Do Monkeys Have Ear Wax?

Do Monkeys Have Ear Wax?

by Marilyn Mackenzie

I mentioned early this morning in the Daily Whine & Shine - January 22, 2008 that my son and I had some long discussions on Monday and starting into today.  He's quite a thinker and philosopher for someone "only" 23.  With the Internet, he can Google his ideas and thoughts to see if there are similar thinking persons or to hone in on ideas he's pondering.  Honestly, I don't know where he gets that pondering thing.    Yesterday, we discovered that we both have a file on our desktop for a place to dump our thoughts as they bombard our brains.  We've both called the file "random musings."  His have snippets of ideas that he might want to persue later.  Mine has titles I might want to use, although the words behind them have not surfaced.  Oddly enough, my son has just discovered the need for a good title, even in his blog, to make people want to see more.   We both have quotes that have hit us as something interesting.  Or quotes we have created on our own.

Yesterday, my son awoke with the thought that we are "pink hairless monkeys."  Monkeys were obviously on his brain early yesterday, so it wasn't odd that they came up later in the day too.

I guess while I was at the knee doctor, the two cats and the dog made sure that he paid attention to them in my absense.  He scratched one cat behind her ears and she purred so loudly that he reached in her ears to massage the insides too.  As he did, he thought, "I wonder why cats don't have ear wax?  Perhaps it's because the tiny hairs make it unnecessary."  He peeked in the dogs ears to confirm that they don't have ear wax either.

With monkeys on the brain, his next question was, "Do monkeys have ear wax?"  Off he went to Google that, but he didn't find an answer.  He posed the question in his own blog page at myspace.com.  He was more concerned, I think, with how do they rid themselves of ear wax if they have it.  They don't have Q-tips, and even if you see two monkeys grooming each other in the zoo, you don't see them concentrating on the ears.

Later in the evening as we were talking, he read that blog page to me (I don't visit his myspace pages, since he asked me not to.  Perhaps he needs a place to vent about me sometimes.  )

I pondered the question of monkeys and ear wax myslef and finally decided that they have lots of ear wax and they don't clean it.  That must be why they are always so loud and screaming and screeching.  Think about it.  Have you ever heard a monkey whisper?

Have we settled that question?

Last night, my son, my hubby and I all watched a 2-hour show on the History Channel called, "Life After People."  It will be showing tonight too, I think, or maybe next Wednesday.  You might want to check it out.  It's also available on DVD.

The show was all about what would happen to our world, the earth, if people just up and disappeared one day.  It mentioned that within 36 hours, there would be almost no power being produced with no humans to be working at and guarding the workings of power plants.  The Hoover Dam plant would work longer because it doesn't need humans to keep it working.  Well, except that humans have to rid the pipes of some organisms that will eventually clog them and make not be able to pull in the supply of water that makes the power plant work.  I can't remember exactly how long they believe that would take, but it was much longer than the 36 hours for the other plants - days or weeks or months.  I forget.

This show took us from hours after all humans disappeared to thousands of years later.  At 10,000 years after man disappeared, the scientists and engineers believe that the only evidence of man would be the pyramids and the stone etchings of early man.

Our books would be eaten by bugs, especially cockroaches, and overtaken by molds in about 100 years.  Film - without being protected from extreme heat and cold and humidity would bubble and be rendered useless in even less time than it would take the words on paper pages to disappear.  CDs and DVDs would have that same kind of fate.

The documentary reported that animals and vegetation would learn to survive without man and would go back to their natural states, before man appeared on the scene.  For domestic animals, there would be an initial dying out, perhaps, but those that did survive would learn to hunt in the wild.

The New York subways would be quickly submerged in water without humans to man the many valves that keep them dry.  (I didn't know this.)  They showed how Central Park would look after years, and it was quite beautiful without man's paths and concrete.  The main street at Greenwich Village, that used to be a meandering stream, would return to that state.

Buildings all over the world would collapse and fall.  Those with wooden frames would be the first to fall, without man there to maintain them.  Stone and brick buildings would take longer, and steel skyscrapers, but eventually they would all crumble and die according to this show. 

Cars, so necessary to us in today's world, would rust and be merely skeletons in such a short while.

An intersting phrase was used about how we value our oceans and other bodies of water.  One scientist said that we treat them as both pantries and toilets.  How right that is, and how disgusting.  Without man, sea creatures would multiply too.  And sea gulls, now so reliant on man for food scraps, would learn to find some of those abundant fish.

Interestingly, one scientist pondered whether or not it was possible for the apes to evolve into thinking animals who would one day become man, and he decided against that.  He said that the leap was too great to fathom.  He said that while they can be taught to use tools for means of survival, we have seen no evidence that they could evolve into humans who look to the sky for answers, who ponder the stars and the sun and questions like, "Do monkeys have ear wax?"  Okay, he didn't say that last thing, but that was what he was saying - that science has no real evidence today that evolution occurred nor would occur that would take an ape from being able to use rough stones or even metals for tools to one who wished to conquer space.

I'm glad my son and I were able to talk yesterday.  We talked, as I mentioned in the Daily Whine & Shine, more yesterday than we had sometimes for months on end.  It did finally exhaust him mentally, while I was still enjoying the time together.

Having had those discussions, it was a natural progression for him to stop what he was doing to join hubby and me in watching the History Channel show.  I'm glad the three of us had that time together.  That doesn't happen often either.

If you can find the show - Life After People - either on the History Channel programming or on DVD, I would suggest doing so. 

Realizing how temporary are all of man's greatest inventions makes me, at least, realize how temporary is this earthly home and this time.  I'm glad that I believe in a Heaven that goes on into eternity.  I'm glad that I believe Jesus is waiting with open arms.

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Here's the link for the documentary:  Life After People