PEACEONE
BEFORE I CAN SHOULDER MY pack, Cat and Kizza vanish into the undergrowth as though swallowed into a green portal. I dart in and scurry toward the sounds ahead. Now and then I glimpse Cat, glancing over her shoulder to make sure she hasn’t lost me.
I catch up and she whispers, “It’s Alf. Alf can disappear.”
Alf is disappearing now; we must hurry.
He’d just eased his dark, human-like figure down a thick vine, planted his feet on the ground, lowered himself to the knuckles of his hands, then straight and purposefully walked off into thick vegetation. Now he’s moving at a challenging pace.
Alf’s all-fours gait is well suited to these thickets. Upright, on two tippy legs, we’re slowed by head-high leafy branches and ankle-tangling vines.
Cat and Kizza glide through the thick greenery. I’m new here. And if I lose my companions, I’ll be completely lost on my first day in this African forest. Coming back to find me would disrupt their research for the morning. They can’t afford that loss of time. I can’t afford that kind of a start to my visit. I struggle to keep them in sight.
After a few minutes Alf slows, and as I catch up I get a good view of him. By following Alf, we’re studying how chimpanzees manage their day and their social agenda. Cat Hobaiter’s life’s work is to learn how chimpanzees here in the Budongo Forest of Uganda use gestures—often very subtle ones—to communicate. Expertly aided by research assistant Kizza Vincent, Cat looks deep into chimpanzee life.
Cat Hobaiter
Alf
Alf joins several other chimpanzees. One, backlit high up in a tree, has a clinging baby. I raise my binoculars. Kizza whispers, “Dat is Shy.”
“How,” I ask, “can you tell who that is?”
Kizza replies in light zephyrs of speech. “If I see your shape, you walking away, I know it is you.”
It’s that easy?
Cat affirms. She just glances—face, build, stride—recognition is instant.
The chimpanzees certainly differ. Some have a boxy body build, some lanky. Their complexions range: pale, brown, mottled, freckled, coal black. Faces that are flatter or rounder, have heavier or finer features, differ in shapes and wrinkle patterns and higher or lower hairlines. Ears, mouths, the shapes and shades of lips—all vary. Hair varies, butch to plush.
Here in their easy mix of pale and dark faces, chimpanzees have a solution to humanity’s fundamental obsession with skin differences. Chimps suffer none of that awful thing; we alone saddle ourselves with those manufactured hatreds. But as I’ll learn, they have their own self-inflicted issues. I’ll also learn: a preference for peace, within a penchant for war, is another thing we have in common.
* * *
Masariki, an adolescent male with distinctive oval eyes and a flat face, rests with his usual companion, Gerald. When Masariki was young, Gerald would help him across gaps in the trees by bending branches or by using his own body as a bridge. Masariki was an orphan. He and Gerald might be siblings, but Gerald is dark-faced and Masariki a lighter shade of pale. Gerald probably adopted him.
Kizza Vincent
Fifteen-year-old Daudi appears with twenty-year-old Macallan, who is missing his left thumb. Cat brings us startlingly close.
I wonder out loud why they are not apprehensive of me.
“Actually,” Cat informs me, “they’ve been watching you. But they don’t fear people who are with me and Kizza.”
Cat Hobaiter has been working here in Budongo Forest for a decade and a half. Athletic, late thirties, sporting a dark bob of hair, she is among other things a very strong walker. A child refugee from war in Lebanon, Cat eventually earned a doctoral diploma from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she is now a professor. When she first came here, she found chimpanzees “addictive,” she says.
Chimpanzees seem very familiar to most people, of course. And as with most “very familiar” things, if we stop to think for a moment we realize we actually know almost nothing about them. We know they are cute as babies. We may think of Jane Goodall lovingly cradling an adorable young chimp (yet not wonder what happened to the mother). We may know that they normally live in Africa. And not much else.
About seven million years ago our common ancestor started to split into new species, and Pan (chimpanzee and bonobo) and Homo (human) began separate trajectories. (The gorilla had begun its journey much earlier, about ten million years ago. The orangutan, roughly fifteen.) Various Homo species—possibly up to twenty species of humans—evolved and flourished. They include the widespread Homo heidelbergensis, Asia’s “Denisovans,” the Naledi in South Africa, and many others. Homo erectus first mastered fire making. Neanderthal bones with healed breaks and evident disabilities indicate their care for the disabled. Some disappeared; some became us. Our species is the closest living relative of the chimpanzee and bonobo. Together with gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans, humans are in a group called Hominidae or “the great apes.”
