Primates and ‘trimates’
Want to learn more about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom?
That would have to be apes, with humans and apes sharing 98 percent of our genes. The most familiar primates are monkeys (examples being “unggoy”) and apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and many more). No, King Kong is not included—he was created for movies in the 1930s, is tall as skyscrapers, and is based on gorillas.
After almost a hundred years, King Kong has lost some of its appeal, displaced by zombies and similar silver-screen creatures. Then, in the last 20 years or so, we’ve seen more true to life documentaries making it to our homes, as part of environmental conservation efforts.
I have to admit documentaries aren’t always too exciting, a real challenge for teachers. Some time back, I mentioned the case of Punch, a baby monkey abandoned by its mother in a Japanese zoo, but which is slowly recovering through an Ikea surrogate plushie (stuffed animal) and one of its caretakers (not available at Ikea). The plushies were produced even before Punch was born, a tribute to primatologist Jane Goodall when she passed away last year. They’ve run out of the plushies, but the local Ikea says they’ll have new stocks by May. Meanwhile, Punch draws large crowds every day at the Japanese zoo.
A more comfortable way to learn more about primates, especially as we have yet to bear with the warmest part of Philippine summers, is to catch two documentaries on Netflix. One is “A Gorilla Story,” which you can finish in one sitting as you follow a small band of mountain gorillas in a forest reserve in Rwanda. The other is “Chimp Empire,” filmed in Uganda, perhaps the longest documented “chimp war” that makes United States President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth look like angels. This has four episodes.
Both documentaries are about social relationships, including hostilities and conflicts that come up. “Chimp Empire” reminded me of “Planet of the Apes,” but with much less spectacle. “A Gorilla Story” was more like a telenovela, spanning “family life” across 50 years of chimpanzees.
“A Gorilla Story” has Pablo as a key character, from its “babyhood” up to its old age. The males are called silverback gorillas because they have a large patch of silver hair on their backs. One of our late visiting American professors at the University of the Philippines used to call our department’s male professors silverback gorillas because of frequent in-fighting. Unlike their human male counterparts, the gorilla males were usually gentle and docile, although violent outbursts occurred as well.
Females, too, were a force to deal with. Outsider males trying to join a pack of silverbacks had to be accepted first by the females. The film also featured one male who killed an infant gorilla and was “excommunicated,” with the other gorillas keeping their distance. Two females, including the mother of the murdered infant, kept constant watch over the killer, who kept trying to get back into the group, even as the two females kept trying to push him out.
Pablo, the “star” of the documentary, turned out to be quite a leader, beginning to attract followers even when he was only 18. Significantly, Pablo attached himself to an older alpha male, Beethoven. Leadership among the gorillas is earned, mainly by defending the group when they meet danger.
Outsiders were occasionally accepted into the group, and this is explained by biologists as an important biological mechanism to prevent inbreeding.
Not mentioned in the film is the important contribution of the work of pioneering women primatologists, who came to be known as The Trimates: Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas. Galdikas died in March. Goodall died last year, and is acknowledged for her work in animal behavior, especially with chimpanzees. She challenged the idea that there wasn’t much to study in terms of animal intelligence and developed many of the important primate research methods. Fossey devoted her professional life to the conservation and protection of gorillas in Rwanda and was murdered by poachers. She is buried next to Digit, her favorite gorilla, one of the early victims of poachers.
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michael.tan@inquirer.net
