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Surely if we did descend from monkeys then we should be able to teach monkeys to use firearms to kill humans. Stands to reason really!
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Taliban can't train monkeys to shoot US soldiers with machine-guns, say scientists
IN a torrid week for the US military, here's some good news - you won't be fighting monkeys in Afghanistan.
Two weeks ago, the Chinese People's Daily Online reported - citing a "British press agency" - that the Taliban was training monkeys to shoot at US troops.
Armed with "Kalashnikovs, Bren machine-guns and trench mortars", the macaques and baboons are being taught to recognise and fire upon anyone wearing a US military uniform.
“A senior US military source confirmed the existence of the Taliban monkey soldiers, military experts call armed monkeys ‘monkey terrorists’,” it said.
While no mention of this has yet popped up in the 90,000-odd "war logs" revealed by Wikileaks, the tactic would work on two levels.
The first and most obvious consequence would be that US troops couldn't operate confidently anywhere near light forestation or a zoo.
The second, more sinister outcome would be that animal rights activists back in the US would protest so violently at the fact that innocent monkeys were becoming pawns of war that the US would have no choice but to pack up and head home.
Many media outlets immediately tried to discredit the story, claiming the photos circulating on the web were "Photoshopped" and showed the baboons wielding "toy guns".
Stripes.com found that the original photo of machine-gun wielding baboon that surfaced following the People's Daily scoop had it on a leash with an orange cork in the barrel.
It was used by a US military officer for a humorous Power Point display during soldier training.
The website then tried to confirm the story with the People's Daily, but ended up with a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the US defending the coverage.
“It's above question that the Chinese government strictly regulates that Chinese media organizations must report truthfully, objectively and fairly by obeying professional codes and standards,” Wang Baodong told them.
And it's not like the US doesn't have any history in the field of guer- er, animal warfare.
Their most memorable proposal involved tying incendiaries to Mexican Free-Tailed bats during World War II and releasing them en masse over Japan.
The People's Daily even claimed the US had tried the monkey experiment back in the 1960s.
"Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained massive "monkey soldiers" in the Vietnam War and dispatched armed monkeys to dangerous jungles to launch assaults on Vietnamese soldiers," it said.
"Today, the Taliban forces have given the American troops some of their own medicine."
Monkeys, bats, machine-guns - oh my. Who to believe?
Finally, after two weeks of bloggers, media and animal rights activists wrangling with the morality of it all, LiveScience decided to ask a real scientist.
"They can be trained to do things like turn off lights and open faucets and so on, but eventually that breaks down," psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, William Mason, said
"If we're talking about animals going out into the field or a fortress with an AK-47 or whatever, it seems very, very implausible.
"To give a monkey a complex device like a rifle and say ‘We're going to train it to become a soldier’ is purely fantastical."
So there you have it - monkeys can't be train to shoot people. End of story, believe what you will at your own risk.
Taliban can't train monkeys to shoot US soldiers with machine-guns, say scientists
- By Peter Farquhar, Technology Editor
- From: news.com.au
- July 27, 2010 11:47AM
IN a torrid week for the US military, here's some good news - you won't be fighting monkeys in Afghanistan.
Two weeks ago, the Chinese People's Daily Online reported - citing a "British press agency" - that the Taliban was training monkeys to shoot at US troops.
Armed with "Kalashnikovs, Bren machine-guns and trench mortars", the macaques and baboons are being taught to recognise and fire upon anyone wearing a US military uniform.
“A senior US military source confirmed the existence of the Taliban monkey soldiers, military experts call armed monkeys ‘monkey terrorists’,” it said.
While no mention of this has yet popped up in the 90,000-odd "war logs" revealed by Wikileaks, the tactic would work on two levels.
The first and most obvious consequence would be that US troops couldn't operate confidently anywhere near light forestation or a zoo.
The second, more sinister outcome would be that animal rights activists back in the US would protest so violently at the fact that innocent monkeys were becoming pawns of war that the US would have no choice but to pack up and head home.
Many media outlets immediately tried to discredit the story, claiming the photos circulating on the web were "Photoshopped" and showed the baboons wielding "toy guns".
Stripes.com found that the original photo of machine-gun wielding baboon that surfaced following the People's Daily scoop had it on a leash with an orange cork in the barrel.
It was used by a US military officer for a humorous Power Point display during soldier training.
The website then tried to confirm the story with the People's Daily, but ended up with a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the US defending the coverage.
“It's above question that the Chinese government strictly regulates that Chinese media organizations must report truthfully, objectively and fairly by obeying professional codes and standards,” Wang Baodong told them.
And it's not like the US doesn't have any history in the field of guer- er, animal warfare.
Their most memorable proposal involved tying incendiaries to Mexican Free-Tailed bats during World War II and releasing them en masse over Japan.
The People's Daily even claimed the US had tried the monkey experiment back in the 1960s.
"Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trained massive "monkey soldiers" in the Vietnam War and dispatched armed monkeys to dangerous jungles to launch assaults on Vietnamese soldiers," it said.
"Today, the Taliban forces have given the American troops some of their own medicine."
Monkeys, bats, machine-guns - oh my. Who to believe?
Finally, after two weeks of bloggers, media and animal rights activists wrangling with the morality of it all, LiveScience decided to ask a real scientist.
"They can be trained to do things like turn off lights and open faucets and so on, but eventually that breaks down," psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, William Mason, said
"If we're talking about animals going out into the field or a fortress with an AK-47 or whatever, it seems very, very implausible.
"To give a monkey a complex device like a rifle and say ‘We're going to train it to become a soldier’ is purely fantastical."
So there you have it - monkeys can't be train to shoot people. End of story, believe what you will at your own risk.
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Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth
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