I am a primatologist who spends twelve hours most days in the company of a thirteen year old chimpanzee named Bow. I am also an editor with Inverted-A Press.
Yesterday morning, the chickens from across the fence were back. But this time, they were bolder. And they brought reinforcements.
I could see the chickens from a great distance, and they seemed to have made it quite far into my yard from their initial illegal border crossing.
I could hear the neighbors calling to them from the distance: "Here chick--ee chickee. Here chick-ee chick-ee, chick-ee!" But if I had not herded them toward the fence, they probably would have stayed right there.
Shortly afterwards, they came right back. I was watching them from my kitchen window, and I thought I saw two dogs run right through the spot where the chickens were crossing and then disappear into my unmown pasture, which right now is more like a wildlife preserve than a pasture.
By the time I approached the chickens, the dogs were nowhere in sight, but they were on my property and not the neighbors'. And this fact seemed to embolden the chickens.
Now the chickens were not running so fast to get away from me. They were strolling at a leisurely pace.
They even paused for a short while by the new apple tree in the orchard. And even when they had crossed over to their own side of the fence, they just stood there and looked at me.
They seemed to be saying to themselves:"Let's wait right here until she leaves. Then we go back in!"
On my stroll back to the house, I was suddenly confronted by the neighbors' dogs, who came out of my overgrown pasture. One of them was my old friend Cowboy the Neighbor Dog. He is very well behaved. But his young and much bigger friend was much less socialized, and he actually dared to bark at me on my own land, as if I were the one who was trespassing.
When I glanced over at the other fence line, I saw the chickens were still there, on the other side of the fence, watching and waiting for the chance to cross back over. Were the dogs and the chickens from my neighbors' yard acting in concert? Was this a planned invasion?
Dogs and chickens can coexist and even work together. But it's not always the case. When I had chickens who were kept separately from my dogs, the dogs eventually got to them and killed them. Yet where chickens and dogs are allowed to roam free, coexistence does not seem to be such a problem.
Why is that? What can we learn from this about humans and chimpanzees?
Bow is intelligent. Bow is literate. Bow also has problems with impulse control. Should Bow have legal personhood? My answer is no. Is it because he's a chimp? Not exactly. It's because of the way he behaves. (And the way he behaves may indirectly have something to do with the fact he's a chimp, but not necessarily.) I am not prejudiced on the basis of species or race. I judge each individual by the things that he does.
When 100 pig tailed-macaques disrupt the voting process in Thailand, we can laugh that no matter how bad our own election cycle problems might be, at least we haven't had this happen here yet. But what if the monkeys in Thailand are not any less intelligent than some of the humans? What if they are in fact aware of the news and siding with the two eight year old girls now facing criminal charges in Thailand for tearing a voter registration list off the wall because they liked the pink paper it was printed on?
Do you think those little girls deserve to have the vote, given their current level of maturity and impulse control? I am not alone in thinking they do not. In most countries the vote is restricted to people over the age of eighteen, who are presumed to have the level of maturity required to make decisions that affect everyone. In many places, that is not a rebuttable presumption. But shouldn't it be?
In the past, in places where representative government was first practiced, it was always restricted to free males. And usually free males were males who owned property. Take the government of Carthage.
In Carthage, unlike Tyre from which it derived, there was no king. Carthage was run by two annually elected judges (שופטים) who made both judicial and executive decisions. One of the judges was responsible for domestic affairs and the other for matters abroad. There was also a senate of great ones who served for life and who decided on declarations of war, and a popular assembly that was responsible for deciding things that the judges and great ones did not agree upon. Participation in politics and the popular assembly was limited to those who had citizenship: free, native born males.
In the United States we associate the idea of slavery with captive kidnapped Africans -- a violation of civil liberties -- and we are taught to think that everyone should be free and everyone should vote. We are not told that representative government is not strictly a European idea. We are never told about what really happened in Carthage. But in Carthage's sophisticated African government, it was understood that in order to vote you had to be free -- and that not everyone was capable of being free, even if native born. It was not about race. It was about impulse control.
