“When Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal read a news story that said Microsoft’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, had hurled a chair across the room on hearing an employee was going to work for rival Google, the scientist immediately made a connection with his own research: ‘When I see such behavior, I think of a chimpanzee,'” Shankar Vedantam reports for The Washington Post.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: So do we, Frans, so do we.
They don’t call him “Monkeyboy” for nothing:
Ballmer is also an excellent song and dance assemblage:
LOL
“Monkeyboy”…..It just doesn’t get old for me, no matter how many times I hear it!
I’ve been outed.
Doesn’t surprise me. Ballmer is the only guy I know that can scratch his ankles without bending over.
Not to defend Balmer or anything, but the article suggests that we ALL have behavioral patterns linked to our genetic tree (ie. we all share traits with other primates related to our group behavioral patterns).
It mentions the social hierarchies that Chimps form and compares them to the way we function, territorialism, etc. We think we’re somehow evolved above animals.. most of our behavior however is primitive and based on inherited genes. Anything above that is the exception, not the rule.
He deserves his banana now.
What will we do without that guy, how boring it would be. When him and Gates start tossing feces around, just priceless.
plain and simple, Ballmer is an embarrassment. a joke at the right place at the right time riding the right coat tails.
All of that body hair removal must be painful. Ouch!
I wandered where Balmer was finding all those banana skins.
You need to change the name of this site. It’s more about slamming Microsoft then it is about Apple news.
You sound like a little kid constantly making fun of someone else just to make yourself feel better. GROW UP !!!!!
It’s people like you that give Mac fans a bad name.
HAHAHA what a great find.
I take great umbrage at Frans de Waal’s attempt to denigrate our Apish Cousins.
I understand what you are saying.
I have felt the same way in the past.
Then, I realized, it is just plain fun to make fun of ballmer.
The guy prances around on stage yelling “Give it up for me!”
How, I ask, how, can we not find that funny.
“Give it up for me” The guy has to tell people to like him.
No, it is not childish to make fun of ballmer, the guy is an idiot and it is fun.
That simple.
The fact that Apple has not released a new product in more than 6 months is really starting to get on my nerves. Hello?? I can’t spend money on vapor and Steve Jobs keynotes.
This is not news. Despite my belief that Steve Ballmer is one of the worst CEO’s in modern American business. He may not be criminally corrupt (Skilling, Lay, Ebbers et al.), he just is blind to the fact that it is no longer the ’90s and he can’t get away with his bullying tactics.
Although it might be fun to take someone down a peg, especially someone such as Ballmer. The real story, again, is the fact that it has been more than 6 months since Apple has released a new product. Simple updates to Airport Extreme do not count.
“Lighten up, Francis.”
“You need to change the name of this site. It’s more about slamming Microsoft then it is about Apple news.”
greg, check the current headlines. MOST of them are Apple news. then you read the one story bashing MS and make a statement like that. just a little selective? oh yeah…..
AP –
All good things to those who wait.
Fun article, Ballmer must be squirming under this spotlight.
But don’t be dissing the late, great Peter Boyle (Frankenstein monster in the clip above, and TV Everybody Loves Raymond’s dad.) The man was a great, despite his physical similarities to MSFTs chimp-in-chief.
I don’t think MacDailyNews gives Mac “fans” a bad name at all.
And, I think the skit with Steve Ballmer and Gene Wilder is terriffic!
Oh, man. I love that MDN brings back ol’ Monkey Boy every now and then.
@Twisted Mac Freak
LOL “if any of you queers touch me, I”l kill you”
“Would I be insecure if I WAS TALKING SO LOUDLY?!”
-JON LOVITZ as Emporer Tod Spango
Primatologically speaking, Chimpanzees aren’t monkeys, they are apes. Other primates include prosimians (lemurs and their relatives) and hominids (us).
The easiest way to tell the difference is that monkeys have tails and apes don’t.
“The easiest way to tell the difference is that monkeys have tails and apes don’t.”
Well, ants on a stick! That explains why Monkey Boy hurls chairs. It’s hurting his tail. Poor bastard.
Great article, intuitively obvious. There’s a lot we don’t know about human behaviour and how brains operate. I suggest that de Waal ask Ballmer and Gates to donate their brains to science. They function differently but otherwise have interesting similarities. Might as well ask for the Pope’s too.