An email to me: “I think this is very much up your alley and that you will have something deep and philosophical to say bout it (I am hoping so!)”:

Angry monkeys turned on their cruel trainer and beat him with his own stick. One of the trio bit him and pulled out handfuls of his hair…monkeys1_1208243c-1.jpg

…When one of the monkeys refused to ride on a child’s bicycle in a street performance in Sizhou, in eastern China, their owner beat it with a stick.

Although they were tied to the man with ropes attached to their collars, the monkeys appear to have decided to fight back.

The two animals came to the defence of the third monkey, grabbing the stick from the man, pulling on his ear and biting his head.

When he dropped his cane, on monkey snatched it up and began beating the trainer on the head until he broke the stick, witnesses said.

The dazed trainer told his audience: “They were once wild and these performances don’t always come naturally to them. They may have built up some feelings of hatred towards me.”

Hegel’s theory of history must now include the miserable domain of the monkeys. By his own standards, these small creatures are in and not outside of the story of freedom and its absolute realization at the end of time. What this report makes clear is that the motor of progress (which for Hegel is a spirit and for Marx, as with Vico, the father of dialectic idealism/materialism, is class struggle) maybe more universal than initially thought. By beating his master with the master’s own stick, the monkey also beat down to nothing another part of the great wall that has long separated us from the rest.

Note: One of the greatest novellas ever written, Tommaso Landolf’s The Two Old Maids, is about a revolutionary monkey.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

12 replies on “News from the Animal Kingdom”

  2. Charles,
    I detect a theme lately in some of you posts–about the illusion of humanity’s ‘higher’ status amongst the animal kingdom.
    I take it you’ve read “Straw Dogs” by John Gray? If not, you must.

  5. @1
    Not ALL zoos are prisons, some are very compassionate towards the animals and give them large, safe areas and even time away from people so they can have some privacy.

    The picture in the post is great though, that monkey’s about to give the beat-down!

  7. You’ve completely lost me this time Charles.

    But the image of 3 monkeys biting their master, pulling his hair, and beating him with his own stick completely cracks me up. Thanks.

  9. Trying to figure out what Mudede thinks is novel about this monkey behavior. Ok here goes:

    Coalitions: the fact that two or more individuals cooperated to achieve a goal, here in an aggressive context
    Nope. Not novel. Been seen in many primate species, and others such as lions.

    Revenge, retaliation, or protection of group member: seen over and over again in primates, other mammals and social birds.

    Tool use: seen in primates, dolphins, birds

    The fact that they happened all at the same time? Interesting, but not surprising.

    Is there something I am missing? Would like to understand exactly what this “wall” is and how these monkeys crossed it.

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