It's not a race thing. It's not a species thing. It is more like mass culture and which cognitive profile is allowed to prosper and dominate over others. When people are not permitted to individuate, when decisions are made collectively for all, when the lowest impulses predominate and property rights disappear, then destruction is what follows. When tenants vote on the rent landlords may charge and people who have no money get to vote who gets the money of those who have some, then we descend into chaos.
It's not necessarily that monkeys or apes are not intelligent. It's about how you arrange their government. One hundred macaques behave very differently as individuals than as a mob.This is why we have never allowed the lowest common denominator to rule in civilized countries like Carthage. And I think that Bow, too, would not do as well as he is doing now, if merged into a collective tribe of chimpanzees, without the chance to opt out of forced encounters.
The weather has been getting much warmer. It is almost like summer weather sometimes, even though it's still April. Bow enjoys the warm weather and spends a lot of time out-of-doors. Also there are summer treats readily available now, like watermelon, which Bow loves.
Out in the woods. mayapples are blossoming. As their name implies, this should be happening in May.
The bees are very busy in my backyard, and they manage to coexist peacefully with my dogs, enjoying the dandelions that I permit to grow there.
Just outside my door, the robins are being fruitful and multiplying. Remember when there was only one egg in the nest in the rosebush out side my door? There are now four!
I also found another nest by the fence. It had three eggs in it before the one by the door had more than one. It still has three eggs in it now, but I was alarmed to find one broken egg shell on the grass a couple of days ago, not far from the nest by the fence.
Is it safe to put all your eggs in one basket or one nest? Even robins diversify. They have several clutches each year.
I don't think all chimpanzees should be sent to a few centralized locations. Even if no one there means them any harm, one epidemic could devastate their numbers, and the real job of chimpanzee conservation is outside of Africa, in case they are destroyed in their native habitat.
I have decided to be proactive and support libertarian candidates, because they are the only ones who will fight for property rights. And the property rights of chimpanzee owners outside Africa are the only thing that stands between chimpanzees and extinction. It is not right that the US Fish & Wildlife Service is sending US taxpayer money to Jane Goodall in Africa, while eroding the rights of chimpanzee owners in the US. By their own admission, at http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/chimpanzee.html;
"The Service has funded $9.4 million in grants for conservation efforts to protect chimpanzees, matched by an additional $11.5 million in leveraged funds. These grants have supported field projects in 19 countries and include: developing conservation policies and local leadership and improving law enforcement to ensure the long-term survival and protection of chimpanzees and gorillas."
They have taken funds earmarked for conservation in the US and sent them to Africa. There are no wild chimpanzees or gorillas in the United States. The great apes are not within the purview of their jurisdiction. While we can argue that the original mission may or may not be constitutional, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has gone rogue and is operating outside any rights delegated to it by the people.
If you would like to support the cause, please visit here:
Most of us tend to have friends who are people we happen to have met along life's path and who keep in touch with us. Bow has many friends, too, that he has met over the years and with whom he has established relationships.
This year, for instance, Bow has two women friends that he looks forward to seeing once a week, each of them on a different day, who deliver food to us. He knows when each of them is expected, and he waits, and when they come, he has a somewhat different, but similar routine of greeting each of them and interacting. In the case of the one lady, he always hides at first, then shyly comes out to greet her. In the case of the other, he likes to do warm ups before jumping a great distance toward the front door of the pen. Each of these friends is very patient with Bow and allows him to take his time to warm up to them anew, which is one of the reasons he likes them. They accept him for who he is. They don't expect him to conform to any preconceived notion as to what is a socially appropriate way of greeting people.
This year, one of the ladies gave him a picture of herself and her family before Christmas break. The other brought us a platter of Christmas cookies. Bow was actually more interested in interacting with her in the usual way, rather than looking at the cookies, when she came over yesterday. But he did have one of the cookies she brought for dessert last night at dinner.
It gets really dark very early in the evening at this time of year, and despite all the lights we have on in the pens, the video and pictures of Bow's Christmas tree cookie are kind of dim.
It is nice to have friends. Bow appreciates his friends and looks forward to their visits. No matter how isolated we may seem to be, there are always opportunities to meet new people and make friends.
