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What are the National Zoo's gorillas plotting? Photo courtesy of Mehgan Muprhy/National Zoo

With the impending release this Friday of the documentary summer blockbuster Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I thought we should all be prepared in case we ever face chemically enhanced apes that attempt to take over our world. In the past on our site we’ve investigated zombies and kept a running record on robot technology, but the threat of ape rebellion had yet to be cataloged. The National Zoo’s Amanda Bania, a keeper who works with the great apes, told me that gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and the other ape species can best us in many ways, even without being injected with mysterious serums by James Franco. This week’s list deals with 5 ways that apes outdo humans:

1) Apes are 7 to 10 times stronger than humans of a comparable weight, or as Bania puts it: “Apes are insanely strong. In a one-on-one they have us beat hands-down.”

2) They have four hands. While not technically true, apes’ feet are basically like hands, according to Bania. Their lower appendages are adapted to help them climb trees with ease. Additionally, their hands have “a have a reduced thumb and their fingers are longer, which helps them grip when moving through the trees,” says Bania. “You couple that with strength and it’s not a fair fight in the trees.” While orangutans are the only arboreal ape, giving them the best climbing skills, they are also the most solitary, so good luck getting them into any sort of infantry regiment.

3) Their army will be led by a chimpanzee. Chimps are exceptionally smart, which makes sense when you consider that they (and the more mild-mannered bonobos) are the primates most closely related to us (a 98.76 percent match by DNA). Chimps have to navigate complicated social structures in their groups. One might think that the 800-pound gorilla would boss his way around a group, but they operate in a single-male monarchy, says Bania. He would have no experience leading an army of other male apes (unless he had a WAC-equivalent composed of of bonobos—their social groups are female-led).

4) Chimpanzees are battle-tested. Not only would the chimpanzees be leading the revolution, but they are known to go on “border patrols” and even kill opponents. “There is group-on-group warfare in chimp society where if they find other males in their territory, they will hunt them down and kill them, more often than not,” says Bania.

5) Even their stupidest members are still smart. The intelligence scale of primates is rather clear. With humans at the top, it then moves from chimps and bonobos to other great apes to lesser apes on down to monkeys and then prosimians such as lemurs, which are at the National Zoo and “aren’t the brightest.” But, Bania is quick to point out, “Duke University has a lot of cognitive research with lemurs that shows they can work on a computer and do sequencing.”

In the end, “If anyone was going to take over and give us a run for our money, it would be chimps,” says Bania. Fortunately, the National Zoo doesn’t have any so we here in D.C. are safe. For now.

There isn’t too much to say here other than if you missed The Simpsons last night, be sure to check out the opening sequence embedded above. (Pardon the b-roll in front) To nitpick a little: there are 19 museums and galleries, not just one; the Hope Diamond, Fonz’s jacket, Dorothy’s slippers, the Spirit of St. Louis and Jackson Pollack are not in the same building; the Star-Spangled Banner is a lot bigger. On the other hand, to their credit, they did a nice rendering of the Natural History Museum building and they even had the foresight to preview this year’s mummies exhibit (now in a sneak preview.) Did you catch anything else in the background that’s not in the collections?

Portrait of Pedro Martinez by Susan Miller-Havens. Image courtesy of the Portrait Gallery

It’s the rare professional athlete who gets to be known by just his first name. There’s Mickey, Babe, Lebron, Kobe, Mario, Ronaldinho and a smattering of others, including Pedro, one of baseball’s greatest pitchers. Tomorrow, a painting of Pedro Martinez will be added to the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, joining portraits of other baseball greats, including fellow Dominican Juan Marichal, Nolan Ryan, Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra and Carlton Fisk. And within a few years, pending Martinez’ official retirement from professional baseball, he will certainly join those players in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Former Boston Globe writer and ESPN commentator Peter Gammons said the portion of Martinez’ career from 1997-2003 was “the most dominant stretch of any pitcher in baseball history.” During that period, Martinez lead the American League five times in ERA, three times in strikeouts, five times in hits allowed per nine innings and won the league’s Cy Young Award three times in 1997, 1999 and 2000. And in this writer’s estimation, he was robbed of the award in 2002. He was an integral part of the 2003 2004 Red Sox team that broke the Curse of the Bambino and brought the World Series trophy back to Boston for the first time in 86 years. Martinez was also known, lovingly in Red Sox Nation—not so much elsewhere,  for his antics of questionable taste. He befriended the 2-foot-4-inch tall actor Nelson de la Rosa as a “good luck charm” and famously threw down 72-year-old Yankees coach Don Zimmer during an on-field brawl in a 2003 playoff game.

