The biggest change was to give star James Franco a wacky sidekick in the form of a chatty flying simian.

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In that mock epic, the manacled, nearly naked Charlton Heston is rated an interesting specimen by a variety of simian overlords.

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In addition, Netflix has shown great leadership with its Simian Army and Chaos Monkey systems to verify its operational quality.

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Maher, never afraid to ape the object of his pithy humor, was unrelenting on "The Tonight Show" in pushing the simian connection.

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The equivalent virus in monkeys is called SIV, or simian immunodeficiency virus.

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The simian face belongs to Marlon Brando, who was to utter just one line in a Super Bowl ad--"Bud-weis-er, " delivered in a Godfatherish rasp.

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As part of the trip, the students also learned that primates could develop SIV - the simian equivalent of HIV - which could be transmitted if people ate the infected animals.

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This version, not surprisingly, also tells the prequel tale of a how a single and uniquely intelligent baby talking chimp named Caesar launched the simian domination of our world that led to Planet of the Apes.

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Although the researchers did not explicitly examine the health of their simian charges, chronic, generalised inflammation is a risk factor, in people, for a long list of ailments ranging from heart trouble to Alzheimer's disease.

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