Mandrills! The vividly beautiful faces of the males fill me with the same kind of heart-aching longing that I get when looking at pictures of the Paris couture shows. Just perfectly, unreasonably, untouchably beautiful.

In fact mandrills are the most colorful of mammals (sigh…it’s all drab from here, folks). They’re also the biggest of the monkeys. They live in the African countries of Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo, in groups that may number up to 800 individuals.

Here is a very good New York Times article by Natalie Angier (I love her) called “In Mandrill Society, Life is a Girl Thing.” (Weird title, but I promise it’s a good article. Also, page 4 has only one sentence, so don’t be too daunted.)