There is something happening in the island chimpanzee
group. All of the big males are starting
to show up with bite marks and tears, even TKC this 90kg bull of a chimpanzee.
The core of the ruling males are TKC (the alpha), Carlos the tallest chimpanzee
ever with the human eyes, Mokolo and Damian. There aren’t many males big enough
to even try to take a spot higher than they have. Jules is a large male with
one eye and a pretty black and reddish coat, but the older ladies still beat
the hell out of him any time he gets out of place (including reaching for and
grabbing their favorite humans, we are protected by Margaret and Suzie—I can
say “we” now, I’ve earned my place with them).
There are two theories going around about what’s going on.
1) The Madames are taking over. The bigger older females who take shit from no
one may in fact be tired of living under military rule and are taking over, I
guess it happens and when it does it ends up being a much more peaceful ruling
with an overall decrease in injuries to the troupe from fighting. 2) The smaller younger guys are banding
together. We have two subspecies here, the Pan
troglodytes ellioti and Pan
troglodytes troglodytes , the elliotis can be much more political about
things, in the absence of sufficient leadership, the will bind together to form
their own, whereas the troglodytes tend
to rule in the traditional alpha male kind of way. Or this is what I’m told
anyway, I’ve never read this, nor can I seem to find it anywhere.
What is clear, is that the boys are losing their power, you
can see it in how their acting (there is much pouting, especially in TKC and
Carlos), not just the wounds their showing up with. TKC escaped the week before I got here and
he’s been showing weakness ever since. He’s not been as active in the group as
he usually is and Carlos will just outright flop on his belly on the floor and
just sit there and pout in a really submissive position. Its strange to see
something I am so afraid of acting like a baby, its hard to maintain that level
of wariness when he keeps waddling over and making sad noises at you, but then
I remember he did rip off another chimpanzees face and run around with the
body.
Our new job is to watch the social interactions that are
going on now and see who seems to be doing better than normal, and if any
relationships have changed. I’m interested to see what the outcome of this is,
where the power will go.
(A small post script, since I originally wrote this three
days ago. It seems to be some of the smaller males trying to take over.
Standing in front of the island chimps while they were still in their satellite
this morning we watched the interactions. TKC was still pouting, Carlos hugged
him but it did little to brighten him. The biggest standout was Papa. Papa looks
like what human 13 year old boys look like when they are going to be tall but
aren’t yet. His hands, feet and
testicles/ scrotum are all huge while the rest of him is the size you would
expect for a 9ish year old male chimp. He and Carlos were battling this
morning, antagonizing each other with avocado pits from different rooms and
doing the human equivalent of bumping chests before a fight, lots of posturing
and peacocking. It seems like Carlos is
trying to hold this whole thing together but with a hierarchy of 6 chimps that
are not consistently doing much in the way of ruling, it’s becoming more
difficult to keep everyone in line. More observation will follow, but for now,
it seems like there is an overthrow coming led by pubescent teenagers. What will make it more interesting is that Papa is due for surgery next week to fix an inner ear issue and will be in quarantine for some day. We'll see if his supporters hold it together or fall apart then.)
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| TKC pouting |
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| shoulder post coconut carry |
On a completely unrelated note, I turned retrieving coconuts
into a wod (not that anyone is surprised) but I managed to make myself the
sorest I’ve been since I tanked regionals last year. I took 12 in my internal
frame hiking bag and walked the kilometer from the volunteer house to the
sanctuary, then halfway around it to store them in quarantine, knowing we would
have a series of later nights and I wouldn’t get a chance to wod for a couple
days I decided to make it harder. I don’t know what 12 coconuts weigh, maybe
20lbs? (The whole thing from the tree, not just the husk you get at the store),
so it wasn’t enough to be difficult. So I grab the biggest bag I have, this
ridiculously big duffel bag that I can fit in. The only problem is it doesn’t
have wearable straps, at least it doesn’t have straps that should be worn. So I
pack in roughly 4 dozen coconuts, which ends up being 41kgs when I weighed the
bag later (roughly 90lbs). I wore it like a backpack, with the short handles
digging into my shoulders, bent 45 degrees at the waist the whole time to keep
the bag from flopping backwards. So, dripping sweat in Mtn Rob and Gene fashion
I walked the kilometer, all the while passersby calling out “Asha”, which
roughly translates to “I’m sorry, that sucks”. The keepers weren’t surprised,
everyone else thought I was retarded for doing it that way, which is probably
at least a little true. But, in the end, we had 5 dozen coconuts to give the
animals, which they loved. Quarantine got them yesterday, chimps today, and the
gorillas will get them tomorrow. The bigger guys get the whole thing, its good
to make them work for their food sometimes, it passes the time and then they
get a reward at the end when they finally get it open. It takes them about an
hour to get through everything. We cut
them up and fed the pieces to all of the smaller guys in quarantine. Nvuru got to the middle, but then gave up, he
did have a wonderful time tearing at the husk and splashing it through his
water dish. There were indeed seed dispersal breaks. (Funny story, one of the vets saw a white
substance on the bottom of his enclosure and thought he had a tapeworm. There
was much anxiety about the whole thing as they are pretty hard to get rid of
and can do a nasty number on the body, especially certain types that go into
the blood stream and affect the organs including the brain. They made a
microscope slide to check the species, just to find out it was ejaculate. This
whole thing is the in vet notes, good on them for putting it in, but I can’t
say I wouldn’t have let that one go undocumented). Never a dull moment at the sanctuary.
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