If you're like me, you've been stoned one too many times and watched way too many obscure sci-fi movies during your adolescence.

I once spent a weekend watching the entire "Planet of the Apes" saga.  That's all five original movies and then the 2001 remake.

Even people who haven't seen the movies are probably familiar with the line "Get your filthy paws off me, you damn dirty apes," as growled by Charlton Heston, the greatest teeth-grinding Amerikkkan actor of the 20th century.  However, it takes at least one viewing of the entire series to understand the nuanced Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whys and Hows of the Ape's ascent to domination of humanity.

Essentially, after a plague wipes out the dogs and cats of the world, humanity starts to keep apes as pets.  Soon after, the role of the apes evolves -pun!- from that of pet to the role of servants.  After a couple decades, the face of the earth is changed when self-contained citystates replace nations, all built by ape-slave labor.

As with humans, the ape slaves soon get fed up with being slaves and rise up, overthrowing their masters and asserting their dominion over the Planet of the Apes.

Fortunately, our domesticated canines and felines haven't succumbed to a plague.  Yet.  But the first step toward the ape revolt has already been taken by our friends in Japan:



While the Japanese Macaque was not a part of the social hierarchy in the Planet of the Apes movies, Wikipedia has this to say about them:
"The Japanese Macaque is very smart. It is the only animal other than humans and raccoons that is known to wash its food before eating it. Researchers studying this species left sweet potatoes out on the beach for them to feed on, then witnessed one female taking the food down to the sea to wash the sand off it. After a while, others started to copy her behavior. This trait was then passed on from generation to generation, until eventually, all except the very oldest members of the troop were washing their food in the sea."

Pretty fabulous, eh?  Maybe one day (probably soon) we can all have our own food-washing, sake-pouring slave monkey!