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.
Nile the cat is missing. He has been gone for over three days. Here is the last picture I took of him.
I believe I saw him on the 19th during the day, but when I went to the barn to feed him, he was nowhere in sight. Usually, he accompanies me from somewhere close to the house to where I insist on feeding him, in the barn, far away from where we live.
But on the way to feed Nile, I saw rabbits. They bounded away as I walked by. I had not seen rabbits in months, so somehow this betokened the cat's absence from the property.
I sent my daughter out to look for him and to call him the following evening, when he had been missing for a day. He did not show up.
The day after that, Cowboy the neighbor dog suddenly joined me on my walk, which is something he had not done in a while. For a moment, I asked myself whether Cowboy could have had anything to do with Nile's disappearance, but I decided that it was probably the other way around. Now that Nile was no longer around, Cowboy felt free to come visit again. Nile used to hiss at Cowboy.
Yesterday, when I went out for a walk, I saw a long, black rat snake on its way to my door.
The snake's head was very close to the front step, but its tail was curled all the way around the corner of the house.
They say that when the cat's away, the mice will play. Well, I have not seen any mice, but perhaps they are out playing. This seems to be what the black rat snake is thinking.
When I returned from my walk, I thought for a moment that the black rat snake must have gone away, until I saw it draped on the stone wall by the entrance.
I do not suspect the black rat snake of killing Nile the cat. Nile was much too big for him. But I do think the snake is taking advantage of the cat's absence to fill in the same ecological niche.
The deer, on the other hand, seem more cautious today. They had grazed in the front yard, completely unafraid of the cat. But today, they peered at me from the pasture, and then they sneaked into the part of the yard where I cannot see them through the window. When they saw they had been spotted after all, they turned tail and ran.
Bow has not offered any observations on the absence of Nile the cat. He was never too fond of him.
We had a plan as to where Nile would live in November, once it got too cold to stay out. This plan would have also involved getting him fixed. Perhaps he got wind of our plan and made different plans of his own. Wherever he is, I hope he is happy and well.
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.
I may have mentioned once or twice that Bow lies to me. What I haven't talked about as much are the partial lies, the half truths and those cryptic answers that just make me feel a little uneasy, knowing that something is up, but not knowing what exactly that is.
This morning there was some commotion outside. Bow suggested that I go out and check "You want me to go outside?" I asked him.
"תנסי לצאת" he qualified it. "Try to go outside." What does that mean? Why did he say "try"? Was he expecting that someone would stop me from going? Or that it would not be easy to leave? Or that unless I tried to go, I would never find out what might happen next? Did he have some trick up his sleeve?
So I went outside, hoping to see deer again, but it was only the neighbors' cattle grazing close to the fence line.
When I got back, it turned out that Bow had used the potty in my absence. He did so correctly, but since I was not there to help him wipe, it necessitated a little more cleanup. So in hindsight, I think Bow was signalling that it was okay for me to go, he would still be good, but things would not go as smoothly as I envisioned. And all that meaning was jammed into that one word "try".
Everybody is so interested in learning to communicate with animals, and to read their signals. There is this feeling that if only we understood each other better, something miraculous might happen. But very few take into account that since we cannot rely on anything a human being says to us, then we can't really expect "God's Truth" from other animals, either.
Take those deer on my land. They are sometimes seen in the woods.
I see the deer. The deer sees me. It stoops down to make sure I am really there, and then, absolutely certain of it, it leaves. And sometimes there is a whole group of them. They see me. I see them, somebody snorts, and they all turn around, flash their white tails at me and leave.
So the snorting is a signal that means "Hey, let's get out of here, we've been spotted!" -- right? Well, that was my naive interpretation of the signal, until I looked it up. It turns out that some experts believe the snort is not intended for the other deer at all. The snort could be an anti-predator signal, intended to tell me not to follow!
Snorting did not appear directed at conspecifics, and comparative data suggest that it signals that the predator has been detected. In contrast, foot-stamping was effective in alerting other deer to the observer's presence. Deer may have bounded to clear obstacles along their flight path. These preliminary data indicate that several aspects of anti-predator behavior in white-tailed deer may be pursuit-deterrent signals, and they therefore highlight the necessity of observing natural predators' reactions to signals given by deer in future studies. (Caro, Lombardo, Goldizen and Kelly, Tail-Flagging and Other Anti-Predator Signals in white-tailed Deer.)
It is good to remember that not everything other animals do is directed at each other. Some of it may actually be directed at us. As such, we may be mistaking their attempt to speak our language for the whole sum total of theirs, which may be much more subtle and advanced and spoken in a pitch and at a rate that is too high for us to even take cognizance of.
