A baboon who acted as assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa | Hacker News Reader

A baboon who acted as assistant to a disabled railway signalman in South Africa

en.wikipedia.org

98 pointsyboris20 comments

Great story, reminds me the one about Wojtek - Syrian brown bear who was a soldier of the Polish II Corps during World War II - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear).

Another one from South Africa, though perhaps a little less impressive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Nuisance

This is great! It would make a great feel good story, perhaps with the ending changed.

Why change anything about this story, and really .. with what privilege?

Jack was clearly a special creature. For the purpose of 'feel good', you'd alter his story?

This is one of those articles that is so outlandish and incredible that I'm left half wondering whether it's an elaborate prank. Either way I love it! Thanks for posting it.

Yeah. My impression of Baboons is that they are ... ornery. Who knows ,though.

Also, is the Baboon taking a piss in that picture?

> James "Jumper" Wide had been known for jumping between railcars until an accident where he fell and lost both of his legs.

Fascinating; I want to know if Jack, the baboon, drank the half-bottle of beer each week.

Connected by the topic of railways: Reminded me of the the Peter Dinklage film The Station Agent (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340377/).

I find it quite humorous that he may drink beer and as far as I can tell, seems to be actively urinating the picture of him on the platform.

I wonder why they stop the training/business, we will have now baboon guides for blind people or something similar.

Baboons are pretty terrifying, they wouldn't make a very good service animal if you expected to be around other people.

You could breed it out of them in N generations.

Wolfs are terrifying too!

You could try but you might end up breeding out the very qualities that made them useful as well.

The breeder would need to select for both types of traits.

It would just take a very long time, with no certainty of success.

The Russian Fox domestication experiment has come pretty far in 60 years:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160912-a-soviet-scientist-c...

That's what they used to say about * people

Reminds me of the Grateful Dead song I sing my kids when I put them to bed, "The Monkey and the Engineer".

More comprehensive article: http://www.knoxvilledailysun.com/news/2012/august/jack-the-s...

They should make a movie out of this ;) ... @netflix

Totally. Only thing is, who's gonna play Jack?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com