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!”

Crane game world champion

Andrew Schwartz and his team at the University of Pittsburgh have placed two brain implants in a monkey (in the areas of the motor cortex controlling the left arm and hand) and taught it to control the most expensive crane game ever.  The robotic arm has seven degrees of freedom (the previous study of this type was limited to four degrees).

Note the monkey on the right side of the screen. [Ed.- duly noted.] It uses its right arm to tap a button. (Its left arm is gently restrained inside a tube.) This triggers the robotic manipulator labeled DENSO to position a black knob at an arbitrary point in space. The monkey then controls its articulated robotic arm to grasp the knob.  After gently touching the knob, the monkey places its mouth on a straw: it then gets a drink reward. (Actually, the animal places its mouth on the straw before even touching the knob; that’s because it has learned, from repetition, that it’s about to get the reward.) After that, both robotic arms reset. Again, the monkey taps the button, waits for the knob’s new position, and readily and precisely moves its robotic arm to get a drink. [IEEE Spectrum]

The drink?  Brawndo.  It’s what robotically mind melded monkeys crave.  The video is below.  There’s no audio, so just imagine a blogger screaming like Homer Simpson for the entire forty-three seconds.

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Step right up and see the Twitter. [Uproxx]

50 Cent is lookin’ good [Filmdrunk]

The best of Tracy Morgan, season 4.  A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a Wendy’s! [WarmingGlow]

Squirrel goes nuts at a baseball game [WithLeather]

When the student becomes the teacher [TheSmokingSection]

“Adrien Brody Still Traumatized By Goat Rape” [Fark]

Three New ‘Sin City’ Covers By Frank Miller [ComicsAlliance]

An interview with Olivia Munn [TVSquad]

A leading economist theorizes that video games actually prevent crime. [Asylum]

Diego Maradona pledges to run naked if Argentina wins World Cup.  If this were 20 years ago, I wouldn’t be rooting against Argentina now.  [Guyism]

VIDEO BELOW: Dana Carvey is “DARWIN” [via FunnyorDie]

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Remember that horrible Ebola virus that used to be the punch line of so many jokes a couple years ago? Well, it’s still around and if you catch it, you’ll still die a nasty death from rapid blood loss…from every place blood can gush. (And believe me, it can gush from a lot of places you wouldn’t think it could gush.)

Well, some progress in preventing the virus has been made with an experimental vaccine, tested on monkeys, that not only prevents the two most lethal Ebola virus that it was designed to fight, but also a new strain that appeared 2007. (Ebonus!) The experimental vaccine, developed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (a part of the National Institute of Health) , is a big step towards creating a vaccine that will protect all known and future Ebola viruses.

This vaccine is made up of two parts: a DNA vaccine with a genetic material of surface proteins from Zaire ebolavirus and Sudan ebolavirus and a weakened cold virus delivering the surface protein of the Zaire ebolavirus.  Right now, they’re analyzing what parts of the immune response from the vaccine proved effective against the 2007 Bundibugyo ebolavirus. If they can figure that out, then we might just get a complete Ebola vaccine for humans too and not just those smug Ebola-resistant monkeys.

[Physorg]