How much alone time is optimal? What is worse: being isolated or being forced to share space with conspecifics all the time? I think to a certain extent, it depends on the individual. To some people, solitary confinement may seem like the worst punishment imaginable, and for others, the scariest nightmare of prison life is the idea of being forced to share a very small space with a cellmate.
Speaking about these issues with other primatologists, I can't help but feel that they are projecting their own preferences onto the chimpanzees whose rights they believe they are championing. Social people are suggesting that solitary life is cruel and unusual. Those of us who would rather be alone than trapped without a way to escape unwanted companionship feel the opposite. Some of the comments that I get from viewers of my Youtube videos give me the impression that they are in the social camp. They talk about Bow being "all alone."
First of all, Bow is not all alone. I am there with him most of the day.
Perhaps people get the idea that he's all alone because the videos focus on Bow and not on me. But that hand caressing him or helping to operate the computer is not disembodied.
And the other point that may not be clear to our viewers is that like all people, Bow sometimes asks to be alone. Often he wants me to leave and sends me away, so that he can do his own thing. That's when I go for my walk in the pasture, where I sometimes encounter deer.
Most of the deer I see travel in groups.
But the one with the antlers is always alone.
This reminds me of the character of Bambi's father in the book Bambi: A Life in the Woodsby Felix Salten.
This book was read to me by my own father in a Hebrew translation. In the book, Bambi's father was an aloof figure who was usually absent, or watching from afar, but he showed up in person to chide Bambi for not wanting to be alone after the death of his mother. This is described well in an article by Ralph H. Lutts, who contrasts the Disney movie Bambi with the book on which it was based when it comes to the father son relationship.
Disney, however, changed the nature of this relationship. The ability of Bambi's father to live a solitary life, to appear without warning, and then to vanish into the forest, are keys to his survival. To be visible is to be vulnerable. Bambi's maturation in Salten's story is a process of learning the lessons of survival. "If you live, my son," his mother explains, "if you are cunning and don't run into danger, you'll be as strong and handsome as your father is sometime, and you'll have antlers like his, too." Bambi's father, the Great Prince, achieved his stature by surviving to become the oldest and wisest of the deer. In Salten's book, the Great Prince is a teacher who passes his survival wisdom on to Bambi. He teaches mostly by example, but also with words. His first words to Bambi come at a time when the fawn is alone, crying for his mother. The stag suddenly appears and scolds, "Can't you stay by yourself? Shame on you!" Bambi learns his lessons well and eventually becomes as skillful and solitary as his father; he learns "the most vital lesson of the woods: 'Be alone'." These lessons in survival come full cycle years later when, at the very end of the book, old Prince Bambi comes across a pair of fawns crying for their mother. "Can't you stay by yourselves?" he scolds.
The original novel may have anthropomorphized the animals, but it did not play down the presence of death in nature even without man, nor did it make it seem that if only we got rid of guns, then all would be peaceful in the forest.
In addition to that, the novel by Salten celebrated the importance of being alone. Everybody needs to learn how to be alone, and even autistic individuals are allowed to ask for the alone time they crave.
Any humane arrangement on behalf of chimpanzees in captivity needs to give each individual a way to opt out of socializing at will, and to join the group only when he wants to. The luxury of alone time can mean the difference between a fight to the death among competing individuals and the ability to walk away from a fight. But even under much less extreme conditions, when there is no immediate danger to life, there can be no freedom if we are not free to be alone. The right to turn down companionship is key.
Because so many people in academia are communitarian, if not downright socialist, it seems they do not know this yet. When I talk to them about concentration camps, they agree that those are bad. But they have no idea what makes a place a concentration camp. They seem to think it is about the intentions of the gatekeepers rather than facts of daily life.
Some people ask me that when I talk about Bow too enthusiastically . "Well, of course, I do. Do you think I would be doing research on chimpanzee cognition and language ability with Bow, if I thought he was human?" What would be the point?
Bow is not human. He is a chimpanzee. But what exactly that means is what is up for debate. For instance, he's very interested in some things, and much less in others. But is that a chimpanzee trait? Or is that just Bow?
