Page 156: A barrel of monkey puns

By page 156 in The Billionth Monkey, readers have been lulled into a false sense of security with a Shining homage (see here, there, this, that, the other thing, and, yes, here too) only to have the narrator sneak up and beat them over the head with a shameless barrage of #MonkeyReferences. Plus a couple of other goodies. Did you catch them all?

• Estrus: According to sociobiology, the development of menstruation sets those primates apart from other mammals with an estrous cycle. Because this renders fertility/receptivity less obvious, in theory it significantly alters the dynamics of Parental Investment.
• Mandrell: Homonym for “mandrill.”
• Savanna: Several types of monkeys have evolved or adapted to living in savannas, including baboons, patas monkeys, vervet monkeys, and green monkeys.
• Gibbons: The archetypal tree-swinging ape.
• Simeon: Homonym for “simian.”
• Nichols-Woking: Anglophile homonym/bad pun for “knuckle-walking.”
• Chattered, howled, grunted: All terms for how different apes and monkeys communicate.
• “O! I am Fortune’s fool!”: A Shakespeare quote, these are Romeo’s tragic words from Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1.
• Central University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne: See our earlier story on unfortunate university names (see here, and its reappearance on Wikibard).

Vervet monkey, by BimboDelux [Image source: Wikimedia Commons].