Even though he is far past his prime and currently not signed with any major league team, when Martinez arrives in Washington for the donation ceremony tomorrow, he will still be the best pitcher in the nation’s capital, the Washington Nationals notwithstanding. And I say that as a loyal, but downtrodden, Nats fan.

Artist Susan Miller-Havens’ painting, donated by Peter Gammons and his wife Gloria, will hang in the “Recent Acquisitions” wing of the museum after tomorrow’s private ceremony.

UPDATE: At the ceremony, Miller-Havens revealed that she hid rose petals from the Dominican Republic beneath the pitchers’ mound in her painting as an extra gesture to Martinez. Their friendship reaches back to his joining the Red Sox in 1998. Her goal when painting this portrait was so viewers “could see a Pedro Martinez that maybe you haven’t seen before.”

In response, Martinez said, “Susan, there are not enough words to say ‘you are beautiful’ and your art is even prettier.” In front of an audience of a few hundred friends, family, press and dignitaries, including Marichal, Gammons and the Ambassador of the Dominican Republic, Martinez thanked his fans and supporters frequently. “I’m very happy to be inducted into this museum,” he said, perhaps hinting at his speech to come in a few years at the Hall of Fame.

A fire broke out earlier today at a cooling tower near the Natural History Museum. Flickr photo courtesy of kimberlyfaye

Early this morning, a fire broke out just off the Mall in the National Museum of Natural History’s mechanical building, where the museum’s heating and air conditioning units are contained. The frightening-looking mushroom cloud emanating from the cooling tower appeared more hazardous than it actually was. There were no reported injuries. And damages will immediately be assessed.

Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas told TBD that the affected building was “a small building in the parking lot.” She assured museum-goers that it was not the main building itself. “There was some construction work in the mechanical building this morning,” she said.

Update: The opening of the museum is delayed. Officials are awaiting an all-clear report from the fire department.

Update: 10:33: The museum is now open to the public.

Update: 11:30: The Johnson IMAX theater in the museum is temporarily closed.

Update: 11:44: Officials say that the fire was started by a contract welding worker in the mechanical building located in a parking lot on the East side of the museum. The fire caused a large cloud of smoke in the area around 10th St NW and Constitution Ave NW.  There were no reported injuries or damage to the Natural History Museum. The Johnson IMAX Theater is now OPEN. First show will be “Grand Canyon Adventure 3D” at 12:20. www.si.edu/imax.

Freer Gallery Director Julian Raby looks at the "gigapixel" princess. Image courtesy of the Freer.

You’ve never seen a Whistler this way before.

As a part of the newly announced Google Art Project, the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art is giving art lovers an up close and personal look at James McNeill Whistler’s “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain” along with 16 other works of art from museums around the world, including Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy” and Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Each is comprised of over 7 billion pixels, allowing visitors to the project to view each brushstroke and even see what sort of canvas was used.

In addition to these “gigapixel” paintings, the project uses the Google Street View technology to provide a tour of the inside of some of the world’s most famous museums. As for the Freer Gallery, the museum contributed additional works for browsing, from more Whistlers to Japanese prints to ancient Buddhas. Now, on frigid days like today, you can hole up in your home and tour the collections of the Freer (not to mention the Ufizzi, MoMA, the Met, Tate Modern and more) from the comforts of your sofa.

“I think they were keen to have one of the Smithsonian museums involved and I was extremely keen because it seems to me that at least some aspects of this are a game-changer for the way that museums approach the Web,” said Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. “The gigapixel allows you to see elements that you would really never ever see, certainly in traditional means of reproduction. You might see the crackle in the oil of a painting, you can sense the brushstroke in the artist’s hand and energy, you can see narrative details you would never see otherwise.”

Raby is convinced that endeavors such as the Google Art Project will increase interest in visiting art museums. “The traditional thing has been to say that any form of surrogate photograph, video, film will mean that people won’t come to the museums; actually, the experience is quite the opposite. In this particular case, I think it will create a sense of fascination that will engage completely new audiences.”

–additional reporting done by Arcynta Ali Childs