There are two main groups of
chimpanzees aside from the 4 babies and partially paralyzed Ghaa in quarantine.
The island has 37 chimpanzees and the mainland group has 8. The mainland group
is comprised of chimpanzees that have at some point or another found their way
out of the island, most on multiple occasions. It is also home to two that
cannot be let outside at all until they can figure out how to contain them,
they are Jack (the current leader of the mainland) and Bankim. Collectively
they are hugely stubborn and cause more issues with the keepers than their
island counterpart but there are relatively few issues between the chimpanzees
themselves.
Then there is the island. The
island is home to a wide range of personalities. There is Suzanne who is the
matriarch, and the oldest member of LWC, she was a resident of the zoo before
it was the sanctuary and is thought to be somewhere in her mid to late
twenties. She is identifiable at a distance because she is the only blonde
chimpanzee we have, it is not genetic, it comes from old age, the stress of
having spent her early life in a very small cage and pretty horrific
circumstances and having plucked or rubbed off most of her hair at some point.
She looks like a matron now and plays the part well. If she stamps her foot,
everyone stops what they are doing and the offender is often attacked in some
manner by a large portion of the group. Aside from the violence, its kind of
cute because she’s old and moves relatively slow. She is also the foster mother
to a three year old chimp named Po-Po whose mother died last year.
There are some young chimpanzees,
just a few years old, some older. There are about 7 that rarely or never go
outside including my grooming partners and an older chimp named Mac who really
likes when you jiggle his huge belly. And there is Carlos.
Carlos is an anomaly in many ways;
most of the workers here either have a guarded respect or outright fear of him.
One of the volunteers here told me that being alone in a room with him was her
worst nightmare, that just the threat of it would cause her to have a heart
attack and die before he even entered the room. I can’t say I blame her.
He is the tallest chimpanzee we
have, even on all fours he stands about 4ft tall. Most striking are his eyes.
Unlike humans, most if not all primates do not have whites to their eyes, outside
of the iris is a brownish black that fades into a paler brown and almost white
at the extreme edges. Carlos though, he has eyes like we do. So in the morning
before everyone gets let out, you are greeted with varying amounts of
aggression by a huge chimpanzee with human eyes. Its oddly disconcerting.
Fortunately much of his aggression and dislike is focused on men. Carlos is our
chief poo flinger, and some staff will only come to the island in the morning
with a stick to keep him at bay. When chimps throw poo, they don’t mess around,
their hands are huge and they fill them, and it never seems to be with the
solid stuff…
He is also our most aggressive
towards other chimpanzees. It wasn’t until our newest volunteer came in that I
was really made aware. She had volunteered here before, and had asked about a
chimpanzee named Jackson. Having gone through all the files I knew he had died
at the hands of Carlos, but I did not read the full report. I pulled it up and
read it, then went to the keepers for some clarification and details. What was
apparently a fight over a female, the low ranking Jackson became the object of
Carlos’ aggression. It does not appear to have been much of a fight, Jackson
had just rejoined the group after having been fairly sick. Carlos pounded his
head into the ground and ripped most of his face off until he died. During the
post mortem it was noted that there was no blood in many of the organs, most of
it coating either him or the floor. He
then paraded around with the body. Yup, you read it right, held him up like he
was a parade leader and pranced around with the now lifeless and faceless
Jackson in hand.
I feel like a kid who just found
out Santa isn’t real. It is easy to be around these guys and forget what they
are capable of. Jane Goodall went through the same progression (She’s the
chimpanzee lady from England who studied in Tanzania, not the Gorilla lady from
the US who was macheted to death in Congo, that was Dian Fossey). She thought
that chimps were better than people because they seemed so much gentler—then
her group split into two and one annihilated the other. It was silly of me to
put them on the same pedestal. Perhaps it was because all of them had suffered
so much at the hands of humans. But they suffer just as much, if not more, at
the hands of each other sometimes. Nature is not a beautiful calm. There is no
such thing as a peaceful forest, I say it all the time, but apparently I
forgot. Forest systems are classified as a dynamic equilibrium, they need a
certain amount of disruption and chaos to continue to develop (come to think of
it, so do we). There are fires and wind storms, there is death and suffering.
Everything gets eaten, everything dies. Aside from possibly trees, there is no
such thing as dying of old age in nature. You are alive until something
stronger finds and eats you. I got caught up in the stories and forgot this. I
remember now. Wild things are beautiful and wonderful, but nature is harsh and
sometimes cruel and there is no escaping it.
