Through a Window

by Jane Goodall

  There can be little doubt but that differences in behaviour observed in Freud, Frodo and Prof stem, in large part, from the different personalities and child-raising techniques of their mothers. Of course, there are genetic differences also between these three young males: some temperamental differences surely derive from heredity rather than experience. Sometimes, though, one can trace the onset of an unusual behaviour to a particular traumatic incident that occurred in early childhood. When Prof was two years old, for example, he was attacked by an adult male colobus monkey during a hunt. Passion was just sitting and watching, holding Prof, when suddenly one of the colobus males, enraged, leapt at and attacked her. She was quite unharmed: Prof had one toe bitten right off.

  That experience, both painful and frightening, apparently left Prof with a deep-rooted fear of monkeys. Most young males begin to hunt when they are mere juveniles. Freud caught his first monkey (which Fifi took from him) when he was only six years old. Prof was not observed to hunt monkeys at all until he was eleven, and even then it was in a half-hearted manner. He has never been observed, by us, to catch one. Interestingly, Prof was also terrified of baboons as a child. He showed none of the swaggering, bristling, aggressive play with young baboons that we saw so often in Freud and Frodo. If a large male baboon approached him, during feeding for example, he whimpered in fear and hid behind Passion. Thus it seems that his fear of colobus monkeys may have generalized into fear of all monkeys and baboons. Of course, there is always the possibility that there was some equally traumatic interaction with baboons that led to this second childhood fear. Certainly there would have been many opportunities for such an event to take place.

  12. BABOONS

  THE INTERACTIONS between chimpanzees and baboons, as observed at Gombe, are more varied and more complex than those between any other two species in the animal kingdom—with the exception of our own interactions with other animals. Chimpanzees and baboons sometimes compete aggressively for food. Young baboons may be captured, killed and eaten by chimpanzees. The young of the two species sometimes play together—and young chimpanzees may even groom and try to play with adult baboons. Finally, they understand many of each other's communication signals, and sometimes this results in what amounts to a joint effort to intimidate and repel a predator.

  There are more baboons than chimpanzees at Gombe for, while the number of individuals in each social group—the baboon troop or the chimpanzee community—is about the same, averaging fifty over the years, there are some twelve troops of baboons crowded within the range of one chimpanzee community. This means that it is rare indeed for a day to go by without an encounter of some sort between individuals of the two species. For the most part these meetings are peaceful: often the chimps and baboons simply carry on with their own pursuits and seem to ignore each other altogether. They do, of course, utilize many of the same food resources. The food supply at Gombe is, for most of the year, more than adequate for the requirements of both chimpanzees and baboons, in which case there is no need for them to squabble. On occasion, individuals of the two species feed peacably in the same tree. At other times there may be varying amounts and intensities of aggression. It is during the dry season, from June to October, when food is sometimes in relatively short supply, that one sees the most aggressive competition between the two primate species. When a baboon troop arrives near a tree where three or four chimps are feeding, and its members, one after the other, climb into the branches, the chimps tend to become increasingly nervous. Moving rapidly from place to place, they stuff food into their mouths more and more quickly, then they usually leave. But not always—sometimes, even when they are heavily outnumbered, the chimps do not give up so easily. It depends on the age, sex and personalities of the individuals present. Some chimps are far bolder than others in situations of this sort—and there is no question but that the baboons recognize them. I well remember an occasion when Goblin, Satan and Humphrey were peacefully feeding on figs, and D troop baboons arrived and climbed up, more and more of them, to share the feast. Led by Goblin the three male chimps charged the baboons again and again. There were violent skirmishes in the branches, chimps and baboons screamed and roared, the quiet of the morning was shattered. It was only after twenty minutes that the chimpanzees finally decided to call it a day. Even then they made an impressive exit, uttering loud roaring hoots and charging through the baboons who were feeding on the ground, scattering them, screaming, in all directions.

