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.

   


Miasma - Iftekhar Sayeed When all else fails we turn to magic, but it does not always provide the answer we need

Ash Wednesday - Donal Mahoney In the face of someone who has returned, the battlefield has left most games far behind

Waiting for Anna - Phil Temples Longing for the past is always a mixture of innocence and re-understanding

The Mexican in the Bathroom - Weldon H. Sandusky How do we measure mental illness when the culture is equally socially ill? [This is the first of a series of five installments Issues Eighteen to Twenty-Five]

Padre Lamente - Michael C. Keith Topical and still disturbing--what does a priest think about when he has strayed from the path?

Amenities - JD DeHart The working world has changed and we must accommodate

Banned Books, or Spread the Wealth or You Can't Say This, So I Am: Subtitled-Yes, I Know There are Exceptions and Young Ass Gregory Orr, You Head the List (Stay Young), and Anselm Hollo, Why'd You Have to Die? - R.A. Riekki Reikki's spirited defense of letters is a call to arms for everyone who hasn't yet atrophied in the academy

Carved into the Bar - Colin Dodds A tribute to the folk wisdom and how short it falls when we need it to be true

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