Special Day Post
Every year, December 14 is celebrated as Monday Day. The day marks the celebration of monkeys as well as other similar simians such as apes, lemur, tarsiers, and other non-human primates. The day celebrates the unique features of simians.
The origin of the day was an outcome of a joke made by a Michigan State University art student, Casey Sorrow. Sorrow jokingly wrote “Monkey Day” on a friend’s calendar and adding to the fun, Sorrow with friend Eric Millikin decided to go and celebrate the day with other art students. The holiday became famous after Sorrow and Millikin started including the day in their self-published comics strips.
The word "monkey" originated in a German version of the Reynard the Fox fable. Monkeys are an interesting species of simians popular for their unique features and cute but mischievous personality. Monkeys live all over the world, with more than 250 species. Their size ranges from mere ounces like the pygmy marmoset to the mandrill at a heavier 80 pounds. Their personalities and habits make humans curious on many levels. These intelligent mammals with opposable thumbs live in family groups, too. However, many species of monkeys are endangered.
Something which started just as a little joke has now transformed into a big operation. Today, Monkey Day is celebrated each year to raise awareness of dangers to monkeys, with institutions such as National Geographic, Greenpeace, and the Smithsonian Institution promoting the day. Sorrow and Millikin have also been influential in using monkey-themed art as a way to serve this end, as well. Their work has provided an entirely new understanding of the term “monkey business!”
Monkey Day holds great attention from different zoos as well. For example, the Lahore Zoo in Pakistan marks an annual World Monkey Day celebration which includes art competitions and educational and learning events about monkeys, comprising over a hundred children wearing monkey masks, poetry making and reading about monkeys, and performances to highlight the dangers monkeys face as well as monkey evolution. The Indira Gandhi Zoological Park in India organizes Monkey Day programs to educate children about wildlife issues and encourage people to adopt monkeys.
Some Interesting Facts about Monkeys and Monkey Day-
In the early days of pioneering medicine during the 2nd century A.D., Galenus (known as Galen) studied monkeys through dissection, noticing their similarities to humans.
A squirrel monkey, Miss Baker, and a rhesus macaque, Able, were the first monkeys to make a successful launch and return to space. They were sent by the United States Air Force on a Jupiter rocket.
Monkeys show affection to one another by grooming, cuddling, holding hands, and lip-smacking. They show aggression by showing their teeth, yawning, head bobbing, and jerking their head and shoulders forward.
According to the University of Wisconsin, the world's smallest monkey is the pygmy marmoset, weighing around 113 grams and is only around 12.7 cms tall.