A Leprechaun who evolved from Monkeys!

Recently while on a plane from Dubai to Riyadh, I had a chance to browse Friday (June 8-14, 2007), an expensively and beautifully produced magazine, filled almost entirely (in my opinion) with trash, that accompany the Gulf News every Friday.

I browsed through its pages and stumbled upon the first piece titled Animal instincts written by a Mr. G* Nice.
http://www.gulfnews.com/friday/People/10130683.html.

I was curious to know what G* stands for. Conservative media use asterisks when they have to print expletives (e.g. s**t, or f**k etc., see how useful the asterisks are). May be there is one, but I could not think of a two letter expletive that starts with G. The blurb mentions that Mr. G* Nice is a Dubai-based columnist who writes an exclusive column for Friday. The column includes an unusual photograph of the author; a rear view of his bald pate with an oversize headphone strewn around the head. In the photo, Mr. G* Nice is apparently looking at the blank screen of his notebook PC. Perhaps he is having trouble booting up the device, or he gets his stimulation for his columns by staring at a blank screen (I am inclined to think that he is doing the latter). Since his face is hidden, I cannot guess anything else apart from the fact that he is a male Caucasian, completely bald, perhaps 30-40 years old, prefers to wear blue denims and black jacket even on a very hot summer day in Dubai. I would be interested to know what he is listening on that oversized headphones while staring at a blank screen - music, a podcast, Gospel?

So, who or what is this Mr. G* Nice?

1. An erudite columnist – especially on matters of philosophy, science and evolution, who occasionally gives intelligent teasers to his readers.


2. A creationist, who believes that the Bible’s account of the Creation is literally true and that G** created man to rule over this world.


3. An obtuse, dull-witted humor writer masquerading as a specialist in “creative circles, psychology and stuff”.

I would rather let the reader come to his/her conclusion after reading his column and my comments below.

Since there was no other worthwhile pursuit I could do in that plane journey, I read his column. That confirmed my hunch that he is not only staring at a blank screen, but also is fond of listening to silent, imaginary, non-existent music through oversize headphones. Perhaps, the information that he gathers from blank screens and silent music also fills his brain with the same. How else can you explain such utter hogwash in a magazine, unfortunately read also by at least a few impressionable youngsters, who might believe anything they see in print? Then again, seeing such articles, one feels happy that kids of this generation aren’t that much interested in reading anyway!

In his column, Mr. G* Nice poses a very interesting question: “If you were an animal – what kind of animal would you be?” Can anything be more brainless? What does Mr. G* Nice thinks of himself – a Gremlin, Elf , Goblin or most likely a Leprechaun? - Doesn’t this guy know that he is already an animal, a mammal called Homo sapiens (Genus: Homo, Familiy: Hominidae, Order: Primates, Class: Mammalia, Phylum: Chordata, Kingdom: Animalia)?

In fact, he also has a challenge for his dear readers; his offer of a “life changing mental stimulation”. Perhaps, he intended to ask, “If you were a different animal, what kind would you be?” That makes some sense. If you are not born in the family of H. Sapiens, what else would you be? That is a reasonable question to ask, an interesting thought experiment. Mr. G* Nice weighs up several options – penguin, dog, donkey, lion, etc. before giving his personal choice (after careful consideration and due diligence) – that he would want to be a ‘Monkey’! There is nothing wrong in that, except he did not specify which species of monkeys he would like himself to be when he becomes one.

In spite of our distinct and different looks, whether Black, Caucasian, Mongolian, Chinese or Japanese, we all can interbreed and produce offspring; hence we humans belong to the same species. Unlike H. Sapiens, there are more than 250 different species of monkeys currently living in the wild that do not interbreed at all. Come on, Mr. G* Nice, specify which monkey species you want to be in – Rhesus, Colobus, Langur, Macaque, Baboon, Mandrill, Capuchin or any other? That will pose another problem. Will his chosen species want Mr. G* Nice in their midst? If I were a Rhesus monkey, I know the answer already.

I must assume here that Mr. G* Nice would want to be a real monkey rather than be a member of another ape family such as orang-utans or chimpanzees. From the wording of his teaser, I could easily guess that he doesn’t know that he is already an ape, that the Hominidae family includes chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas and humans and is collectively known as the “great apes”.

It is a common misconception to call our ape cousins monkeys. The monkeys and apes (including us humans) belong to the Primate Order, but are different families. How do we differentiate? We humans are hairless (some are baldheaded, like Mr. G* Nice) apes, our cousins (chimpanzees, orang-utans, gorillas etc.) are hairy, but none of us have a tail. Monkeys on the other hand are hairy like the apes, but also have a long and very useful tail. Perhaps Mr. G* Nice is missing his tail. So, when he becomes a monkey, we could probably expect a new photograph to accompany his columns – a photograph of his posterior adorning a real masculine tail!

Then he digressed away from an otherwise interesting argument with a “quick aside” – “if we did evolve from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” I wouldn’t mind a thirteen-year old asking that question, but this is an exclusive columnist of Friday! That’s when I realized that that this guy really spends all his time (except perhaps when writing his columns) staring at his blank computer screen and listening to silent, non-existent music.

Give me a break Mr. G* Nice, where did you get the idea that we evolved from monkeys? Perhaps you don’t know that all animals that we see around us today underwent millions of years of evolution and are the perfect examples of those species that survived?

We, Homo sapiens, did not evolve from monkeys. Let us do a thought experiment. Let us assume that Mr. G* Nice has a family, and that he can trace his family tree sufficiently back, perhaps millions of years. Let us also assume that a wise old Rhesus monkey in India called R* Nice also has a family and can trace his family tree back millions of years. Both gentlemen will trace their respective family tree to find a common ancestor, who probably lived around 25 million years ago, in the jungles of Africa. If an energetic young chimpanzee in Angola called C* Nice will do the same exercise, she will trace her ancestry also to the same common ancestor. That perhaps will be the 1.5 millions-greats-grandpa of Mr. G* Nice, the wise old R*Nice (Rhesus monkey from India) and the energetic young C* Nice (the chimpanzee from Angola). Their greats-grandpa, who was neither a monkey nor a human, would probably have nice narrow, downward facing nostrils somewhat similar to Mr. G* Nice’s nostrils and a perfect long tail almost as our wise old R* Nice has. It is not a coincidence that Mr. G* Nice and our venerable R* Nice share 93% of their DNA sequence.

Incidentally, Mr. G* Nice and the young energetic C* Nice will share a common ancestor much earlier than that, say around 5 million years ago. This ancestor, perhaps their 250,000 greats-grandpa, also lived in Africa, and probably looked more like C* Nice rather than Mr. G* Nice, but this greats-grandpa was not a chimpanzee.

What I am trying to say is that none of us evolved from chimpanzees or monkeys. We, i.e. the apes and monkeys, all evolved from a common ancestor, who lived perhaps 25 millions years ago in the jungles of Africa.

For a very interesting and scientific account of where we came from, right to the origins of life on this planet, I would strongly recommend Mr. G* Nice to throw away his oversized headphones and blank-screen PC to read The Ancestor’s Tale – A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life by Professor Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned evolutionary biologist and author. That will probably help Mr. G* Nice to realize that he is not a Leprechaun and we humans did not evolve from monkeys!