60秒科学:Monkey Drives Dinosaur Game Extinct（在线收听）

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and DND Imports of Los Angeles recently announced a voluntary recall of something called the Dinosaur Era 2 Hunting Dinosaur playset. Because the monkey contained too much lead. Yes, the monkey. Each set includes a dinosaur. A helicopter. Trees. A hunter. A monkey. And various hunting equipment.

Clearly, time travel is involved. Because how else do you have this particular assortment of organisms in the same place, outside of a creationism museum? Now, if I were a time-traveling hunter looking to live out Ray Bradbury’s story A Sound of Thunder, and bag a dinosaur way back when, I wouldn’t bring a monkey. What’s he going to do, carry the guns? Really bad lesson for the kids. Maybe the idea is to shoot the dinosaur from the helicopter. Which leaves the monkey as the pilot. Another terrible example for children. Seriously, if they ever invent a time machine, they should slap a big warning label on it that says, CAUTION, NO MONKEYS. Also a good policy for DND Imports.

—Steve Mirsky explains, with additional reporting by Karen Hopkin and John Rennie.