Monkeys are usually known for their intelligence. I want to complicate this a little bit not because I don’t think that monkeys are smart. For sure monkeys are intelligent. But humans seem to think that monkeys are superior in intelligence to non-primate animals. How true is this?

Every animal has its own type of intelligence. Birds have precise vision and snakes can disguise their bodies. Aren’t those all forms of intelligence? Every type of being has its own intelligence which makes it different from other beings. Humans are able to recognize monkey intelligence more easily because we are also primates.

The Congo river bifurcates two different monkey communities—chimpanzees and bonobos. Neither monkey can cross the river so they don’t meet each other. Both monkey communities have very different cultures. Chimp live in patriarchal groups full of stressful internal politics. Chimpanzees will kill each other and will even gang up on one chimpanzee to subdue it. The question of whether someone is in favor with the patriarch of the group, whether they are in the in-group or the out-group, is always contentious.

Bonobos, on the other hand, don’t fight at all. When different groups of bonobos find themselves in competition over food, they have sex first and then they share the food together. Sex brings bonobos together. They use sex to solve all of their problems. Whenever a fight is about to break up, the matriarch of the group will actually chase other bonobos around to have sex with them. Bonobos have sex many times a day.

Chinese astrology tells us that monkeys are social. As an animal, monkeys live in groups. In the myth about all of the animals racing along the Jade River the goat, the monkey, and the chicken all worked together to make a raft. Each of these three animals played a different role in the team. As we saw before, the goat actually was in the front of the group because goats are adventurous and can walk through extreme environments.

What about the monkey? What kind of role did the monkey play on the team?

Here’s what we know about monkeys—they like politics and they like to have sex. This sounds very human. Of course humans relate to monkeys.

In the story about the Jade River, the monkey sat in the middle of the raft and used its long arms to clear reeds from the river path. The goat was at the front of the raft and the chicken was at the back. I like to think that the monkey, being in the middle of the two, did a lot of work in moderating and regulating the group’s cooperation. The monkey integrates groups. How do they do this? Through politics and sex. Both politics and sex are forms of play.

The monkey is actually opposite from the tiger in the zodiac. Both tigers and monkeys climb and sleep on trees. Both animals like to stretch out their limbs because of this. Tigers like to stretch their back and monkeys like to stretch their arms. Both tiger and monkey are actually considered to be traveling signs. Tigers and monkeys are going somewhere. They like to reach up. They have big dreams and aspire to more.

The difference between the tiger and the monkey is that tiger is the energy of spring. Spring is when life starts to bloom. That’s why tiger is wood. Monkey, on the other hand, is metal. Monkey begins the fall which is not when plants bloom but when harvesting begins. What is a harvest? A harvest is when people go around taking things from plants and distributing fruits amongst themselves. That’s why a monkey stretches out its arms. Monkeys like to grab at things and take them. In fact, one of the first things that a baby monkey learns to do is grab.

Monkeys are foragers, a bit like dogs. They are omnivores and can eat anything. Monkeys will eat fruits, ants, other monkeys, or garbage. When they see something that they can metabolize, they will take it and eat it. Monkeys also live in forests. Forests are huge, syncretic ecosystems. Different types of trees and other vegetation all live in a forest and they all compete and collaborate together.

I think that this is why so many great filmmakers are actually monkey day pillar people. Film is a syncretic medium. Film works through montage. You piece disparate things together and create a medium. Monkeys are social, syncretic thinkers. They reach out and grab all kinds of things, tinkering with them to put them together. That’s how new ideas are made.

So, monkeys bring different ideas and people together. They achieve this using politics or sex. Monkeys are fierce friends but also strong rivals. They are playfully competitive. They talk to each other a lot. A group of monkeys is rarely quiet. They are also rarely still.

Monkey is a traveling sign for a reason. Monkeys don’t really sit somewhere for long periods of time. They are usually busy climbing trees, swinging from one branch to another, and exploring their environments. Monkeys like to play, another trait that they share with tigers. Imagine life from the perspective of a monkey for a moment. You’re not dealing with a concrete sense of up or down. You can dangle from a vine with your feet.

The reason why monkeys are so good at dialogue and at creating new ideas is because they are able to shift their perspective quickly. In fact, monkeys don’t see the world objectively at all. They are able to encounter infinite subjectivities and balance all of these different moments in time or perspectives in their heads. Monkeys are free thinkers. They see all ideas in relation to other ideas but all of the ideas are also moving, mutating, and changing at all times.

I think that this is another reason why the monkey appears in the middle of the goat and chicken, in the middle of the raft that the three of them built to chart their course through the river together. A monkey is someone who can think forward but keep the back of their mind on the back of the raft. A monkey can be in two places at once, and can see motion from multiple angles. A monkey is rarely still. They are always trying to get from one place to another place.

Both tiger and monkey are quite ambitious. They want to get somewhere in life. They want to climb and they want to see success within their lifetimes. Monkey achieve through integration. They explore the world and they create scenarios for everyone to play in. Put a monkey in any environment and they will transform it into a playground somehow. They will use all of the elements of whatever is available and synthesize everything to make new toys.