Is it justifiable to write 'primate' as my ancestry on forms?
Q: On a government department form, I was asked to specify my ancestry. I responded “primate”. Is my answer acceptable?
G.B., Murrumbeena, VIC
Illustration by Simon Letch.Credit:
A: Your answer is acceptable if you agree with Darwin’s theory of evolution. Or if you have a parent or grandparent who’s moderately furry, hangs from a branch by one arm, and enjoys chucking their faeces at passers-by.
But even though writing “primate” on a government form is an acceptable answer, whether it’s a sensible answer depends on the type of form this was.
If it was a visa or immigration form, that could really backfire on you. The government may send you back to where you come from: the Great Rift Valley – the cradle of humankind – where you would have to live out your days in a rocky outcrop with your Australopithecine ape ancestors, those dear old fossils.
If it was a form related to employment, that may not work out well, either. The government might struggle to find you a job: primate folk are hard workers, but your skills are limited to foraging for fruit and digging ants out of mounds with a stick. So you could only work as a seasonal fruit picker. Or a dessert chef at Attica, making green ant and banana pavlova.
If it was a form about education, then you could be rejected on a technicality. The government might find your “primate” answer to be educationally unsatisfactory: according to evolutionary biology, you needed to go back to the origin of life, 4.5 billion years ago, and write “prokaryote” on that form.
Those were your oldest unicellular micro-ancestors, living in primordial seas, foraging for hydrogen and sulphide compounds, and chucking their faeces at passers-by with their tiny flagella.
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