  Some chimpanzees are far more fearful than others in their interactions with the baboons—and the baboons, knowing this, react accordingly, taking liberties with some chimpanzees they would not take with others. Likewise, the chimpanzees recognize that certain adult male baboons are not to be trifled with. Walnut, for several years alpha male of Camp troop, invariably struck fear into the hearts of the staunchest chimpanzees. And rightly so, for he sometimes appeared to go berserk, charging hither and thither through a peaceful group of chimpanzees, uttering the fierce roar-grunts that sound every bit as frightening as the coughing roar of a leopard, until one and all had fled.

  Nevertheless, despite the occasional dramatic confrontation over a valued food resource, most disputes are settled peacefully, with nothing more vigorous than a mild threat gesture from one side or the other. Competition is minimized by the fact that baboons have a more catholic diet than do chimpanzees. They eat a greater variety of stems and seeds and blossoms. They spend hours digging for roots and little nodes in the dry season, when food is scarce. They turn over rocks in the streams and on the mountain slopes looking for crabs and insects. Their incredibly strong jaws enable them to crack open the small rock-hard kernels of the oil-nut palm fruits. The Gombe chimpanzees, die-hard conservatives that they are, seldom show interest in any food item that is not part of their traditional diet. Except for the infants—sometimes they seem fascinated when they see baboons feeding on something different.

  I vividly recall one incident. Pom was resting as her two-year-old son, Pan, played nearby. A number of baboons were peacefully foraging in the vicinity, and one of them, the adult male Claudius, sat near the two chimps. Pan moved closer and watched with a wide-eyed stare as Claudius picked up a palm-nut kernel, placed it between his molars and, pressing up on his lower jaw with one hand, cracked the shell. He extracted the nut and let the two halves of the now hollow kernel drop to the ground. Pan, keeping his eyes fixed on the baboon's face as though trying to gauge his mood, very cautiously approached, reached out and seized a piece of shell. Overcome with his daring, he hurried back to Pom and, holding her hair with one hand, carefully examined and licked his prize. Claudius, by this time, had selected another fallen kernel and Pan watched, with similar fascination, as that was cracked open too. Then, this time with greater confidence, Pan again approached the baboon and picked up the discarded shell.

  If the food had been something that Pan could easily have obtained for himself, like a berry growing on a bush, I am sure that he would have picked and eaten one. In that way a new feeding tradition could have been started, learned originally from the baboons. But the rock-hard palm nut posed too difficult a problem for an infant chimpanzee.

  The rich, nutritious outer flesh of the fruit of the oil-nut palm is, however, a staple for chimpanzees and baboons alike as the trees ripen one after another throughout the year. Each palm offers only one or two feeding places and, when food is scarce, there may be fierce competition for access to the clusters of red fruits. I remember one time when, as I followed Fifi through the forest, she suddenly paused and, hair bristling, stared up into a tall palm. A moment later she rushed up the trunk and, as she neared the crown, a very small juvenile baboon, screaming in fear, leapt away along one of the fronds. I watched, holding my breath, for I thought that Fifi was trying to catch the youngster—even though in twenty-five years we had never known a female to take part in a baboon hunt.

  But Fifi wanted only to gain access to the one cluster of ripe palm fruits up there. As she settled d
own to feed, uttering soft grunts of delight, her hair gradually sleeked. Meanwhile, however, the small baboon was in a predicament. Perhaps he too had mistaken Fifi's aggressive mien for a predatory interest in himself. At any rate, he seemed determined not to venture anywhere near the female who had given him such a scare. Clinging to the very tip of the frond he looked around vainly for a way to escape. His weight was not sufficient to pull the frond all the way down so he hung some ten feet out from the trunk of the palm. There were no convenient branches nearby into which he could leap. For over three minutes he remained thus suspended. And then, gradually gaining confidence, he very quietly and cautiously climbed back up the frond towards Fifi until he could reach a neighbouring frond. He worked his way, oh so silently, around the palm, from frond to frond until, at last, he could leap into a nearby tree and make his getaway.