Bow was raised in a human household, but there are some human practices that he has staunchly refused to follow. He does not want to wear clothes, and as soon as he was independent enough to refuse to wear them, I had to give up on that idea. For me, it had seemed convenient that Bow wear clothes, but as he grew up, I had to concede. It was his choice.
On the other hand, Bow loves to groom his finger nails using a nail file. He watches me with deep fascination when I do it, and the he gets very engrossed in using the nail file himself.
Now, this is not anything that I had to bribe Bow or force him to do. It's just something that he wanted to do. But quite possibly some other chimpanzee would not want to do this. Bow is not representative of all chimpanzees. Not everything that is true of him is true of every other chimpanzee. For instance, some chimpanzees like to play in water. I have seen videos of them doing that, but Bow has always hated water. He won't even step into a puddle or on slightly damp floor, much less immerse himself in a body of water.
I used to explain it like this: "He has a very low fat to muscle ratio in his body. If thrown in a lake, he would drown, because he cannot float. So he must know this instinctively, and that's why he avoids water." It sounded like a good explanation, but when the counterexamples of chimps happily playing in man-made pools started to surface, I had to revise my opinion. Maybe it is not all chimpanzees. Maybe that's just Bow.
It's easy to fall into the trap of overgeneralizing. But there's no reason for it. Individual differences are just as important as group traits. Bow can read. He can spell. Maybe it's because he was exposed to it when young. That certainly must have something to do with it. Maybe most chimpanzees could do the same, if given a chance. Maybe some couldn't. After all, some humans can't, either.
Some traits are group traits. But there are individual differences, and those are important, too. As a scientist, I feel that one counterexample can disprove a rule. "All Chimpanzees do X" can be falsified by one single example of a chimpanzee that does not do X. "No chimpanzee can do Y" is falsified by a single example of a chimpanzee that can do Y. I am not interested in the average, the mean or the bell curve. My job is to find out what Bow can do.
I am deeply suspicious of anyone who makes sweeping generalizations about groups based only on group affiliation. No matter how many chimpanzees a so-called expert knows, he or she does not know Bow. What is good for Bow may not be good for another chimpanzee. What is good for another chimpanzee may not be good for Bow.
Do you know anyone who purports to speak for all chimpanzees? Be very suspicious. Such people are overstepping their bounds, both as scientists and as activists. Real scientists deal in facts. Real humanitarians care only about individuals.
Sometimes it's the leaves turning color and falling, and sometimes it's little, fuzzy white seeds from dandelions blowing through the air.
This morning the dogs were barking loudly and Bow sent me out to see what it was. All I could see was a chipmunk who scampered under the storage shed. It was so small that even Nala did not choose to pursue
The persimmon trees have lost all their leaves already and are decorating themselves for Halloween.
In the pasture, I occasionally run into a family of deer who hurry to take cover in the woods.
Many of the butterflies that I meet are in very poor shape.
But there is a yellow butterfly who meets me at the same spot each day.
Sometimes it lets me come in pretty close, but it always flies away before I get in a really good shot.
I finished the painting of the Liberian chimpanzees.
The last part I worked on was the hands. Chimpanzees have such beautiful hands.
I hope that Bow is never reduced to asking for a handout like those chimpanzees in Liberia. Before I am done, I hope that I can leave him in a situation that is financially secure. I also would like him to be able to earn his own money, if necessary. It does not make sense to talk about personhood for chimpanzees and then completely rule out the right to work. You have to ask yourself what kind of personhood are these idealists envisioning for chimpanzees: Is it the same kind that humans have when they are wards of the State?
I think we had out first frost of the season this morning. There has a been a chill in the air. Even yesterday it was cooler.
Bow attempting a display yesterday
On a cold, blustery day, one way to keep warm is to try to display.
But sometimes you don't feel like displaying, so the whole thing does not come off as planned.
On a cold blustery day, the dogs find reasons to play.
Yesterday, there were still bees on the blossoms, no matter how cold or how windy the day was.
In the sky birds were flying overhead. I tried to follow one with my camera, until it flew too close to the sun.
