Meet The Blog Monkey

I have received this message from the InterTubes:

I am contacting you on behalf of the Blog Monkey Initiative. The Blog Monkey Initiative is an attempt to get to get a monkey species named after the blogosphere and at the same time help renowned biologist and ... [so called] "Hero of the Planet" Marc van Roosmalen by raising money so he can get back to his important work.

You can find out more details here:

Proudly Presenting the Blog Monkey

and

Interview with Marc van Roosmalen

I'm not going to advocate for or against this project for the simple reason that I feel like I know something about primate conservation and ecology, you should expect thoughtful and meaningful commentary from me on this, yet I have not read this material in any detail. So I'm not endorsing it, just passing it on to you as something that seems very much worth looking at.

Plus it would be cool to have a monkey named after the blogosphere.

What they should really do is to challenge the bloggers to compete to raise more money, and whoever gets the most money together gets the monkey named after their blog. Imagine: Gregladensblogus gregsladensblogii

Of course, you know the outcome would actually be:

Peezeeus myersii

Anyway, do look at this and let me know what you think.

More like this

tags: Marc van Roosmalen, primatology,monkeys, Brazil, research, biopiracy Dutch scientist Marc van Roosmalen (pictured) was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for trying to auction off the names of several monkey species and for keeping monkeys at his house without proper authorization.…
Yet more on the multiple new Amazonian mammals that have been discovered or documented by Marc van Roosmalen. If you haven't already done so, please read part I and part II. Here in part III we're going to look at the monkeys, as Marc has continued to discover various forms that don't match any…
Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years'…
Here's an interesting strategy for raising money for research: Marc van Roosmalen is asking for internet donations to fund his work on Amazon primates. He's not trying to raise much — his goal is $31,000 — and it's a good cause. There's also a prize! He'll name a newly discovered monkey after the…

I would pay to not have a monkey, or any other living thing, named after the "blogosphere." The Internet is informative, and at times entertaining, but that's going too far.

I think the blog monkey is meant to commemorate that monkey hitting keys for an infinite amount of time who eventually end up writing Hamlet. Come to think of it, that would be an appropriate mascot for the blogosphere.

I think I like the Joel approach:

"Give me a million bucks or this monkey gets named after the blogosphere. Small bills, unmarked, in a suitcase, under the elm tree in front of the library in the town square at midnight. Don't try anything funny, or your precious monkey gets named....."