Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/17/baboons-cleverly-plot-escape-f.html
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Go Baboons, GO!
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The baboons are also highly-enough evolved to at least not shoot vertically formatted video.
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I don’t find it surprising they weren’t shot. Being an open carry state doesn’t mean everyone shoots everything! Now had baboons been in season…it might be another story!
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Matthew Broderick’s wherabouts at the time of the incident could not be confirmed. 
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They just wanted to experience the grass and trees that grow right up to the edge of their desolate, rocky, denuded, sun-baked hellscape of a habitat. Poor, poor primates…
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The environment they are forced to live in is very charitably called a “habitat.”
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i know people who have raised baboons. those things terrify me. they are smart, strong, and definitely will plot against you. they are like evil 6 year olds that can go vertical at will.
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Baboos just give me the creeps;
SHAKMAAAAAAA!
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Baboons are monkeys. Terrifying, murderous monkeys.
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They’re like evil six year olds who are more agile than an Olympic gymnast and built like a Rottweiler, but with much bigger teeth.
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I don’t know what’s more painful, calling baboons apes or the idiot keepers not realizing that they would instantly figure out how to use a barrel to escape.
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When I was in college, I paid for a couple of years by working in a laboratory researching…diarrhea. One floor down was a guy who used to work at a facility that had baboons. Their habitat was a giant half-dome made of chain-link fencing, and the only entry/exit was a door made of a 2-inch slab of solid stainless steel locked with a giant Masterlock. Every now and then, a noob will feel sorry for them and try to enrich their environment by tossing in some sort of rubber ball. It would be ripped into postage-stamp sized debris in nanoseconds.. Their hands were just small enough they could stick a hand through the links in the mesh and grab the Masterlock. They couldn’t manipulate it more than what it took to swivel it and bang it against the door - loudly and constantly. AS soon as one baboon got bored, another would start banging it without even missing a beat. After about 6 months, the lock would explode from metal fatigue and everyone would have to run outside and round the baboons up.
When he told us this story, myself and another guy had a Million-Dollar Idea: Instead of Underwriter Laboratories, which determines whether nerds/indoor kids can easily break something, have toys and tools rated by Monkey Hours - if something can survive in the baboon cage for a few milliseconds, then it is indestructible by mortal humans. The longer it lasts, the higher the Monkey Hour rating.
That’s why that Texas habitat looks so bleak. If anything sprouted, they would tear it up and put it in their mouth just out of curiosity.
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I assume that’s a typo. “Babboo” has a double “b.”
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At one of the zoos that I had my rotation at in Vet School, you had to be super careful in the primate enclosures… when the animals weren’t in there. Drop anything, and they’d figure out some way to use it to help them escape or for what they consider a funny joke.
There was a gorilla that was able to manually remove an enclosure bolt, and he hid it every time an enclosure sweep was done. He was using the bolt (clamped in his hand) to remove other bolts one by one, which he’d toss over the enclosure wall at night. He was only found out when the night cleaning group reported finding multiple bolts over a period of weeks. One super exhaustive search later, they found his hiding spot for his makeshift tool.
Primates are a lot more clever than most people give them credit for.
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LOG0223.m4a (217.2 KB)
(Edit: attempt to embed audio as other than an attachment was not successful. Any chance of AAC gaining support, or should I just do it Youtube-style and disseminate audio as video with a still image occupying that side of things?)
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Yes… BUT WHAT OF JEFF FAHEY?!
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/jeff-fahey-plays-a-gardener-named-jobe-in-the-film-the-lawnmower-man-picture-id667878328
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