Hanuman

Hanuman, a prominent divine entity in Hinduism, is a Human-like monkey god. He bestows courage, strength and longevity to the person who thinks about him or the god Rama.In Buddhism, the monkey is an early incarnation of Buddha but may also represent trickery and ugliness.

The Chinese Buddhist "mind monkey" metaphor refers to the unsettled,
restless state of human mind. Monkey is also one of the Three Senseless Creatures, symbolizing greed, with the tiger representing anger and the deer lovesickness.

The Mizaru, or three wise monkeys, are revered in Japanese folklore,
together they embody the proverbial principle to
"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
The Moche people of ancient Peru worshipped nature.

They placed emphasis on animals and often depicted monkeys in their art.Monkey brains are eaten as a delicacy in parts of South Asia, Africa and China. In traditional Islamic dietary laws, the eating of monkeys is forbidden.

However, monkeys are sometimes eaten in parts of Africa, where they can be sold as "bushmeat

Baby Boy or Girl? Mammals Can 'Choose'

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Mammals can skew the male-female ratio of their offspring in order to maximize their reproductive success, new research finds.

The study, published today (July 10) in the journal PLOS ONE, confirms a long-held theory that animals can influence the sex of their young in response to environmental conditions and other factors. The results come from about 90 years' worth of records for 40,000 mammals, ranging from primates to rhinoceroses, at the San Diego Zoo.

Females that produced the most males went on to have up to 2.7 times the number of grandchildren from those sons as those who had even numbers of male and female offspring. (The 10 Strangest Pregnancies in the Animal Kingdom)

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Tidy Monkey Flosses Teeth
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"When mothers produced predominantly male offspring, those male offspring outcompeted their peers," said study co-author Joseph Garner, an ethologist at Stanford University.

Parents that produced more females also tended to produce more offspring from those daughters than those with an even gender split, though the effect was less pronounced.

Still, that doesn't mean mammals are consciously choosing to have a male or a female. Instead, environmental and social cues may be subtly influencing their physiology so that they produce offspring with the best chances of passing on their genes.

The funny animal genre evolved

The funny animal genre evolved in the 1920s and 1930s, as blackface became less socially acceptable. Early black-and-white funny animals, including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey Mouse (perhaps the most enduring of the kind), Foxy the Fox, Felix the Cat and Flip the Frog, maintained certain aspects of the blackface design, including (especially with the advent of sound film) heavy emphasis on song and dance routines. The increased use of Technicolor and other color film processes in the 1930s allowed for greater diversity in the ability to design new "funny animals," leading to a much wider array of funny animal shorts and the near-total demise (except for Mickey Mouse and a few other Disney characters of the era) of the blackface characters. Song and dance fell out of favor and were largely replaced by comedy and satire. The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts by Warner Bros. Animation, for instance, introduced dozens of funny animals, many of whom have reached iconic status in American culture. Other notable funny animals from the color film era included Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker, MGM's Tom and Jerry (among many others), and Paul Terry's Heckle and Jeckle.
Television changed the dynamic of animation, in that although budgets were much smaller and schedules much tighter, this prompted a shift from the physical comedy that predominated film shorts to more dialogue-oriented jokes (including celebrity impressions and one-liner jokes). Hanna-Barbera Productions focused almost exclusively on these kinds funny animal TV series in the late 1950s and early 1960s, creating an extensive line of funny animal series (Yogi Bear being one of the most enduring franchises). Jay Ward Productions also produced The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, a series representative of the genre (albeit with much stronger Cold War overtones than Hanna-Barbera).

Penguins support gorillas as biscuit makers respond to palm oil threat

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Penguins are coming to the aid of gorillas, according to a survey which reveals that the UK's leading biscuit manufacturers are responding to the environmental threats of palm oil production.

Many of the biggest names in biscuits including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and United Biscuits – which makes some of the UK's most popular biscuits including McVitie's Digestive and Penguin – have pledged to reduce the amount of palm oil in their products.

The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) and Ethical Consumer magazine together surveyed over 50 of the UK's biggest biscuit manufacturers about their use of palm oil or its derivatives.

The top scoring companies were the Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and United Biscuits. Those at the bottom of the ranking were mostly American-based companies including Asda/Walmart, PepsiCo and Kraft, makers of Ritz and Oreo biscuits.

The project was carried out in response to the increasing threat that palm oil production is posing to the world's rainforest and to the people that rely on these forests for their livelihoods. Palm oil is a core ingredient in many food products but companies are not required by EU law to label products containing it until December 2014.

Having destroyed vast areas of forest in countries including Indonesia, which is home to orangutans, the RFUK says palm oil companies are now planning to expand into the rainforests of the Congo basin in Africa, home to lowland gorillas and other threatened primates. Palm oil companies are also partly responsible for the recent devastating forest fires in Sumatra, which caused pollution episodes in Malaysia and Singapore.

Simon Counsell, executive director of The Rainforest Foundation, UK said: "UK biscuit manufacturers and retailers are showing that it is possible to outright reduce the use of palm oil, which is going to have to occur globally if large areas of Africa's rainforests are to be saved from conversion to palm plantations."

Leonie Nimmo, researcher at Ethical Consumer, added: "This survey clearly shows that environmental campaigning is having a positive impact on the palm oil policies of many companies which is something we wholeheartedly support. Consumers now have a choice in buying biscuits which are reducing the risks to both people and wildlife."