Chimps: Nawapenda

There have been quite a few changes at Ol Pej since I left last year, some at chimps and some at research.  We have a new cook at research, Eric, who makes us some pretty amazing meals.  He really loves through food evidently, and is definitely going to cut into the research-weight-loss-plan that we all tend to get on out here.  There have also been mosquito nets mounted above our beds, which, if you had asked me a year ago, I would have said were completely unnecessary: I wasn’t bitten more than ten times in three months.  This year, however, there seems to be an absolute plague of the biggest mosquitoes I’ve ever seen in my life, I’m constantly smashing them as they rest on the walls in the mornings, and I’m really glad we have nets.  Gorbachev, the blind elephant, is also back to research.  He was relocated last year (I wrote about that here) to a fenced area in the northern part of the conservancy, as he was becoming incredibly destructive around the research center, staff camp, and Ol Pejeta house.  He seems to have broken out once more, despite having his tusks cut down, and is now back to his old habits of wandering around control and visiting us.  I’ve encountered him several times on foot, and after the initial heart-attack of seeing a huge bull elephant and wondering where you’re going to run to if he charges, it’s pretty cool to get to see him so up close and personal as he goes about his daily business.

The research center skulls, an Oryx, Steenbok, and Impala, with Magic Mike, the unicorn beanie baby given to me by Madelynn and Alana (my riding trainer).  Expect to see Magic Mike around, as I plan to take pictures with him all over the place.

At chimps, the new house for the young chimps is completely finished and it is beautiful.  There are twelve spacious rooms for the chimps to sleep in at night, a full bathroom, a clinic, and hopefully sometime in the future: a lab space!  Currently there’s no electricity to the house though, so we can’t move the lab in there just yet, but it will be wonderful when we can.  Also, my old nemesis, the weir! the weir! aka the river crossing, is no longer something I have to face daily.  Since January the river has been much too high for even the experienced-stepping-stone-jumping keepers, and one of the stepping stones got washed away, to boot.  So now there's a gap that's basically unjumpable, and too much water flowing for it to be safe to try to jump or wade across.  This is actually somewhat annoying, because I wanted to get a picture of me conquering the river crossing, and I also now need to drive all the way around to the bridge when I want to get data on the young chimps by the river.  I can't hate that I have no opportunity to crash to my death at the bottom of those rocks any longer though...

My old nemesis, the weir.

Many of the chimps have changed too, especially the young ones.  There’s Angela, of course, who is about twice as big as she was last year, though still quite small.  Ajabu has started walking everywhere on her own, which is a huge change from last year when she would primarily ride on Cheetah, Victoria, or Julia’s backs, and only hitches a ride when she is feeling excessively lazy.  Vicki has also grown quite a bit, and is now almost the same size as Julia, one of her age-mates.  This is only remarkable because Vicki has always been a fairly small chimp – her growth was stunted by the bullets that were lodged in her skull when she was brought to Sweetwaters, and the several operations she had to have to remove them all (poor baby). 

Vicki has gotten quite smart in the last year though.  She has always been a very submissive chimp, willing to give up her food to pretty much anyone.  Even Ajabu can take bananas from her in the night-house and often the guys have to peel bananas for Victoria and stuff them directly into her mouth to make sure she gets her fair share (or keep her separated during feeding time, which is only sometimes feasible as she likes to be with Alley, her foster-mother).  Last year she would often have large portions of her lunch stolen by Oscar, the alpha.  Vicki is so submissive that she wouldn’t even take food if Oscar was looking at her, and if he so much as stepped towards her she would run off screaming.  Just last week though, I saw Oscar do exactly this when Vicki was thrown her bananas at lunch: he stood up and took a swaggering step towards her.  Vicki glanced at him and didn’t move, so Oscar moved towards her a bit more.  She ran off then, but as she was running she pulled one banana off of the bunch of four that she was holding and placed it behind her, right in Oscar’s path.  Oscar was distracted by the banana that Victoria left on the ground, and she managed to keep the rest of her lunch.  I was very proud.

