mandrill

It ends, satisfyingly, with a funk song by Mandrill, the kind of music for which these moves were made.

Balamuthia mandrillaris was first identified in 1986—not in a hospital but at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where staff were eagerly anticipating the birth of a mandrill, the largest species of monkey.

Out of a field that included a “hairless mutant” with no teeth and a crooked face, a creature that resembled “a hyena or mandrill baboon,” and a canine with a “gorilla-looking head,” a Chihuahua mix named Mr. Happy Face emerged on Friday as the foulest of them all, winner of the 2022 World’s Ugliest Dog contest.

“The Lion King” draws on the Christian narrative of a son who becomes a savior but also incorporates elements of mysticism though the mandrill shaman Rafiki.

In “The Lion King,” a pair of longstanding references to the shamanic Rafiki as a monkey — taxonomically correct, since the character is a mandrill — have been excised because of potential racial overtones, given that the role is played by a Black woman.