EWW: Chimpanzees can kill you
It's that time of the week.
Last week I was reading my son a story about Stephen Hawking and it described his “robotic voice”. My son wanted to know what his voice sounded like. So I just googled Stephen Hawking and seconds later we were watching him talk about something boring.
Later, watching Bondi Rescue we noticed the lifeguards were wearing bands around their ankles. We googled “Why do lifesavers wear bands around their ankles” and seconds later we were watching a video about shark bands.
Sharkbanz are shark deterrent bands you wear on your wrists and ankles. They use patented magnetic technology” to push out a “powerful electrical sense (electroreception)” that apparently causes a “highly unpleasant sensation that turns sharks away.”
What I’m saying here is that we have every bit of information we might ever need at our fingertips. And I have insomnia.
So at 3am the other night I googled: Can I kill an attacking chimpanzee with my bare hands?
And let me tell you. The answers I got were very useful. And I quote:
“A chimp’s greatest weapon is his teeth. Sure, he can punch and thrash but you can bet his technique will be poor. The teeth must be neutralised and to do this you must be prepared to sacrifice use of your hand in the initial part of the battle.”
Now, would I sacrifice my hand? It truly depends on whether or not I’m alone with the chimp or I am protecting the chimp. If I’m alone, I’m sorry but I’m just going to let the chimp kill me. I don’t want to die. But I also don’t want to make things worse. If a chimpanzee is going to kill me I want it to be quick. If there are other people around and I have to sacrifice myself by fighting the chimp - then yes, I suppose I would put my hand into its mouth as advised by some random dude on the internet.
He has more advice.
“Next tactical move is to blind the choking chimp with your thumb - both eyeballs must be popped. The chimp will likely attempt to disengage which you will allow.”
You might think that that is it. But it isn’t. There are further “tactical moves” provided by this man whose name is Anthony Dowd (pictured below).
He ends his instructions with this: “Congratulations you have killed a chimp. You may have severe blood loss and horrendous bruising, perhaps even internal bleeding. Luckily we have a paramedic on standby and you are off to the hospital.”
When someone pointed out that the woman who had a face transplant because a chimp ripped her face off also has no hands now, this was not considered a fair comparison by other Quora users. Said one:
“Obviously I'm sorry for what happened to him [sic] but anyway she was an old woman without preparation, here we are talking about a massive and prepared man.”
They continued: “A chimpanzee doesn't know what a human's weak points are because nobody taught him, to be honest they don't even know how to punch if in fact you look on the internet no chimpanzee punches, they jump and clap their hands, and in any case a chimpanzee is slightly stronger (1.35 times) than an average man of the same weight (a chimpanzee weighs 40kg). But the average human being is not muscular and not prepared, but here we are talking about a trained man of 90-100kg with knowledge of the opponent's weak points.”
Which as you can imagine lead to the question: Could an MMA fighter defeat a chimpanzee in hand to hand combat?
Most of the answers were no. Which quite infuriated some people on Quora.
“I'm pretty surprised by the chimpanzee fanboying and fangirling in the replies. Chimpanzees are smaller than the majority of people, usually reaching a maximum weight of around 55 kg. A large MMA fighter would be over six feet tall and weigh above 100 kg.”
This answer did not appease those who were convinced a MMA fighter could not take on a chimp and win. I actually could not disagree with this point:
“Find me the MMA school that teaches how to defend yourself from someone trying to rip your dick off or pull your eyes out of their sockets.” Indeed.
Most of the points generally made a lot of sense. For example: “DO NOT fight a chimp unless you have a very good weapon, in which case an old world samurai would be a better match for a chimp, provided he gets a good slice in before the pain begins.”
A video was shared of a man fighting a chimpanzee but I didn’t watch that because I wasn’t sure it would help me fall asleep. The caption for the video read: “This man is not prepared but it seems he did a good job with the chimp he didn’t win but his genitals or his face aren’t ripped off.”
I think this is an incredibly insightful message for all of us to takeaway - you might not win in life, but as long as your genitals or face are not ripped off, did you really lose?
I think we can all agree the answer is no.
And if you’re thinking about whether anyone can keep a panda for a pet - they cannot.
According to a woman on Quora who knows a lot about pandas: Amanda Smith - a panda would not make a good pet for the following reasons:
China owns every panda on Earth. I absolutely did not know this. According to Amanda, source of all panda knowledge, China just rents pandas.
Pandas are very expensive. Amanda says the Chinese government charges 100 million RMB per year
Pandas eat 20 to 40 kilograms of bamboo a day and you probably don’t have that much bamboo.
Even though their diets are vegetarian they might eat you.
They do at least 10kg of poop every day.
They also rub their anal glands all over everything.
Finally, I’m just going to quote this from Quora verbatim in case you’re still unsure if you want to have a panda as a pet: “Pandas are assholes. A) their antics are real cute until you're trying to clean their enclosure. B) they're such a pain in the ass that experienced zookeepers in China are hiring panda handlers with no experience because nobody who has any experience wants the job and C) at least part of your life will be spent trying to convince pandas to fuck, which they hate doing.”
That’s all
Really it is. This week has been so cold and so overwhelming that the tank is just empty except for animal facts. All I can tell you is that giraffes kill more people than you think. Usually it’s from hitting someone with their neck or trampling on them. That’s all I can tell you because literally that’s just my brain right now.
I have so much to do and my brain is just like “Emily, remember when Sharon Stone’s husband got attacked by a Komodo dragon?” It’s not helpful. Of all the animals I don’t want to bite me, I think I don’t want to be bitten the most by a Komodo dragon.
They’re very large.
If you need to leave on a good note I understand. I recommend this: The Girl From Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” Responds 18 Years Later. Or simply searching “the Fajita wife”. This Junkee journalist is incredibly correct when he says: “Wife guys truly are a curse upon the world”. And I wrote a silly thing for The Spinoff you can read it here.