This month will mark my fourteenth anniversary living in Missouri. This is the house that I bought to live in when I returned from Taiwan. We have not moved since.
But back on September 11, 2001, I was staying in a motel in Salem with my daughter, because we were looking for that special house to buy in Missouri, as this was the best state to move to in order to start an ape language project. The laws here were minimally invasive. And the way I heard about the terrorist acts that happened that day was like this: A friend from Taiwan sent me an email to tell me that there was a war on and that the United States had been attacked by another country. She wanted to know if I was okay. I assured her that there was no war, I was fine, and that everything was perfectly peaceful. Then I turned on the TV, and they kept replaying the crashing of the planes into the Word Trade Center. I still did not consider this a war. It was at most an insane act of terrorism. No country had attacked us. A few nut jobs in an airplane with box cutters do not constitute an act of war.
However, this event was soon used as a provocation to attack another country. It was also used as a pretext to pass a whole slew of legislation cutting down on the civil right of Americans which was collectively known as The Patriot Act. If you would like to read the Patriot Act, here it is:
Entitled "USA Patriot Act" -- an acronym of "Uniting and
Strengthening
America by
Providing
Appropriate
Tools Required to
Intercept and
Obstruct
Terrorism "-- this Act of 2001 not only created new legislation, it also amended and altered a great many existing statutes. It even curtailed rights secured in the bill of rights to the United States constitution. The Patriot Act became effective as of October 26, 2001, which means that in a little over a month from the terrorist action, America was already a much less free country. By the time I was living in this house with my daughter and our dog Teyman, who just came up to us and adopted us on October 3rd, it was really not the same country. Flags were waving everywhere, and nobody dared say a word against the government action, because nobody wanted to seem unpatriotic.
Sword and Teyman on the Day Teyman Joined Our Family
Passing a law is very easy. Repealing it later is something that hardly ever happens. According to the Wikipedia:
Following a lack of Congressional approval, parts of the Patriot Act expired on June 1, 2015.[4] With the passage of the USA Freedom Act on June 2, 2015 the expired parts were restored and renewed through 2019.[5]
The Patriot Act was a bipartisan effort to curtail the freedom of American citizens. We can't blame any one party for passing it or any one president. It was kept in effect in 2015 under a different set of politicians. The new President who campaigned against it did not veto its renewal.
On the Project Bow calendar, September 11 is marked as "Patriot Day". When I was planning the calendar, I tried to erase that, but the program would not let me!
The pretext for the Patriot Act was an event that took the lives of 2,977 people. Many more people die in auto accidents every year.
A similar event, although on a much smaller scale, is apparently what led to the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. According to the Wikipedia the legislation was fueled by this story published in a 1965 issue of Sports Illustrated:
The piece detailed the story of Pepper the Dalmatian, a dog that disappeared from the yard of the Lakavage family home in Pennsylvania. It was later discovered that Pepper had been stolen by "dog-nappers," was bought by a Bronx hospital, and had died during an experimental surgical procedure.[8] On July 9, 1965, Representative Joseph Y. Resnick introduced H.R. 9743 into the House of Representatives, a bill that would require dog and cat dealers, as well as the laboratories that purchased the animals to be licensed and inspected by the USDA. A hearing was held on September 30, 1965, and similar legislation was sponsored in the Senate.[5]
A family dog was kidnapped, tortured and killed by a Bronx hospital and its henchmen. Under already existing common law which had been available for centuries, that was illegal. Stealing is a crime, as well as a tort. Destroying another person's property is a crime as well as a tort.The culprits ought to have been harshly dealt with for violating the property rights of the family whose dog it was, and then life for everyone else should have gone on as usual. Instead, a whole bundle of laws cutting down on the property rights of all Americans was passed, using this gruesome incident as pretext. Today, the right of a family to own any pet is curtailed, because somebody stole somebody else's dog in the 1960s.