  Tall palm trees, with crowns emerging from the surrounding canopy, have occasionally served to trap baboons on the relatively rare occasions when they are hunted by chimpanzees. If a hunter manages to creep stealthily up the trunk, while others wait on the ground below, the intended prey may find it difficult to escape. Once, for example, six male chimpanzees, travelling in the south of their range, came upon a female baboon with a very small infant feeding, quite by herself, in a palm tree. She was not a member of any of our study groups and we did not know her by name. Figan, who was in the lead, grinned when he saw her, squeaked softly, and reached to touch Satan. All six males stood gazing up, their hair bristling. When the baboon noticed them she stopped feeding and, almost at once, began to show signs of distress, giving soft fear calls and backing away to the other side of the palm. Jomeo, moving slowly, climbed a tree close to her palm until he was level with the baboon and about five yards away. As he stopped and stared at her she began to scream loudly, but apparently no other baboons were within earshot. Certainly none appeared, then or later.

  After a tense two minutes, Figan and Sherry climbed deliberately into two other trees. One hunter was now stationed in each of the trees to which their victim could leap. The other three chimpanzees waited on the ground. Suddenly Jomeo leaped over into the baboon's palm. The baboon made a huge jump into Figan's tree. It was easy for him to seize her and pull away the tiny baby. He killed it with a quick bite into its head. And then, as the mother watched and called out hopelessly from a neighbouring tree, the six hunters shared the carcass.

  Because we also study the baboons at Gombe and know the members of five troops by name, along with their fascinating life histories, it is always traumatic when they are killed and eaten by chimpanzees. Yet there is an undeniable sense of excitement when such a hunt begins and a mounting feeling of suspense among us. More often than not baboon hunts fail. Had that female's troop been nearby when Figan and his friends arrived on the scene, things would have gone very differently. Baboon males are fierce when roused, and as soon as they hear the distressed screaming of an infant or its mother they race to the rescue, roaring, lunging and hitting at any chimpanzees in the vicinity. Adult females join in too, at least adding to the commotion with their screeches of fear and rage. In the face of such mobbing many attempted hunts are abandoned and the chimpanzees flee. Indeed, it always amazes me that, given the fury of the defence, chimpanzee hunters ever manage to seize and kill a victim. Even more amazing is the fact that on all occasions when we have observed successful hunts, the chimpanzees, though they may be seized and held to the ground by infuriated male baboons, have never been actually injured by them. Yet baboons will attack a leopard who hunts their young, and may wound it so severely that it later dies. It seems that the chimps, perhaps by virtue of their ability to hurl sticks and rocks at their opponents, have established themselves as the dominant species. They have, in effect, bluffed the baboons into believing them to be stronger and more dangerous than they actually are.

  Baboons are hunters too—there are records of meat eating from almost all parts of their range across Africa. At Gombe they most often catch the fawns of bushbuck during the birth season, when the mothers leave their young pressed to the ground in areas of tall grass. Because baboons spend more time than chimps searching for food in such places, and because they spread out when foraging, they are more likely than the chimps to come upon the hidden fawns.

  Once a baboon has captured prey there is usually a good deal of aggression as the captor, trying to feed, is harassed by his companions. Often, during these skirmishes, the carcass is taken over by a succession of adult males. All this makes for a lot of noise, a cacophony of screams and barks and roars. If chimpanzees hear a commotion of this sort they usually stop whatever they are doing and race towards the sounds. Then follow amazing acts of piracy.

  I have already described the encounter between Gilka and the male baboon Sohrab. She, small and weak, failed to take over the prey. Other females have been more successful. One of the most dramatic incidents was described by Hilali. He was following Melissa and her two offspring: her five-year-old son Gimble and her ten-year-old daughter Gremlin. A sudden medley of sounds from the baboons of D troop, who were foraging nearby, brought the chimpanzees, who had been quietly grooming each other, instantly to their feet. With grins of excitement they embraced briefly, then raced together towards the uproar. A few moments later they came upon the adult baboon Claudius tearing at the meat of a freshly killed fawn. Three other males were threatening him, slapping their hands on the ground, showing their canines and the whites of their eyelids as they yawned, uttering fierce-sounding roar-like grunts.

