Dog days

So there's this news story I came across, 'Rocky the orangutan apes human speech in knockout study'. I noticed the pun of course but it serves a duel purpose in this instance, it's also highly equivocal. A fact that is rather unfortunately demonstrated by the video that accompanies the story. Alas Rocky doesn't speak in the video, he doesn't even ape human vocalisation, what he in fact does, is grunt. Ape grunts, doesn't quite have the same impact does it?

This isn't the only case of attention seeking I've witnessed in the field of animal studies lately. Recently there was a story that could be summarised as goat stares, masquerading as somehow a relevant incident for media attention. It was supposed to be fantastic because the goat in question, wanted something from the person he was staring at. Yeah well domestic animals interact with humans that way a lot, hens will even tug your trousers if they think you have a treat for them, in way not dissimilar to kid pestering a parent for ice cream.

So how come this stuff gets into the media, well I put it down to another story that isn't newsworthy: humans are stupid.