The AWA in its current form affects dogs, cats, horses, elephants, and chimpanzees, among others. It is used routinely in order to steal animals from their owners and to give them to "rescue" operations that profit from the theft. A recent example is that of Arabian horses stolen from their owners:
There is nothing patriotic about a law that disempowers citizens and strips them of the protections afforded them by the bill of rights. There is nothing humane about a law that allows animals to be stolen from their homes and given to others. But that is the kind of legislation that routinely passes these days, and most people have no idea what is going on.
I was asked recently: "Aya, what will you do if ownership of chimpanzees becomes illegal?" It was in the context of a conversation about a sanctuary, and the implication was that if I had no other choice, wouldn't I turn Bow over to a sanctuary?
I kind of stammered. I said that if the law only affected this state, I would move to another state. If it affected the entire country, I would move to a different country. I only moved here to start Project Bow. Before the second half of 2001, not only was I not living in this state. I was not even living in the United States. I came here for Project Bow, and if Project Bow is not welcome here, I can leave. That is, if I am not prevented from leaving.
But I had a bad feeling about this as I answered, because I felt the person asking me that was making it sound as if this was just my problem -- and that he would gladly gain from my loss. What I feel now that I should have said to him was this: "Sir, are you a patriot? Then what will you do if my rights are violated? Will you fight for me? Will you risk your life for my rights? Or are you planning to profit from my loss?"
A patriot isn't somebody who dies as a helpless victim of an unconscionable act of terror. A patriot is someone who knowingly risks his life to protect his own rights and the rights of others. There should be a Patriot Day. It should fall on April 19.
I believe that there are many benefits from taking naps throughout the day, whenever the spirit moves us. Most of us would have trouble doing this in a public place, or where we think we might be attacked or censured. One of the benefits of working at home is that you feel comfortable enough to do what feels natural.
Bow napping indoors yesterday
A friend phoned yesterday, and while we were chatting, he asked me, almost at random: "When chimpanzees are asleep, do they sleep with their toes stretched out or curled in?" I answered at once: "Curled in." But this was not because I actually knew the answer. It's because all I had to do was glance over at Bow where he was napping, and I could see what he was doing. This is not a scientific random statistical sampling, and it may not be true of every chimpanzee, but it is of Bow.
Sometimes Bow wants to know what I have been up to while I take my walks, or when I am away, and I show him videos. Yesterday afternoon, I showed him quite a few of them, many of them from Orchard House, until he was satisfied. Then he went to lie down on his blanket, yawned and started napping.
A damaged anglewing butterfly in my backyard, surrounded by well meaning dogs
You cannot take a nap unless you feel comfortable and safe. And I think this kind of relative safety is what even the butterflies experience on my property. After I returned from my trip last weekend, I encountered an injured anglewing butterfly. Some people call this type a tree bark butterfly, because when the wings are folded that is what it looks like: tree bark. But in fact, the Latin name of all these anglewing butterflies is polygonia, because of the polygons that their wings are shaped into. And the English name is usually after a punctuation mark. But I am not absolutely sure if this one is supposed to be a comma or a question mark.
The remarkable thing about this butterfly in my backyard is that it was able to rest on the ground, while the dogs walked past, and nobody bothered it. It felt that safe.
Two Monarchs embrace
Now, I wish that the Monarch butterflies felt this comfortable around me. I have to admit that they still do not. But we have made progress. Yesterday, I saw two of them embracing just on the other side of my fence. They chose to do this not on my property, but so very close to the border that I could see them clearly while standing on my own land!
There was also a pearl crescent feeding on a flower on my side of the fence. When the pearl crescent flew past them, that is when the two Monarchs came apart, and the female flew off first.
Startled by a Pearl Crescent, the two Monarchs move apart
The male was left alone for a moment, and then he flew off, too.
The male is the last to fly off
After they flew away, they came flying back.
Flying past again
First one, and then the other appeared, going in the opposite direction from where they had fled to.
Now these are not my Monarchs. They were in the neighbors's field. But it was so close! I have never been this close to a Monarch before, let alone, two.
Yesterday, I spotted both a dragonfly and a damselfly in about the same place. The dragonfly was delicately balanced on the barbed wire that separates my land from the neighbors. The beautiful backdrop to the dragonfly was a landscape I do not own, but am lucky enough to enjoy anyway, from a distance.
