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.
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.
The days are getting cooler and autumn is in the air. Bow is taking it easy. Whenever he naps, I take this opportunity to do somethings else. Today, it was a little more work on the painting of the Liberian chimpanzees.
As of right now, the painting looks like this:
I saw an article today that said there were natural reasons why people do not recognize other people outside their ethnic group very well.
I think it actually works even on the family level. People in a particular family filter out the traits they all have in common and notice only the differences. But people from outside the family will think relatives all tend to look the same,
Nevertheless, when I look at the photo of the Liberian chimpanzees, I see individuals who all look very different from each other. I hope that comes through in my painting. They are all going through the same experience, but each is reacting to it in a completely different way, and each face is different.
I am not an accurate painter, but I do focus on the personality and the special features of my subjects. No two are the same. It's what I believe.
It has been very hot out for the past few days. The sun casts heavy shadows, and everything seems slow.
Even the little butterflies on my long internal road look lazy.
They congregate there in small groups, and then they line up, as if getting ready for a race.
"On your mark, get set, go!" they seem to be saying. And then they all fly off at once.
But even though they all take off at the same time, there are always some that are faster and some that are slower. No two are the same.
No matter how similar they look, and how perfectly lined up they seem to have been, and how well synchronized their start is, they still each have their different pace and speed and destination.
No matter how superficially similar, no two chimpanzees are alike, either. And no single "solution" of the chimpanzee "problem" is going to perfectly cover every case.
Some are literate, and others are not.
Some are domesticated and some are wild. Some are imprisoned, and some are free. Some are gainfully employed, and others are asking for a handout.
Photo Credit: The Daily Mail, UK Chimpanzeessin Liberia, abandoned by their captors, beg for a handout
I've been thinking a lot about Liberia lately. Not just the chimpanzees in Liberia, but also the entire history of that country.
If you would like to read a news item about chimpanzees in Liberia abandoned by the New York Blood Center, here is the news source I have seen:
The short version of the story is this: In 1974 the New York Blood Center captured wild chimpanzees and infected them with diseases deadly to humans while keeping them on six little islands in Liberia. The chimpanzees, who had been self-supporting up to that point, became entirely dependent on their captors for food and all of life's necessities. In 2005 the New York Blood Center abandoned their research project, but they promised to care for the captive chimpanzees for life. Ten years later, the funds for the "lifetime care" have run out. Sixty-six adult chimpanzees and one baby are now begging for food. They have not learned how to become self-supporting again. They wait for humans to come to their island and feed them, greeting them with outstretched hands and hugging those who help them.
This is a very moving, very distressing story, and here are the lessons we can learn from this;
Bad things can and do happen to chimpanzees in Africa all the time. Sending chimps to Africa does not guarantee them a happy or "natural" life.
Banning medical research on chimpanzees in America will not prevent American organizations from conducting such research abroad.
When the funding for research on chimpanzees is cut, chimpanzees find it hard to make a living.
Sixty-six adult chimpanzees, who could easily attack and kill the few men who come to their island, instead hug them and are grateful for the food they bring. If chimpanzees were stupid wild animals who cannot control their violent impulses no matter the circumstances, how could this be happening?
I am not saying this in support of medical research on chimpanzees, but you have to realize that anytime any activity involving chimpanzees is banned, that is going to be hard on chimpanzees from an economic standpoint. If you ban medical research, medical research companies are going to dump their chimps. If you ban circuses, circuses are going to lay off their chimps. If you ban films in which chimpanzees are allowed to play chimpanzees, giving those choice roles to human actors and CGI constructs, then chimpanzee actors are going to be out of work. And if you ban the private ownership of chimpanzees, then nobody will feed the chimps that they don't own anymore.
People who want to cut off funding to chimpanzees in every possible endeavor in the United States are not "friends of chimpanzees", no matter how humanely they couch their propaganda. They are not trying to "liberate" chimpanzees. They want to get rid of them.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Liberia. Because those particular chimpanzees from the New York Blood Center are in Liberia, I have been reviewing the history of Liberia, and the motives of the Americans who sponsored the Liberia project seem to me to be parallel to the motives of those people who are currently campaigning for chimpanzees to be allowed to exist only in Africa.
From the Wikipedia:
The Founding of Liberia in the early 1800s was motivated by the domestic politics of slavery and race in the United States as well as by U.S. foreign policy interests. In 1816, a group of white Americans founded the American Colonization Society to deal with the problem of the growing number of free Blacks in the United States by resettling them in Africa. The resulting state of Liberia would become the second (after Haiti) Black republic in the world at that time.[21]
Why was the growing number of free blacks in the United States in the early 1800s seen as a problem by the white men who founded the American Colonization Society? Wasn't it a good thing that more and more blacks in America were becoming free? There can be only one answer: the people interested in resettling free blacks in Africa were racist. Free blacks in America were those successful men and women who despite all the disadvantages they were under managed to assimilate into American society and become self-supporting -- some of them even wealthy. This normal process of upward mobility had been ongoing in the colonies even before the American Revolution.
Some of the men who joined the American Colonization Society were Northerners who resented free blacks, because they did as well as or better than free whites. Some of them were Southerners who resented the example free blacks set for their slaves. This was before the Civil War, and many of those people would end up on opposite sides of a very bitter struggle that could have been entirely prevented if the natural process of manumission had been allowed to take its course. Today, in the schools, we are being taught that if you are black, the only reason you are free is because of the Emancipation Proclamation. But many black Americans had free ancestors in the US long before the Civil War. They did not need anybody to set them free, because they had gained their freedom on their own.
So what does this have to do with chimpanzees? Today, in America, the people who work to prevent chimpanzees from earning a living come from two camps:
Those who hate chimpanzees and fear them as wild animals who kill humans indiscriminately and without regard to circumstance. They just want them far, far away.
Those who adore chimpanzees as wild savages, but think they should not be domesticated, educated or allowed to work.
The two camps may seem as different as the two groups that formed the American Colonization Society. But their motives are at base the same: they are for apartheid, and they want to destroy chimpanzees in America.
I am not writing this to complain about Liberia. Like Israel, Liberia was one of those 19th century experiments in founding new countries that have both positive and negative results. Nobody is suggesting that Liberia should be disbanded, any more than I am suggesting that all chimpanzees should live in the US. But I think by now everybody agrees that just because Liberia exists, that does not mean there should not be black Americans in America. Or that just because Israel exists, there should not be Jews in America.
I once knew a man from Liberia. I met him in college. We both liked poetry. But he liked the poetry of Marcus Aurelius, while I favored Kipling. So we each went our separate ways.
No two butterflies are the same. Remember that. It will stand you in good stead.
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