I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle

"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle." Aimee used this quaint little phrase the other day and it reminded me that I'll soon be an uncle. My little brother Zak and his wife are having a baby. They told the family at Christmas. We're all glorified monkeys, so it really is kind of appropriate. I like to portmanteau it into muncle. So, I'm going to see if I can get the kid to call me Muncle Josh. It works a couple of ways. First, it implies that the kid is, in fact, monkey-like, and that's funny. Second, when spoken aloud, it sounds like "My uncle." Zak will probably go for it, but I'm not so sure about his wife Jo. I guess we'll see. Since visuals are good:

Here's a picture of my mom at the moment she realized that Jo was pregnant:

To prove my point, here's a monkey making a similar face:

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Here's my grandmother coming to the same conclusion:

For comparison:

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Finally, here's a sonogram. Zak pointed out that in the bottom photo he (they're having a boy) is giving us all a thumbs up. That's pretty cool

Since this post is sorta about hominids and ancestry, here's a pseudo-historical tidbit. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. In 1860 the leading scientific minds of England gathered to discuss and debate various ideas of the day. Darwin's most vocal supporter, T. H. Huxley (Brave New World's Aldous Huxley's grandfather), spoke on his behalf on the theory of evolution. As legend has it, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce sarcastically asked Huxley if it was through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed descent from an ape. Huxley calmly replied that he would rather be descended from an ape than a bishop, and there was much uproar. It probably didn't happen, at least not quite this way, but I like the story anyway.