Monkey Uprising: Field Dispatches

Well it has come to this: Baby monkeys are riding mini pigs. 

After a slow and somewhat lethargic summer, the monkey uprising has heated up in the last few weeks. First, some baboons living in the hills above Cape Town have been stripping grape vines of the ripening fruit, getting hammered, and harassing locals. It's almost like living next to a naval base. 

Meanwhile, chimps out in the rainforest of Guinea have figured out how to deactivate snares. What's most terrifying about this is that they've avoided the standard method of animal learning,  which is trial and error. Instead, they've gone up a level in Daniel Dennett's tower of generate-and-test - they've gone from being Skinnerian to Popperian creatures, a seriously important step. 

Finally, forget that octopus who was predicting games in the Word Cup of Soccer. A spider monkey at the Staten Island Zoo named Grandpa has an unblemished record calling games in the US Open tennis tournament. 

But it's not all defeats for the opposable-thumb team. We've got some monkeys roped into doing dinner theatre in Thailand, and Britain's fattest orangutan has been put on a diet. And as proof that not all monkeys are blood-thirsty killers, a macaque in Bali has adopted a kitten. It's totally adorable.