Are You in Anthropodenial?

After finishing Frans de Waal’s
engaging history of primate
studies, The Ape and the Sushi Master, I
wasn’t surprised, a day later, to come
across a Web site called ”Bush or
Chimp?” The juxtaposition of head shots
of the new president alongside
chimpanzees, in poses ranging from
slack-jawed joviality to goofy hooting,
plays off a timeworn joke.

The laughter depends on the underlying
assumption that while apes may look like
humans, akin even to the most powerful
leader in the world, there still must be a
quantum leap from them to us. But the
laughter grows thinner by the year as
one by one the supposed bellwether
differences between apes and humans, like toolmaking, fall away.
Chimpanzees use leaves as seats, as it turns out; they fashion a kind of
footwear to protect themselves from thorns; they ”fish” for termites with
twigs and reeds they strip and cut for the occasion. New York Times