRemote cameras catch chimps teaching youngsters how to use tools to hunt | Discover WildlifeCaptured in Senegal, one video appears to show a chimpanzee showing her daughter how to use a stick to extract ants from a nest.

16 Sept

Whether apes even imitate others is, incredibly, a longstanding debate in primatology.

14 Sept

This coulda been one of those cute inter-species primates stories, but never underestimate a chimp... www.nytimes.com/1942/05/25/a...

10 Sept

Ape Shit is now available (early!) at Quimby’s NYC in Williamsburg, along with a few back issues of my old zine, Stay Free!

10 Sept

And it’s also now available at Awesome on Flatbush Ave. in Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. (Available at other retailers on October 6.)

8 Sept

For those days when you want to see the video of a chimp destroying a drone

1/ 🧵 In 1940, Bob & Mae Noell started a travelling show selling tickets to see men fight a "gorilla" -- actually, a chimp. The chimps wore muzzles, which wasn’t enough to stop them from shredding opponents; they'd rip noses apart and aim to take out eyes. So their hands had to be bound as well.

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3/ The men who stepped up to fight tended to be drunk — some, very much so. So even with their handicaps, the chimps never lost. For every 10 men who entered the ring, roughly 8 had to be carried out. Most fights were over in seconds.

4/ One of Mae Noell’s biggest challenges was convinincing dummies who wanted to fight chimps that the protections were for their own safety. Her solution: awards go to those who play by the rules. Touch the chimp’s muzzle, you don’t get a prize — and you may just get yr fingers bitten off.

2/ Humans were required to wear helmets (the apes got no such protection, nor needed it) and a special pair of pants — because the chimps would rip their opponents clothes off.

2 Sept

The use of the “it” pronoun to thing-ify animals is one of my bugaboos. So I was happy to see that, upon making this mistake in unpublished notes in 1838, Charles Darwin corrected himself. He had been observing Jenny, the first orangutan exhibited at the London Zoo.