Through a Window (21 page)

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 down 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 while 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.

The actors in the drama were seven-year-old Flint and the adolescent female baboon Apple of Beach troop. Flint, clearly, was sexually stimulated by the sight of Apple's small rosy swelling. To attract her attention he used postures and gestures typical of male chimpanzee courtship: he sat and looked towards Apple, his thighs splayed, his penis erect, and he shook a little branch with quick jerking movements of one arm. With the exception of the erect penis, a male baboon does none of these things—he simply approaches the female of his choice and gets on with the job. Apple, however, seemed to understand quite well what Flint wanted—probably she wanted it too. She approached and presented herself for copulation. She did this in the manner of her kind—she stood squarely in front of Flint, facing away from him, looked back over her shoulder, and held her tail to one side. But this is not how a female chimpanzee offers herself to her male—
she
crouches close to the ground. Flint looked at Apple, perplexed. He shook his branch again. And then, seeing that this was not effective, he stood upright, placed the knuckles of his right hand on her rump, at the base of her tail, and pushed down. To my amazement, Apple flexed her legs—but only a little. Flint stared at Apple, shook his branch again, then repeated the pushing exercise. Apple flexed her legs just a little more. Now it seemed that Flint was prepared to meet her half-way. The male chimpanzee normally copulates in a squatting position, his body more or less upright, one hand often resting lightly on the female's back. By contrast, the male baboon grips the female's ankles with his feet, grasps her around the waist with both hands, and, thus elevated, gets down to business. Flint gripped Apple's right ankle with his right foot, held onto a sapling with the other foot, and actually achieved intromission.