fandomhigh | Primatology; Thursday, Fourth Period [ 01/06 ].

Oh, well, this was it! This was the first day of her very first class, and Jane was terribly excited. And horribly nervous. But mostly excited! Her nerves were all aflutter, which kept her bouncing slightly as she'd straightened the books and papers on the desk at the front of the classroom for the tenth time, checked to make sure her hair was still properly pinned up for the thirtieth time, and smoothed out her dress for the fiftieth. She'd lost track of how many times she'd adjusted her collar, and she tried to keep her beaming smile down to only a few thousand suns as the students started to file into the class and claim their seats. When it started to look as though they were all there, she took a moment to count heads and, finding the number satisfactory, she nodded and clapped her hands together.

"It looks as though we're all here!" she bubbled. "Wonderful! We can all get started! Hopefully, you're all here because you've signed up to be in..." Here, she spun eagerly toward the blackboard and wrote in great big letters, slowly saying the word as it appear in chalk, "PRIM-MA-TOL-LO-GY! And, well, if you aren't here for that, you're more than welcome to stay; we would be more than happy to have you! Now, Primatology is, of course, the study of primates. Apes, gorillas, monkeys, and even humans, if you'll believe it! There are great discoveries being made in primatology that show that human beings have a very strong connection to their primate friends, and, in studying the behavior of the various different species of primates, we can, in turn, learn quite an amazing bit about ourselves! I am Miss Porter, and I will be your teacher, your mentor, your guide in exploring this exciting new world of science that shows we are all part of the same world, the same culture, and we can learn a great deal from our so-called more 'primative' cousins!"

Stopping to remember to breathe and not just babble, Jane looked over the class with dancing eyes, eager to register how they might have responded to the first bit of her lecturing. She was so drilled up on adrenaline that, though she looked the class over, she might have actually managed to look right over some of the more peculiar aspects of the group, such as any peculiar skin tints or other not-quite-human additions.

"Now," she said, "I know we have such a small group, but that works out quite well, because it means I can afford each of you more attention that I would be able to in a much larger class. I have here on my desk your ~~currently handwavey~~ syllabus, which will cover a wide range of topics, from primate anatomy and biology, evolution, society structures, classifications, the use of primative tools and even," here she allowed herself to shoot them all a wry, daring smirk as her voice dropped a bit scandalously, "mating habits."

"But that is, of course, all in good time! We should all get to know each other first. Now, primates exhibit many different ways of greeting each other, and most of them are methods used to first be able to test and get an idea of the strength and potential risk of another primate. Hopefully, we all do not have to worry so much about such traits, so we can skip the habit of the male guinea baboon by embracing each other and fondling reproductive organs to see who might be best suited to carry on the clan's genes,"--yes, that was a chuckle and Jane's idea of a very good and shocking joke--"and potential compliance. However, I think it could be quite the exercise if we did take into consideration that, when olive baboons meets each other, they have a tendency to showboat a little, puffing themselves up and strutting up with an imposing gait, trying to seem quite big and bad and like you wouldn't want to mess with them at all. They smack their lips and squint their eyes and lay their ears back like this."

Of course Jane was demonstrating, her little chest swelling and her arms going out to her side to make her appear larger as, bowlegged, she took a few steps forward and gave a few hooting sounds. The smacking lips and the squinting eyes, and putting her hands flat against her head since she couldn't quite do that with her ears.

It quickly dissolved into giggles, though, and a modest blush across her cheeks, and then she started waving her hands to her students. "So, get up, then, all of you, and let's imitate the ritual greetings of the olive baboon! It is going to seem quite silly and very odd, I'm sure, but look at it this way, once you've introduced yourself to your classmates in such a way, there is little else you could do in this class to embarrass yourself in front of them! And I believe firmly in an interactive approach to these sorts of things; since I can't very well drag you all with me to Africa to study them in person, we will simply have to study them in ours persons! You never know what it's like for someone unless you've walked in their shoes, or, in this case, paws! So come on, come on! Everybody up! And once you've greeted a fellow classmate or a few in the fashion of the olive baboon, you can then exchange your names in a more typically human manner."

[[ ~~please wait for~~ the OCD is grunting and trying to intimidate you! ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And no monkey business!

Calvin

Noah Puckerman

Elphaba Thropp

Maladicta

Rosalind

Jane does tend to go on, but there's no denying that she's quite passionate about the subject.

Calvin blinked. Did she just mention fondling?

That's right! None of you have an excuse at all for not doing it, if your teacher herself did it right in front of the class. Adopt a strutting gait and try to intimidate your fellow classmates in greeting!

Jane is certainly not going to let anyone off easy on this, either. It isn't silly if everyone's doing it, right?

Calvin didn't have much trouble imitating a strutting baboon...he'd had Moe to watch for years before he came to Fandom, after all.

It was a bit of a transition, to go from holding oneself like a two-legged wolf to the posture of a baboon. Still, Firekeeper managed with little difficulty. Being raised among wild beasts meant a certain aptitude for body language was something of a necessity.

Elphaba stood there for a moment.

"What if where we're from, they'd just say hello?" she asked aloud.

No, Maladicta was certain that it would remain firmly in the silly category. But she would soldier on.

Even if the normal inherent cool was rebelling every step of the way. "I feel like a troll," she muttered, knuckles dragging on the ground.

Puck balked for a moment. A long moment.

But: his teacher was hot, and it was kind of funny. So he dropped into an approximation of the correct posture, rolling his eyes as he did so.

... Yeaaaah, no.

Rosalind crossed her arms over her chest. "Might I ask what the point of this exercise is?"

And, after everyone had a chance to greet each other and hopefully have a good laugh, Jane smiled at them all and said, "Now. I know this is the first class, but, just to get an idea of where we all stand on how to interpret primate behavior, what can you postulate about baboon culture based on the greetings we all tried? This is all speculations right now, so there are no wrong answers, just getting the ideas out there to think on for developing next week. Does anyone wish to start us out?"

Firekeeper didn't know all that much about baboons specifically, but she'd grown up as part of a pack, and had met primates during her time in Liglim. "They live in groups," she guessed. "And some have more status than others. This greeting is a way of making so not every encounter result in a fight." Though she suspected young males may have had difficulty with actually making it all the way through the ritual without a fight.

"Oh, very good!" Jane praised with a bright smile, her head bobbing and her hands clenched excitedly in front of her. "Yes, that's it exactly! Have you had experience with primates before? Or are you interested in animals and general? Or was it just a very smart and clever guess, by using what you know and trying to apply it to the situation at hand?"

"...Yes," Firekeeper decided, since really, all three of those applied to some degree. "I growed up with wolves," she explained, with a nod in Blind Seer's direction.

Jane thanked her students again for being good sports and dismissed them for next week, still bursting with the energy she had at the beginning of class because now she had a new swing of emotion, and that was in figuring out whether she'd managed a very good class or a complete and utter disaster of one.

She kept her bright smile, though, even through her worries.

BABY OLIVE BABOON (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZwMM0chSA&feature=related).

Primatology; Thursday, Fourth Period [ 01/06 ].

Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Sign In -- Primatology, 01/06.

Listen to the Lecture -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Listen to the Lecture -- Primatology, 01/06.

Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Imitate Olive Baboon Greetings -- Primatology, 01/06.

Discussion -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Discussion -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Discussion -- Primatology, 01/06.

Re: Discussion -- Primatology, 01/06.

Talk to Jane -- Primatology, 01/06.

OOC -- Primatology, 01/06.