"Guns and Monkeys" by Jason Spitz

For those of you who are illin' for a post on Science and Torah, R' Slifkin, Evolution, etc. — Bereishit is just around the corner! — as I was driving up on Sunday to visit MPMYF/Ághám and The Guy Cropped Out Of This Old Profile Picture, I thought of this song, by a young Jewish musician from [if I remember correctly] Texas.

Guns and Monkeys by Jason Spitz

I remember back in 7th grade
My teacher rained on my parade —
He told me something I could not believe.
Within the walls of that institution
He taught us all about Evolution;
He said that apes were Adam and that chimpanzees were Eve.
And he told me Darwin's word was like the law,
And that Australopithecus was my great-great-great-grandpa;
And he said, "Pay attention — there's a test next week."
I raised my hand and began to speak;
I said, "Excuse me, sir, with all due respect,
If you believe our little heads'll
Buy that crap that you just said, sir,
You're the biggest idiot that I have ever met —

'Cause monkeys don't have shotguns and gorillas don't make war;
If you gave an ape a dollar, he wouldn't know quite what it's for.
They don't have Jerry Springer, and they don't have World War II,
And it seems to me the chimpanzees are just one step ahead
Of me and you."

My intellectual dissension
Got me three days of detention
And I had to take the pop quiz anyway,
But from that day I knew for certain —
Biology was really hurtin'
For a revised explanation of how people got this way.
'Cause a primate is a peaceful, loving thing,
And I'm sure it has no interest in professional wrestling;
It don't care for Mercedes-Benz,
Just hanging out, making friends
With all the other monkeys of its kind.
It's never racist, hardly rude —
It ain't got no bad attitude —
A human being just like that is getting hard to find.

'Cause monkeys don't have shotguns and gorillas don't make war;
If you gave an ape a cell-phone, he wouldn't know quite what it's for.
They don't have Whoopi Goldberg, and they don't have drugs & booze,
And it seems to me the chimpanzees are just one step ahead
Of me and you.

This topic needs to be addressed,
And I'm sure Jane Goodall can attest
To what I'm sayin' 'bout humanity.
Respect is what these chimps deserve,
Cause it took an awful lot of nerve
To stick ourselves upon these friendly creatures' family tree.
There's a lot that we can learn from these little guys —
Like how to swing from treetops, and how to not tell lies.
And I think that it'd be pretty neat
To have some thumbs on both my feet;
Perhaps a tail for all my friends to see.
And maybe if we change our ways
And end our self-destructive days,
The human race can catch up to the chimps eventually.

'Cause monkeys don't have shotguns and gorillas don't make war;
If you gave an ape a crack-pipe, he wouldn't know quite what it's for.
And maybe we're the ones who need to be locked in the zoo,
'Cause it seems to me the chimpanzees are just one step ahead
Of me and you.

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The claims made in this song about other primate species being "peaceful, loving thing"s are not quite accurate. In particular, chimpanzees have been known to kill each other as well as human babies.