The Fear of Monkeys - The Best E-Zine on the Web for Politically Conscious WritingThe Rhesus Macaque - Issue Eighteen
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The Rhesus Macaque, photo from Christian ArtusoThe Rhesus Macaque is brown or grey in color and has a pink face, and they are both arboreal and terrestrial. They are quadrupedal and, when on the ground, they walk digitigrade and plantigrade. Adult males measure approximately 53 cm tall on average and weigh about 7.7 kg and they are mostly herbivorous, feeding on mainly fruit, but also eating seeds, roots, buds, bark, and cereals, as well as some insects. Rhesus macaques are native to northern India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and southern China. They have the widest geographic ranges of any nonhuman primate, occupying a great diversity of altitudes; they may be found in grasslands, woodlands, arid open areas, and in mountainous regions up to 2,500 m in elevation. They are regular swimmers. Perhaps because humans and macaques apparently share about 93% of their DNA sequence and shared a common ancestor roughly 25 million years ago, Rhesus macaques are noted for their tendency to move from rural to urban areas, coming to rely on handouts or refuse from humans. Due to its relatively easy upkeep in captivity, wide availability and closeness to humans anatomically and physiologically, it has been used extensively in medical, biological, and psychological research. Even though, in psychological research, rhesus macaques have demonstrated a variety of complex cognitive abilities, including the ability to make same-different judgments, understand simple rules, monitor their own mental states, and have even been shown to demonstrate self-agency, an important type of self-awareness, the rhesus macaque was used in the well-known experiments on maternal deprivation carried out in the 1950s by controversial comparative psychologist Harry Harlow. The U.S. Army and NASA launched rhesus macaques into outer space during the 1950s and 1960s, and the Soviet/Russian space program launched them into space as recently as 1997. One of these primates was allowed to return alive. In January, 2001 a Rhesus macaque, the first transgenic primate carried foreign genes originally from a jellyfish.

   


Ash Wednesday

By

Donal Mahoney

Ash Wednesday I saw Quinn again,
first time in years, sailing the streets,
weaving through people,
collar up, head cocked,
arms like telephone poles sunk
in the pockets of his overcoat,

the brilliant pennants of his long red hair
waving over the stadium
where years ago he took my handoff,
bucked off guard, found the free field,
and heaved like a bison
into the end zone.

Tonight, when Quinn wove by me muttering,
I should have handed him the ball.
I should have screamed, "Go, Quinn, go!"
He would have stiff-armed the lamppost,
found the free field again,
left all in his wake to gawk

as he hit the end zone
and circled the goal posts,
whooping and laughing,
flinging the ball like a spear
over the cross-bar,
back to Iraq.

 


Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction appear in various publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html
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