I believe that some ethologists studying chimpanzees in the wild may have mistaken the chimps' cries intended for non-chimps to overhear as the sum total of all chimpanzee communication. It is for this reason that they believe chimpanzee vocalizations are extremely limited and do not carry much information.
But what sort of information would you direct at a predator, an outsider or an enemy, anyway? Wouldn't your chief purpose be to deceive him? And if you always lied, then what kind of deception would that be? How could that possibly work?
Beyond the empirical significance of our results, we have
demonstrated an alternative evolutionary explanation for (partially)
honest communication in situations of conflict of interest,
which can range from parent–offspring interactions to mating
advertisement to predator–prey interactions. Although this
equilibrium had been previously observed [5,20], it was not
known if this phenomena was an artefact of the particular
games or if it represented a general phenomenon common to
many different signalling interactions. In this paper, we show
that this type of signalling is at least as evolutionarily plausible
as that offered by the traditional costly signalling models and
may fit better with the observed data on signal costs. In this
respect, it may represent a superior theory to traditional
handicap theory.
This is a novel concept for me, although in hindsight it sounds almost too simple. Lying and deception continue to pay off, but only if they are partial. Because no information could be conveyed unless you were honest at least part of the time, the optimal amount of deception would have to be only partial. This means that even the deer tell their predators the truth part of the time. Good to know!
It is definitely, unmistakably fall now. The maple leaves are turning the most brilliant colors.
Some trees are supposed to give fruit in the fall.
The persimmon with its orange baubles looks as if it is decorated for Halloween.
But for others, the rare fruit they are sprouting now is unseasonable and slightly disturbing, like the odd, last child of an overly fertile woman long past her prime.
Here is the last of the blackberries, ripening when the rest of the bush has gone dormant.
Here is the first cherry, nursing a single green fruit and willing it to ripen. Who is this cherry for? Who will get to eat it?
Right beside the first cherry tree, is the second cherry tree, with its seemingly pregnant open bloom.
Will this blossom come to fruition as well? And if so, what will become of the fruit?
There is one branch of the service berry by the fence line that still bears blossoms.
Will there be service berries for the deer to eat in November?
The deer are still coming by in the evening in the front yard, though they do seem a little more shy now.
They come with the setting sun, and they leave when they see me.
I read somewhere that the Japanese fry maple leaves and then eat them, and I wondered what Bow would do, if I offered him an assortment of leaves.
So this morning I went out to gather leaves in a Wal*Mart bag, and I brought them in to the pen for Bow to inspect.
Bow was not impressed. He took the first leaf out of the bag, turned it over then handed both the leaf and the bag back to me.
I thought that perhaps if I laid them out on the floor, so he could see how different and varied they were, I could get him more interested in the leaves.
Bow was very patient with me. He lay down on the floor quietly while I arranged the leaves to my satisfaction.
Then, when he could tell I was done, he got up, picked up every leaf from the floor, picked up the bag and handed them all back to me, with an unmistakable gesture that said: Get them out of here. After all, they were just dead leaves!
When I took the leaves away, Bow asked to go outside.
Today, my Facebook feed reminded me of a faded memory: Sword and Bow bouncing up and down, carefree on the trampoline.
Does Bow still jump up and down on the trampoline in the backyard, today? No, he doesn't. But neither does Sword. There is a time for all things and for all things a season. The value of the memory does not diminish, even though it is a thing of the past.
Today, the trampoline is a bit rundown, and the fence has a grey look to it, and is not yellow and fresh as when it was first put up. Sword and Bow are teenagers. They have other interests besides jumping up and down together on the trampoline. But isn't it great that they could, when the time was right?
Although I was never able to see more than about four deer at a time, it was mainly due to my limited vantage point, standing in the doorway.
In the evening, when the light was fading, I saw the troop again. It is a whole herd of deer that are grazing on my land, and who choose my front yard in particular as a place to congregate.
Can you see Nile the cat watching the deer?
The deer were trying to be quiet, so that I would not notice them. I was trying to be quiet so the deer would not notice me. But Nile the cat was completely uninhibited. He was meowing loudly, startling us all.
Why are there so many deer in my front yard all of a sudden? "Did you put a salt lick out for them?" a friend asked. No, I have done nothing to make this spot attractive.
I am beginning to suspect that it's not what I've done, but what I haven't done. I haven't tried to shoot them. It's deer season now, and they somehow have figured out that my property is a safe zone. So while there is nothing here to attract them, they see it as a temporary sanctuary.
Yes, sanctuary. Not like a chimpanzee sanctuary, to which the chimpanzees are forced to go and from which they are never allowed to depart. But a real sanctuary, to which the deer go of their own free will when they choose to, and depart when they feel safe going elsewhere.
The difference between a sanctuary and a concentration camp is that you are free to come and free to go.
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