Caesar Is Home

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Caesar Is Home

                We recently switched to DirecTV for our TV, and we have several movie channels that just play movies that have recently came out of theaters and are no longer new releases at movie rental stores.  One of my favorites of these movies is Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is about a scientist who creates a virus that can cause neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells.  He tests it on his pet chimpanzee, who is eventually taken to animal control for beating the hell out of one of the neighbors.  Later, the chimpanzee, named Caesar, unleashes the virus on all the apes in the facility, and they proceed to take over the city of Oakland. 

                Although this situation probably is impossible within the next few centuries, I still am very intrigued by the whole idea.  I am amazed by the strength of these apes, and I wish that I had that kind of strength.  I often joke with my friends that if I had my brain in a chimpanzee’s body, I could easily take over the world.  One of the most obvious advantages that apes have over humans is their incredible hand and arm strength.  As shown in the movie, chimpanzees can easily climb up a giant redwood tree, while an extremely fit human would take somewhere from thirty minutes to an hour to do this.  Another clear strength that we humans lack is their jaw.  Humans still have extremely powerful jaw muscles, which are pound-for-pound the strongest muscles in our bodies, but apes’ jaws are tens of times stronger, and are valuable tools and weapons in the wild.

                In fact, one theory of humans’ divergence from apes throughout evolution is that a mutation in a gene for jaw strength allowed humans’ skulls to grow much bigger as they were no longer held down by the powerful jaw muscles, and this led to larger brains and dramatically increased intelligence.  I would like to have this, but then have the gene replaced with that of our ancestors, so that my jaw muscles would be as powerful as an ape’s.  In Planet of the Apes, the chimpanzees’, orangutans’ and gorillas’ intelligence increased exponentially in a very short period of time, and this is simply unrealistic.  There is no way that this fast of a neurological change could happen in any species on Earth.  However, I still am a big fan of the movie.