The Relationship Between Dogs and Chimpanzees

Yesterday, it was rather warm out. Bow went and swung on his swing for a while. Then, Leo engaged his attention. They played for a while, and after that, Bow decided to go inside.

I like dogs. I like chimpanzees. And I like watching dogs and chimpanzees play together. Maybe that is why two of my Facebook friends quite independently of each other shared with me a photo article about a baby chimpanzee whose mother died and who was then adopted by a dog. The chimpanzee had a very white face, not like Bow's combination of chocolate and cream, and the dog in the picture had a collar and some puppies of her own. There were pictures of all the puppies and the baby chimp eating out of dog bowls together.

This article was from ViralNova in one case, and from a different site in another, but it was not really clear whose dog or chimp it was, who took the pictures or who wrote the article.

Don't get me wrong. I realize that in many cases dogs do rescue human babies who have been abandoned and if left to their own devices, dogs can nurture a human infant. I have written about this before, here:

http://aya-katz.hubpages.com/hub/DogsWhoRescueAbandonedBabies

One reason to allow stray dogs to continue to roam free is that those babies who were rescued by stray dogs could not have been rescued if not for the dogs' freedom and self-sufficiency. A world without stray dogs is a world in which abandoned babies have less of a chance at rescue.

But what bothers me in the case of the dog who "adopted" a chimpanzee baby in those pictures is that the dog is obviously a pet. She eats out of a dog dish. Someone else feeds her. Someone who is not self-sufficient can't adopt someone else. Both the dog and her puppies as well as the chimp must belong to some human. That's what it looks like.

Since chimpanzees are 97% identical in DNA to humans, it seems odd that the human who owned the dog  did not adopt the chimpanzee after its mother died, leaving the chimpanzee's care to the dog. But then again, did that dog really put a diaper on the chimp baby all by herself? Something in this picture does not compute.

I think it is great when a wolf or an independent dog rescues and adopts a human or a chimpanzee infant. That is a very good thing. But for a human to treat a chimpanzee like a dog, making him eat out of a dog bowl on the floor, when the chimp has hands to hold a spoon and sees the other primates in the household all eating at the table with silverware, does not seem equally kind to me.

What do you think?

He had to go work

Over the weekend we had guests, friends of mine from grad school. It was really nice to see them, and we had a lot to talk about. Their daughter and Sword really hit it off, too. We wanted them to stay longer, but the husband had to travel to Mexico to do some fieldwork, so the visit had to be cut short.

Bow kept insisting that I not allow them to leave. "Don't let them go, Mommy," he kept spelling. When I explained about the trip to Mexico, he kept wanting to know why. "He has to go work." "But why?" "There's a language that is about to die out, and he has to write a dictionary." No matter how many explanations I gave, Bow didn't understand, and he thought I should stop them from leaving. "Mommy, why does he have to go?" "There are people who have a language, but it isn't written, so he has to write them a dictionary. Do you understand?"

Bow spelled: "Yes." But two minutes later he was asking me the same question, and he kept asking it after they left. That was yesterday. But Bow is a realist, and he accepts the inevitable, even if he doesn't understand.

This morning, before breakfast, Bow took my hand and spelled: "The guy had to go to Mexico to work."

"Yes," I answered. "That's right."