Oscar snuggling with Angela.  The biggest chimp and the smallest!  It's unlikely that Oscar is Angie's dad, since they look nothing alike, but he does love to cuddle her and he's always so gentle.

Another big change is Niyonkuru, the alpha of the young chimps group.  Last year, Niyon was a very aggressive and dominant chimp: he would display immediately after coming out of the night house, often throwing rocks, sticks, or dirt around and charging everybody out of his way.  All of the female chimps, and most of the males, would be politely subordinate to him at all times, almost as if to circumvent his unpredictable temper.  This year, Niyon seems to have settled down a bit and is more relaxed over all.  Possibly this is because he is getting older, he is at least 20, and the prime age for chimps is 15-20 or so.  Though they can live much longer, especially in captivity, age is tough on chimps: they can accrue a lot of injuries, especially males who have been in a lot of fights, their teeth start to fall out from the lack of consistent brushing and flossing, and all of the rough-and-tumble play (falls from trees, wrestling, fights with baboons) can really catch up with them.  Additionally, Niyon has started to be challenged by some of the younger males.  Cumbo and William are really becoming fond of the idea that they might not have to be subordinate to him forever, and have been displaying and challenging Niyon more often.  Just a few days ago I heard two chimps screaming off in the bush, and shortly afterwards Niyon and Akela came hustling out of there – not quite running but definitely not walking – screaming, grimacing, and looking behind them.  Following was a very piloerect Cumbo who was swaggering in a half-display and walking them up the fenceline.  Interestingly, Cumbo was also grimacing and screaming/whimpering a bit, which made me think that he wasn’t feeling quite as brave as he was trying to let on.

Chimps have a much harder time controlling their vocalizations than humans do, and many of the vocalizations they make are completely involuntary.  A good example of this are food grunts – chimps seem physically unable to control their appreciation of good food, and will happily grunt and event hoot sometimes when they are eating.  Jane Goodall wrote about this in “In the Shadow of Man,” when one of the younger males at her field site (I think Figan maybe?) would cover his mouth to muffle his excited grunts and hoots when he was given extra bananas after the dominant males left the provisioning area.  The first few times they tried to give him extra, his vocalizations called the dominant males back and his new bananas were swiftly confiscated, but he was unable to completely control his excitement and had to find another way to make himself be quieter, so he physically limited his noise production with his hands.

Unrelated to chimps: Sunrise in the marsh

I am not sure whether Niyon is mellowing out because he is being challenged more often – you would think that an increase in challenges would increase his aggression – or if he is being challenged more because he has mellowed.  Either way, it will make for an interesting five months of data collection if an alpha turnover really is to happen, and I’m excited to watch it.

The lion-tracking that I mentioned last week was pretty fun, if not particularly fruitful.  I followed in Elsa (Kim’s car) with Youngin and one of the current volunteers while Duma took the Oxford students (did I mention that there are four Oxford MBAs here right now doing a project on property size, land use, and productivity right now? They will be here until the end of August, and next week we’re going to the Mara to see the wildebeest migration!) in an Ol Pejeta truck.  We tracked for about two hours, driving all over the East side, before we picked up a signal close to Sweetwaters Tented Camp.  We then moved about fifty meters back into the bush from the road, driving very slowly around all the Euclea and carefully keeping an eye out for suspicious grass (an indication that there might be an aardvark hole there), and finally saw them: a male and a female quietly napping in a small clearing.  They both looked up when we arrived, but neither moved, and the male especially was keen to resume his napping.  Duma suggested that they were probably alone together because the female was fertile and they were “courting.”  The female did move over to the male a few times and nuzzle him, but he wasn’t buying what she was selling, so eventually she just moved off towards the road, probably to start hunting for the evening.  Since I was driving I really didn’t get any good pictures, but I did see six lions a few days later, and got much better pictures then.

A young male lion I found at the quarry

Next up, poop club! I didn’t mention it at all here, but I’ve been collecting fecal samples for my project and that’s been making me keep looong hours.  It’s a whole blog entry of its own though, so get excited!