This morning DailyMail posted an article on how we’ve been underestimating the intelligence of many animals.  Considering the chimpanzees in Senegal who were using spears, the monkeys in Japan who catapulted their way to freedom, and the Bonobo chimps who play Ms. Pac-Man, we’re inclined to agree.  Speaking of video game playing primates, the picture above is of a gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo trying to figure out a Nintendo DSi XL.

Christina Spicuzza was watching the gorillas when a boy dropped his game machine into the gorilla enclosure. A gorilla named Bawang was quick to snatch up the device. [Arbroath]

The videos below show them trying to figure out the new toy.  Okay, so it’s not as impressive as a bonobo who can actually play Ms. Pac-Man, but I’m easily amused. Anyone who has a problem with that can suck macaque. What? It’s not a macaque? It’s a gorilla? Um . . . then they can suck my, uh, Barilla.  Like the pasta, you know, a noodle.  I’ll just go.

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The Unoffical NBA JAM All-Star Team [Uproxx]

20,000 Calories Of Real American News [Uproxx News]

From the Vault: Hartman and Farley Host a Live Call-in Show [WarmingGlow]

The Other Guys closing credit sequence [Filmdrunk]

The 10 Best Sports Fights Ever [BleacherReport]

Speaking of sports fights, here’s a video of the Reds-Cardinals brawl [WithLeather]

How to skip commercials on YouTube videos [LifeHacker]

The 7 greatest Internet hoaxes [Guyism]

10 Best Movie Parodies On Adult Swim [Adult Swim]

The Pixelized Pitch That Sold ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game’ (Exclusive Video) [ComicsAlliance]

“Congrats to Mike Monteiro who finally beat Gmail, the only way possible, by running out of storage.” [Buzzfeed]

7 Things You Buy Before Freshman Year Of College [CollegeHumor]

VIDEO BELOW: Trailer for “NTSF:SD:SUV”, the best show not yet on TV.  Full title: National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sports Utility Vehicle.  Terrorists, you’ve been warned. [via EpicPonyz]

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“This is my rifle.  There are many like it, but this one is mine.” (Did that monkey just talk?)

The rumor about the Taliban training monkeys to kill anyone “wearing U.S. military uniforms” is a hoax started by the official paper of the Communist Party of China.  It didn’t take long for NMA to make an “action news” animation for Apple Daily, the website of Taiwan’s most widely read paper.  They’ve made similar animations for the Tiger Woods and Al Gore scandals.  Just don’t tell them this story is fake, because these animations are too much fun.

Military rumor investigator Jeff Schogol got in touch with a named NATO spokesman, who said that “We have absolutely nothing that leads us to believe that this tale could be even remotely based in reality.” A primatologist pointed out to him that the picture appears to depict an African baboon and not one of the rhesus monkeys which actually live in central Asia, that you probably couldn’t train a monkey to steadily hold a weapon, and that the sound of the gunfire would “certainly scare most animals and make them stop.” Oh, also: It turns out the gun in the photo is a toy. [Geekosystem]

The video is below, and it’s everything I dreamed it could be.

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How’s that for a headline?  If you were watching previews at the theater, and “DARING DAYLIGHT LAB MONKEY CATAPULT ESCAPE . . . THIS SUMMER” came up on the screen, they wouldn’t even have to show footage.  You’re already seeing that, and, for once, 3D is totally justified.

Fifteen monkeys escaped from the prestigious research center at Kyoto University in Japan, where around eighty monkeys in total are observed to study primate behavior and social interaction.  The researchers were at first puzzled how the monkeys could get over a seventeen foot high electric fence when all the trees near it are trimmed to about six feet high and are all six to nine feet from the fence.

The fifteen monkeys stretched the short tree branches enough to catapult themselves, one at a time, over the seventeen foot electric fence and land safely, ’cause monkeys are awesome.

However, despite the intelligence shown in their great escape, the primates appeared unsure as to what to do with their newfound freedom: the monkeys remained by the gates of the research centre and were lured back into captivity by scientists armed with peanuts. [Telegraph]

Thwarted by delicious peanuts!  The researchers have cut the trees by the fence even shorter now, so the monkeys will just have to come up with another ingenious plan to achieve temporary flight and get free peanuts (might I suggest buying an airline ticket?).

And since it’s Japan, I’ll bet this is part of the “behavior” research they were doing there:

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Scientists at the San Diego Zoo and the Scripps Research Institute have successfully created stem cells from the skin of a deceased, endangered drill monkey.  The drill monkey lives in Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Cameroon and would make an awesome band name.  The scientists are attempting to make sperm and egg cells using these induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which could then be implanted in a surrogate mother of the same species or a similar species.

Their attempt to make iPS cells involved using genetically engineered viruses with human genes to alter regular cells into iPS cells.  This worked on drill monkey cells but not on the white rhino.  You know what they say, human and rhinoceros DNA just don’t splice (contrary to what you’ve seen at Walmart).

San Diego Zoo’s Frozen Zoo project has taken samples from 8,400 individuals of more than 800 species. It is hoped that these samples can be used in IVF programmes to improve captive breeding projects.  Jeane Loring, one of the Scripps researchers, told New Scientist: “You could actually breed from animals that are dead.” [Telegraph]

Sounds like the beginning of a zombie movie.  Anyway, this method has also been used by researchers in Spain to clone an extinct Pyrenean ibex, which later died from lung problems that have been common so far in cloned animals.  Hopefully they can get the lung problems worked out, because I don’t want my future velociraptor dance troupe to have to take breaks to use an asthma inhaler.  Wait, I totally do.  Velociraptors with asthma inhalers would be freaking adorable.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if I meant how do I get a job studying binge drinking monkeys or being a binge drinking monkey.   Lucky scientists at the Scripps Research Institute are getting adolescent male macaque monkeys drunk and studying their brain development in what I hope turns into one of many times we use the “DRINKING MONKEY” tag on a post.

The results showed that the binge drinking monkeys had a dramatic and persistent decrease in stem cells in the hippocampus region and decreased neurogenesis (development of new neurons). The number of several types of actively dividing stem cells was reduced by 80 to 90 percent in the drinking monkeys compared to the controls, and there was also an increase in neural degeneration, or brain cell death.
Earlier studies on rodents have shown similar effects, but monkeys are much more like humans in brain structure, especially in the hippocampus, and in their longer period of adolescence. They are also often happy to voluntarily drink to intoxication. [Physorg]

However, they’re probably not happy about having their brains dissected in a bid to teach teenagers the dangers of drinking and possibly explain why drunks tend to have deficits in their hippocampus.  Aww, now I’m sad.  I’ve changed my mind about wanting that job.  I want to be friends with the drinking monkey, not dissect him, even though I’m going to sorely miss the opportunity to not get fired for yelling, “Look at macaque!”