Something fascinating happened after these male baboons died. Men should keep this in mind.
The baboons show up halfway through. Just go with me here for a bit.
Men.
(Men)
We're awesome.
Totally awesome.
We like sports.
Cars.
Sports cars.
And car sports.
(We invented sh*t like this.)
So yeah, we're pretty much the best. Cut and print.
And sure, men are responsible for a lot of really awful, terrible, messed-up things in the world.
Like war. And poison gas. And Bumfights. (Do not Google Bumfights, dear God).
But we can't help it.
After all, we're naturally aggressive and violent.
(MANLY YELLING!)
And kind of thickheaded. And dominant. And emotionless.
It's just common knowledge.
It's how we're wired. Biologically.
It's in our DNA.
It all goes back to monkeys, you see?
Because we were monkeys once. And obviously, if you were a dude monkey, you had to be the biggest, baddest, most thickheaded, most dominant monkey. Because only the biggest, baddest, most thickheaded, most dominant monkeys got to mate with the lady monkeys and produce little monkey babies, who then went on to be big, bad boy monkeys themselves. And so on and so forth.
It's just, like, natural selection, bro. Evolution. Evolution and natural selection.
(Or maybe survival of the fittest? All those things are the same, right?)
Or so we've been told.
Except, well...
Have you ever, like, met any monkeys?
Like, some actual monkeys?
(Actual monkeys)
Like the baboons in that picture.
Baboons and humans share about 92% of our DNA. We're pretty close relatives. And, like humans, baboons are highly social animals. They travel in big packs called troops. And within each troop, there's a clear hierarchy. The biggest, most aggressive males are in charge.
And they're basically terrible jerks.
They hog all the resources. They pick on the smaller males. They mate with any female whenever, wherever they want. You know, just like you'd expect from a bunch of dude monkeys.
But here's the thing.
One day way back in the day, biologist Robert Sapolsky was studying a particular troop of baboons. And basically, they were just going along being their normal, gross selves. Until they were hit by a nasty strain of tuberculosis.
But weirdly, it only affected certain members of the population...
Specifically, the alpha males, who all died.
(Thus fulfilling the LiveJournal fantasies of every nerdy middle-school baboon.)
The females and the beta males? They survived.
And what's kind of amazing is what happened next. The relevant part starts at 44:30.
Basically, Sapolsky expected the troop to return to normal, with the remaining male baboons sliding into the roles of the alphas who had died.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, the surviving male baboons were like...
And the females were like...
So they just decided, as a group, to chill the heck out...
...and spend a lot more time grooming and feeding one another rather than beating each other up, and just generally be more respectful of one another.
Each time a new baboon joined the troop and tried to be a violent, aggressive jerkweed, the existing members of the troop shut it down.
They developed a culture.
(SFW!)
A culture that was different than 99% of all other baboon troops, and contrary to everything we thought we knew about them.
So where does that leave us men?
(Men!)
Well, we're told that we're programmed to be just like monkeys.
(The majesty!)
That it's burned into our DNA. That the only way to get to the top is to be violent, aggressive, and dominant.
(No, sir, you can't upgrade to business class with a bunch of expired Chuck E. Cheese's tickets.)
But it turns out that monkeys might not even be like monkeys.
(Though chasing those giant pelican-y things sure seems like a good time).
Not like we think they are, anyway.
Not necessarily.
And no, one case study doesn't "prove" that nurture is more important than nature or vice versa.
(That's not how science works, yo.)
But it does prove that we're not fated to behave any one certain way. We're not.
And it suggests that culture might be just as important, if not more important, than biology.
Which is great news.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.