The damselfly was less than a foot away, on a poison ivy leaf.
Now I have written about the difference between dragonflies and damselflies before. In that post, we established that the damselfly is as distantly related to a dragonfly as a human is to a rhinoceros,
But at the time, I only spotted a damselfly, and had no dragonfly to compare it with. Yesterday, I was given an opportunity to observe them both closely in a very similar environment.
At first, I noticed only the dragonfly, which was bigger and more active than the damselfly. It kept taking off from the barbed wire, only to return over and over again to the same spot.
Dragonfly in flight
It would get so small in the distance, then grow back in size as it came in for a landing, making its final approach.
Dragonfly coming in for a landing
This happened over and over again, and meanwhile, the damselfly was so quiet and demure and still, that I hardly noticed it.
But it was in almost the same place.
Nobody thinks that because dragonflies and damselflies are so distantly related, they should be kept apart for the purity of their races or cultures. They can hang out side by side, and there is no problem.
You might argue that it is because the two species occupy a different ecological niche -- one preferring barbed wire to perch on and the other poison ivy -- they pose no threat to each other.
But I have seen animals as distantly related as the great spangled fritillary butterfly and the common honey bee feeding side by side on the same flower.
A bumblebee, a honey bee and a great spangled fritilalry
And I have also seen animals as closely related as bumblebees and honeybees share the same flowers with the great spangled fritillary butterfly, and there was peace and harmony, and all went well.
And yet if someone suggests that bonobos and chimpanzees might be able to live together if they knew each other well and agreed to the arrangement, some experts frown. And for humans to live in the same environment as either species is verboten. It would be unnatural, they say. Why? Don't you think we evolved in pretty much the same environment? Don't you think we occupy the same niche? Don't you think there are also humans in Africa in a more or less natural setting? You might as well segregate the honey bees from the bumblebees and the damselflies from the dragonflies.
Of course, there are conflicts between similar animals occupying the same niche. But most of the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos are cultural. And if we are raised in a similar culture, we can get along with others who are not exactly the same as we are. At least we can, if we choose to.
It's no secret that I like to paint, am not very good at it, but still enjoy this as a relaxing activity. Recently, the image of the Liberian chimpanzees with their hands outstretched, asking for a handout, really made an impression on me, so I decided to try to paint that.
The painting is nowhere near complete, but Bow wanted to take a closer look.
When Bow takes a closer look, he really gets close. Close enough to smell it.
Does Bow like to paint? Yes, but I have never been able to tell, just by looking at them, what his paintings are supposed to be. In my opinion, a painting is what it looks like to an objective observer and not what the artist says it represents. If objective observers all see different things, then it's an ink blot, not a painting. We have all seen images in the clouds, but we realize those images are actually in our heads and not in the clouds. When we look at a painting like Mona Lisa, there is no question as to what it's supposed to be. Nobody looks at that and sees a landscape or a still life.We may not know who the woman is, but we can tell it's a woman and what she is doing.
However, I watched the video above of a flock of starlings, and for a moment I was sure they were forming a three dimensional image of a swan. Do the starlings know they are making a swan? I wondered. Probably not.
To prove that chimpanzees, like Bow, can make representational art, we have to be able to objectively determine what an observer would think it was an image of, and also that the chimpanzee intended that it be an image of that. If either element is missing, it's not representational art.
To prove that a chimpanzee understands representational art, you have only to ask him to identify what he sees. I am rather sure that Bow does indeed understand representational art. But to enroll him in an art appreciation class might be a problem.
The truth is that there is still a lot that I don't know about bees, even though there seems to be no shortage of them on my property. Some of the bees are honey bees, while many belong to other varieties. But even in the case of the honey bees, I don't know where they live or whether they are free or "owned". And I certainly don't know how they reproduce or manage to survive our harsh winters.
The idea of owning bees may seem kind of silly. They are insects. They fly around freely. There are no collars on them or identification tags. How could you possibly complain that a bee is trespassing on your property and ask for restitution from the owner? By the same token, how would you go about filing a claim if you thought a bee belonging to you was stolen? Do the bees know who owns them? Oxen and asses do know who owns them, according to Biblical scripture (Isaiah 1:3). But bees?