Compared to chimpanzees’ brains, humans’ brains have no new parts, and run using the same neurotransmitters. Human and chimpanzee DNA is 98 to 99 percent similar. Chimpanzees and bonobos share more than 99 percent of their DNA. We are so closely related genetically because we share a common ancestor species. A few million years ago—a long time for us; but very recently in the long, long history of life on Earth—one ape-like species slowly split into several. One of those lines became chimpanzees. Another eventually became our human species. The differences that make humans human, chimps chimp, and bonobos bonobo are small. This closeness and this family history are indicated by our similar body plans and our mostly identical genes.
The social world of a chimpanzee is a complex web of friends, relatives, and ambitions.
Cat explains. “It’s not just a matter of who you like. It’s also, who are your allies? Who is low risk for you and for your children? Who knows the food trees?”
Chimpanzees often move in groups. You can be with whomever you please. Certain individuals spend part of every day together; some spend part of each day alone.
There are some rules: One, mothers and young children are inseparable. Two, though parties are fluid within a community, which community you belong to is rigid. Third, male rank matters—a lot.
The basic social unit of chimpanzee life is the “community.” A community holds and defends territory—sometimes violently—against other communities.
As with us, group stability depends on a mental concept of “we.” Crucially, young chimps watch Mom’s social interactions, learning how to act, who they’ll be with, where to go when, and situations to avoid.
Male chimpanzees remain in the community of their birth for all their lives. Males anchor a community to its land, its customs, and its identity through generations, over centuries. Most females move at adolescence, permanently, into a nearby community. This often means moving in with chimps who have been her birth community’s territorial enemies. It’s a fraught transition. Upon arrival in her new community, where she will likely live for the rest of her life, she might be welcomed, attacked, or bullied by senior females.
Basically, chimpanzees live in tribal groups on tribal lands. Human-like, not human; contemporaries, not ancestors. We share deep history.
* * *
Budongo Forest, elevation three thousand feet, is an island of green surrounded by smoky haze. The rising sea of human settlement comes right to its boundary, as though the forest is the drowning shore of a shrinking continent. Budongo occupies about 460 square kilometers, twenty-five miles across the long way. Not much. Though Budongo Forest Reserve is one of the largest forests remaining in Uganda, it was heavily logged for mahogany and other woods, with much of it exported. No elephants remain here, no leopards. People may come and gather medicinal plants and firewood. People may not cut trees, or set snares for bush pigs and the small forest antelope called duikers (rhymes with “hikers”). But people do.
The researchers here have named several chimpanzee communities after parts of the forest. This community that’s the focus of Cat’s research is Waibira. Adjacent to Waibira is another well-observed community called Sonso. Sonso, the smallest chimpanzee territory known anywhere, is only about eight square kilometers (three square miles). Waibira, at twice that, is still significantly smaller than average. Elsewhere, most chimp communities occupy territories of around twenty to twenty-five square kilometers. Food in Budongo is a concern. Over twenty years, the amount of fruit has declined by an estimated 10 percent, seemingly due to climate warming.
Waibira is made up of about 130 members and an unusually high proportion of adult males. Sonso has about 65 individuals. Sonso also borders the forest’s edge and farmers’ fields, creating problems. When Cat first arrived here the forest was different. Chimpanzees relied on different kinds of trees at different times of the year. But certain trees that are so valued by chimpanzees are also worth money, and they have been drastically depleted.
Our research station is a cluster of ground-level dormitories on the site of the former sawmill that dismantled much of the original forest. Varied wildlife is accustomed to the camp and its humans, lending a Garden of Eden air. It’s normal to open your door and have two monkeys streak past your toes. Baboons of olive hue, blue monkeys with nervous eyebrows, red-tailed guenon monkeys whose striking facial markings look painted on, and velvety colobus monkeys with elegant white capes—all visit daily. Local women bend over wood fires to cook our supper of rice or cassava with beans or peas. We drink rainwater purified through porcelain filters. There is no plumbing.
The chimps fear villagers in their forest—with good reason—but have become accustomed to researchers. Cat invested years to simply get Waibira chimps to ignore her presence so she could observe them behaving naturally. Researchers provide no food. We’re just here, and the chimps are used to that.
Eight or nine other chimpanzee communities here in Budongo Forest remain untamed, unnamed. Their identity, deep and absolute, is known only by them.
To truly comprehend any creature—including people—you must watch them live on their own terms. Budongo chimpanzees are in charge of their movements and decisions. Their lives are complex. Budongo’s free-living chimpanzees are homeschooled in their own traditions, with the knowledge of mothers conveyed to children through ages of deep, wild history.
