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Reflections from Ngogo

2020; Animal Behavior and Cognition; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.26451/abc.07.04.13.2020

2372-5052

Sarah Dunphy‐Lelii,

African history and culture studies

Wild chimpanzees live extraordinarily rich, deeply connected lives, ranging widely through diverse terrain and negotiating complex relationships.Their social ecology is a fascinating one, and they spend hundreds of hours, most of their lives, in amiable and peaceful consort with close others.Considering Povinelli's (this issue) reflection on captive and wild environments, and having witnessed chimpanzees in both, I can say that my first experience in the field had deep impact for the dramatic and sobering view it gave of the many grave challenges they face in wild living.Young females typically set off alone, just before puberty, on a solitary journey to an unknown community.When they locate a new one, their existence is peripheral, fraught with rejection and uncertainty; adult males show little unsolicited interest, adult females are exclusionary and aggressive.The next year or two is spent much alone.They have no mothers, sisters, or aunts and likely will not for the rest of their lives (it is possible for a sister to happen into the same community).And of course, their own daughters will also depart early.The careful movements and watchful face of a young, unnamed immigrant at the margins is poignant to anyone who remembers their own adolescence.Sex is often (though not always) coercive, through domination and the threat of violence.Dominant males demand through gesture and vocalization, and stalk, and females usually submit.Even so, females can sustain tearing and biting injuries visible long afterward.Their fear is apparent through the welldocumented "fear grin" and screaming.Middle-aged Aretha, her own swollen genitals scarred, climbed a tree in refuge from the fully erect and vocal males staring up from below for hours, before eventually descending from hunger or isolation to succumb.Young Florence studiously ignored the ground-slapping demands of a large male until he grew so frustrated that he started breaking and throwing branches.She crouched and crept backwards toward him, her face set in fear and squealing through her teeth.Infants, intensively cared for as they are in humans (carried for eight months and born singly), often die.The causes are various and include sickness, accident, and infanticide; this last outcome most commonly by members of their own community.Even other females kill, and sometimes eat, neonates.First-time or socially isolated mothers may face higher rates of victimhood.During my five months in the field, two newborn infants were taken from their mothers' arms and eaten by females well known to them.They are not abandoned easily; Julianne carried her dead infant for weeks after he died from causes unknown, cradling his limp body while she ate, and climbing gingerly with one arm in order to hold his body with the other.The threat of illness, including human-borne, is ever-present (intestinal parasites, influenza, polio, pneumonia, syphilis, Ebola, anthrax, AIDS).Respiratory illness can be particularly devastating, with a number of well-known chimpanzee communities losing swaths of members at the height of a contagion