However, not only are there beekeepers and bee owners, there are also bee breeders and bee sellers. If for instance, 30% of a beekeeper's colony dies of the dreaded "colony collapse disorder", that does not mean that next season that beekeeper will have 30% fewer bees to begin with. Not at all. He can simply order new bees -- in a kit -- from his friendly local bee breeder, and next year he will have exactly the number of bees that he wants to have. No more, no fewer.
I actually did know about the bee kits, because a friend of mine orders them most years. Although recently she skipped a year, and that must have greatly reduced the bee population in her neighborhood.
If you read the most popular news items about bees, they never mention this. They don't talk about bee breeders, and how all of us are counting on them to supply beekeepers with extra bees, to make up for the bees they lose to the vagaries of nature.
They do talk about how we need bees as pollinators, so that even if we don't like honey and could not care less if there were no honey left to eat, we should care if we like peaches and nectarines and apples and pears. No bees, no fruit, they tell us. The earth will be a desolate place, and the only thing left to eat will be hamburgers and bean burritos.
Here's what they don't tell us: if we keep importing honey from abroad, our local beekeepers will stop ordering pre-packaged bees from the bee breeders, and then the local fruit growers will have to find some other way to pollinate. This will not result in no fruit. It may, however, result in much more expensive fruit. Because all the bees will be overseas, working for the local beekeepers who are making a living from selling honey to us.
Everything in life is interconnected, including ecology and economy. An animal has no chance of survival in this overpopulated world unless humans cultivate it, breed it and keep its kind going. That's why if you want bees, you go to bee breeders. No breeders, no bees.
The same thing is true for chimpanzees. If you want there to be chimpanzees on earth in the future, then you have to be nice to chimp owners and chimp breeders. Chimp breeders make a living from chimp owners. Do away with ownership of chimpanzees, and there will be no breeders. No breeders means no chimps. There is no other way for them to have any chance at all to survive as a species. So if you are a real conservationist, you have to fight for the right to own chimpanzees.
You might think that when I go out taking pictures of butterflies, I choose the prettiest specimens to photograph. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Many gorgeous butterflies flit right past me, never pausing long enough for me to even get a chance at a picture. The ones I eventually photograph and film are the ones who will stay still for a spell -- at least long enough for me to not only notice them but also to get ready to focus on their antics.
The butterfly in the video clip above seemed to want me to notice. It was modeling for me, flapping its wings and turning around in a circle, almost auditioning to play the role of a butterfly. And if I were casting, it would surely have gotten the part!
What we see is only what they allow us to see, no more, no less. Some butterflies are shy and some are hams. And some look much more brilliantly attractive when in flight than at rest.
This tiny fellow has wings that are blue on top and white underneath. When the wings are folded, as they generally are when it rests on a flower, the butterfly looks white and blends in with the Virginia Mountain Mint.
But when it spreads out its wings to fly, the blue color is revealed in a split second splash.
I've spent a lot of time chasing the tiny blue butterflies in the air only to lose them when they landed somewhere. Because once they land, they look completely different.
In the video above, if you have enough patience, you can see the transformation for yourself. But don't get distracted. There are other insects in the shot, such as this brilliant green fly.
They say that we see only what we want to see -- that something can be staring us right in the face, and if we are not mentally ready to see it, we won't. But the other side of the coin is that sometimes we see something we never expected to see, and we are so blown away by it, that we forget about what it was we were supposed to be doing.
It is good to be disciplined, but it also helps to be open to what is actually happening, rather than what we thought was going to happen.
You can have a well designed experiment with chimpanzees set up to prove or disprove a stated hypothesis. That would be a good way to get reputable data and funding and grants and publication. You can take pictures of what you set out to take pictures of. and then ignore all the wonderful things that are actually happening with your chimpanzee. Or you can pay attention to self-selecting acts of obvious intelligence.
In real life, things rarely go according to plan, but there are wonderful surprises! This is one of those things that each of us has to discover individually at our own pace. It cannot be done by committee.
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