  Melissa and Gremlin slowly moved closer, watching as Claudius dragged his prey along the ground. Then, as he paused to tear off another mouthful, they charged towards him uttering loud barks of threat and waving their arms. When the baboon retaliated, roar-grunting and lunging fiercely in their direction, Melissa stopped. She gave a few small whimpering sounds, then seized a thick dead branch and, hair bristling, hurled it towards Claudius, who leapt aside. Quickly following up her advantage, Melissa charged again, this time swaying the vegetation wildly, leaping up and down, gradually moving closer. Suddenly Claudius dropped his prey and lunged at Melissa, hitting her and, Hilali thought, biting her arm. Melissa fought back, barking loudly, flailing her arms and hitting out at her powerful adversary. At this point the other male baboons, seizing their opportunity, converged on the prey, and Claudius was forced to turn from Melissa to retrieve his meat. Melissa watched for a few moments and then began another wild display. Gremlin joined her mother again and once more they charged Claudius as a team. He held his ground but began to feed in a frenzy, tearing pieces of meat from the rump of the fawn. Melissa watched and, from time to time, shook vegetation and whimpered.

  After five minutes she began to display again, even more wildly this time. Claudius seized the carcass in his mouth and tried to drag it further away, but it got tangled in the undergrowth. After tugging desperately and in vain, he tore off a large piece and ran away with it. But when Melissa rushed to the prey and seized a front leg he returned and grabbed the other end. Amazingly, despite his terrifying roar-grunts and the close proximity of those gleaming canines, Melissa, screaming loudly, hung on. And Gremlin, who had rushed up a tree when Claudius grabbed the prey, soon swung over above the scene of conflict and began to wave and shake branches just above her mother, adding to the confusion. And then Melissa, still hanging onto the carcass for dear life, started to climb up towards her daughter. Suddenly the baboon seemed to lose his grip and Melissa, quickly flinging the carcass over her shoulder, climbed higher. Then, even as Claudius, roar-grunting, leaped after her mother, Gremlin seized a dead branch, broke it off, flailed it wildly at the baboon and then hurled it at him. He managed to dodge this missile and again lunged towards Melissa. But at this point she seemed suddenly to lose her fear of him and, eleven minutes after the conflict began, started to feed quite calmly on the stolen meat. She shared with Gremlin and with young Gimble who had watched the entire incident from safe vantage points in the trees. For a whi
le Claudius sat close by and continued to threaten, but when two other female chimpanzees arrived to share the meat he gave up and climbed down to join the other baboons who were milling about below the tree, searching for fallen scraps.

  How is it that a female chimpanzee, with her relatively short, blunt teeth can face up to a fully adult male baboon with canines twice as large and powerful as hers—and win? Is it her swaggering display that accomplishes this seeming miracle? The bristling hair, the wildly shaken branches, the upright posture that is so often assumed? Or is it the use of weapons—the branches that may be flailed or thrown? Probably a combination of these things, together with the fact that if other male baboons are present they will not help the possessor of the meat but rather try to steal his prey, distracting his attention from his chimpanzee adversary. Male baboons, though they cooperate in the defence of their troop from rival males, have not been observed to cooperate during hunting, nor do they share the prey when a kill is made.

  Only once have we observed a baboon stealing meat from a chimpanzee. This was when Passion had killed a wounded hawk—a large bird with a wingspan of at least three feet. As she sat feeding, sharing with Pom and Prof, Hector, a Camp troop baboon, approached. He sat nearby, watching. Presently young Prof, seven years old at the time, managed to persuade his mother to part with a whole wing. Uttering loud grunts of delight he moved a few yards away to feed. Seizing his chance, Hector raced towards Prof, seized the wing, and rushed off with it, leaving Prof to throw a violent tantrum, almost choking in his rage.

  The sounds made by baboons who have captured prey are very similar to the uproar heard during some other aggressive incidents: occasionally chimps make a mistake and race up to a baboon troop, apparently expecting a mouth-watering feast, only to find that fierce competition has broken out over, for example, a female in oestrus. Not very interesting to a chimp—although an adult male will often watch with the expression of a connoisseur, as a fully swollen female baboon walks past. If she pauses and turns her rump to him, in the typical primate submissive "present" posture, he may reach out and touch, or at least sniff, her bottom—as he would if she were a chimpanzee. Infant and juvenile males show even more interest in the pink swellings of female baboons and may actually attempt to mate with them. Once this led to the most incredible communication sequence I have ever seen between non-human animals of different species.