PEACETWO
BEN, THE MOTTLE-FACED EMPEROR OF Waibira, arrives flinging things and dragging dead branches noisily through dry leaves. He—especially in his own opinion—must be noticed. As “alpha,” Ben has held “office” since last year. In only his late twenties, Ben was unusually young when he attempted to take top spot. “I wasn’t expecting him to succeed,” Cat offers. “But he made it, early.”
How does chimpanzee culture hold their community together despite the intense ambitions of power-seeking males? You’d think members might simply walk away from the threats and potential violence. Their high-strung lifestyle includes the continual drama of males plotting with strategic allies to either overthrow the current dominant male and seize rank or—if you are the most dominant male or in his circle of closest allies—to maintain dominance. Socially it can be like a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Why don’t the pressure, drama, and occasional violence make the system fall apart? Why don’t females, low-ranking males, and more peaceful individuals just leave? Something keeps them together. Like humans in less-than-ideal social conditions, there must be some advantage to staying in the group. I’d especially like to understand chimpanzees’ cultural mechanisms for reducing conflict and tensions, and for maintaining the peace—most of the time. Ben is shaking saplings, hooting, and thump-kicking the fin-like buttress roots that support the trunks of big trees like ribbony walls. The high-ranking are seldom secure. They assert and reassert with bluster and noise, because strength is mainly what they’ve got. But there’s a lot of competing strength among chimpanzees. And willingness to use it. And ambition. So in addition, there’s strategy.
Ben
“Males who rely only on strength,” Cat explains, “who make a habit of attacking over minor things or taking fights further than necessary—they don’t get far or don’t last long. Most use a balance; a few are amazing strategists.” You can play the game in different ways, Cat explains. For instance, Zefa remained second in dominance through two alphas. “You can remain in the number-two spot and get the benefits, while avoiding a lot of the stress of grabbing and holding on to the top slot. It’s worked for him.”
Ben’s rank requires all others to acknowledge his superiority with a specific greeting called a “pant-grunt.” It’s required when a high-ranker must be greeted with a respectful “Hello, sir.”
But today Alf doesn’t pant-grunt to Ben. More surprising—he gets away with it.
“Ben’s not getting due respect,” Cat says. We wonder what’s up.
Hierarchy is the preoccupation of male chimpanzee life. For them as for us, status seeking is an impulse, dominance its own reward.
Masariki
Rising up the male rank order entails calculated risk. “There’s always a lot of subtle politics,” Cat explains. “Who is seen with whom, who sits where, who gets up and follows. It’s like who gets to go to lunch with whom.” These little things clue you to building tensions well before sudden violence brings a power shift.
A possible reason for Ben’s reluctance to assert his rank to Alf: Ben must be unwell. There’s been a serious coughing cold going around. Almost every chimp’s been sick; a couple have disappeared. Maybe today no one’s up for a challenge.
From deep brush comes a chimp with a black face and a torn ear. This is Lotty, one of the regulars. In her early thirties, Lotty has a six-year old daughter. Lotty dutifully pant-grunts her acknowledgement of Ben’s supreme rank, then begins grooming him.
Lotty
Lotty and Ben seem absorbed. Until— They stop. Listen attentively. Are we hearing friends or an adjacent community? They’re monitoring who is where, what they’re up to, what they might be up against. They always want to know: What’s going on in the community?
They move. We follow. They travel on the soles of their feet like us, and on the knuckles of their hands, unlike us. They’re moving off-trail, necessitating bushwhacking by us uprights. We walk single file, me last, following Cat.
A towering tree bursts above its neighbors, spreading its canopy over them. High in chimpanzee heaven, dark shapes are reaching black arms across the baby-blue dawn sky.
Alf climbs as easily as we ascend stairs, basically walking straight up the trunk. When climbing, their thumb-like big toes give them effectively four hands. Their short, thick legs propel them straight up trunks. Long arms make a ballet of it all. Shy begins her own ascent, and with a baby clinging to her belly her strength is even more impressive.
Shy stops climbing and extends an arm, her gesture of intent to her baby to use Mom’s arm as a ramp onto the main trunk. Very small baby chimps are startlingly nimble and confident. He grasps a tiny vine and pulls it, holding its tip in his mouth while getting his grip on a more substantial portion, clearly understanding exactly what’s needed for safety. Hanging by one arm, he swings on the vine, building momentum before making his next reach to the branch he’s targeting. This little six-month-old fluffball is a crazy climber, swinging hand-over-hand through the tree with feet dangling. He’s loving it. His mother watches carefully but seems confident in her child.
Copyright © 2023 by Carl Safina
