I am fairly certain that most of you at one time or another have encountered one or more of those whimsically humorous paintings from the fine series of poker playing dogs from the anthropomorphic imagination of Cassius Coolidge. These paintings feature a comfortably middle-class group of canines, dressed appropriately for the occasion in a dark poker den enjoying a rousing game of poker. Turns out they may not be so whimsical, but the poker players of whimsy are not our canine friends, they are poker playing primates. That ape icon of a player on your online poker site might be - an ape. Technological advancements of today include the IT company, Primate Programming Inc. Yes, they have taught primates how to play poker and win. Primates not only wield tools to improve their lives they wield cards.

Primate Programming Inc has established that great apes (sharing 97% of their DNA with us) make efficient IT specialists. Individuals are employed by PPI, undergo training and offer their services to PPI clients for peanuts. A later PPI discovery was that the same employees, for purposes of pastime or secondary sources of income, are capable of being taught to play online poker, evincing particular talent for no-limit Texas Hold'em.

These card-playing apes are drawn to no-limit poker due to their natural bent for playful displays of aggression. So, this particular feature enables them to be particularly proficient at aggressive bluffing. In no-limit games, any player can bet his entire wad at any time, a strategy (?) requiring risky, aggressive behavior and the ability to retain a poker face while bluffing.

Since there is no way to identify the poker players online due to its anonymous nature, no one knows if their opponents are human or something other than human. That player who started off betting small and showing his lame cards to all, the one who much later bet large, had everyone call, then gleefully showed aces was probably one of the non-humans. The players had no idea he then jumped up and down, pounded his chest and demanded a banana.

Not coincidentally, the primate-payers were initially hired as computer programmers. They actually develop programs by themselves as a side line to playing poker. PPI has not yet revealed the content of these programs. Certainly, though, they could go for a career in professional online-poker playing. They don't seem to want to pursue this career choice, however. When they leave the office, they are very apt to neglect all their training and go back to climbing fences and eating bananas. Even so, if they are paid regularly, given three squares a day and a boyfriend or girlfriend, David Sklansky and Ed Miller may have to update their No-limit Hold'em instruction books very soon.

For the past several years, Norm McAuliffe, a Yale biology Phd and the scientist heading the research team behind the discovery of programmer apes, has been investing money and effort into a Primate Poker Inc, "hiring" profitable ape-players to play for money in rotating shifts, 24 hours a day. He has been quoted as saying: "I'm completely committed to this business model. It is reasonable to say I am "all in"."