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For The First Time, Chimpanzees Are Making A Fashion Statement -- Sticking Blades Of Grass In Their Ears


Stashed in: Primates!, life, Fashion, Anthropology

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But is it Coach grass?

"Julie acted as a role model for the other 11 chimpanzees in her group. As van Leeuwen points out, “everybody can wear rings in their ears, but you just have to come to the idea to do it.” The seven chimps who adopted the grass-in-ear tradition -- and who would continue it after Julie’s death -- repeatedly inspected her behavior before trying it themselves.   

“The chimps would pick a piece of grass, sometimes fiddle around with it as to make the piece more to their liking, and not until then try and stick it in their ear with one hand,” van Leeuwen says. “Most of the time, the chimps let the grass hanging out of their ear during subsequent behavior like grooming and playing, sometimes for quite prolonged times. As you can imagine, this looks pretty funny.”

Coach grass... Ha!

It does look funny but so does a lot of fashion.

Agreed, I was flipping through a magazine that had a story covering fashion week. All I kept thinking as I looked at each page was "REALLY?!?" I think I like the "grass in ear" look better. 

I can only guess this is related to the decorative parrot videos making their way around the interweb. 

Greg and Danielle, yes!

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