Through a Window (32 page)

Soon after that I returned to Gombe to find Mel still alive, and
still with Spindle. Looking at the little orphan, with his pot belly, his skinny arms and legs, his dull, sparse hair, I marvelled at the gallant fighting spirit that had enabled him, against all odds, to cling to life. I marvelled, too, at the concern and affection shown by his caretaker. Spindle was in a sense an orphan himself, as Sprout had died during the same epidemic that had claimed Miff and so many others. Spindle, of course, was well able to care for himself: but was it, perhaps, his sense of loss, a feeling of loneliness, that had led to his unlikely liaison with an unrelated motherless infant? Whatever the reason, Spindle was a wonderful caretaker. He shared his night nest with Mel, and he shared his food. He did his best to protect the infant, hurrying to retrieve him when the big males became socially aroused. When Mel whimpered during travel, Spindle waited and allowed him to clamber onto his back or even, if it was raining and cold, to cling on in the ventral position. In fact he carried him so often that, where Mel gripped Spindle with his feet, the hair became quite worn away and Spindle had two large, white hairless patches, one on each loin!

The main problem that Mel had to cope with, in addition to the loss of his mother, his heavy parasite load and general malaise, was the fact that Spindle was travelling with the adult males and, at that time of year, they were moving long distances each day, searching for fallen
mbula
fruits. They often went out to the northern periphery of their range during these feeding excursions, and several times, after hearing calls made by males of the powerful Mitumba community, they travelled silently, and very fast, back towards the centre of their home range. It was tough for little Mel, because Spindle, patient as he was, did not always wait for his small charge. Mel had to cover a great deal of ground on his own.

Most of the other chimps, particularly the adult males, were amazingly gentle and tolerant in their interactions with the orphan. He was able to approach any one of them, without fear,
to beg for food—even pushing in to take meat after a kill when tension runs high among competing individuals. At most, Mel's presumption elicited a mild threat—which invariably caused
him
to throw a tantrum! And often he was successful in his attempts to get a share.

Towards the end of July, Spindle and Mel became separated. Mel was very distressed. For a few days he followed one or other of the adult males, even, during sudden excitement, jumping onto their backs. And then he found a temporary substitute for Spindle. Incredibly, it was Pax who took him on.

It was five years after Passion's death, and Pax was ten years old, but, like almost all the orphans that survive the loss of their mothers, very tiny for his age. He was still inseparable from Prof, the bond between them as strong as ever. I shall never forget that summer, and the days I spent with the two brothers and little Mel. Prof almost always led travel while Pax, with Mel clinging tightly to his back, stumped behind his brother along the forest trails and over the streams. He even carried his charge part way up some of the bigger trees. It was not long before Pax developed those badges of service—two white hairless patches, one on each loin! Like Spindle, Pax shared his nest and his food with Mel. And Prof sometimes shared
his
food with both of them! Although it seemed that these three had become very close, after a few weeks Mel was reunited with Spindle and the two remained inseparable for several more months.

A year after losing his mother Mel seemed a little healthier: his arms and legs were not quite so stick-like, his belly not quite so rotund, and his hair was thicker and glossier. He was also less depressed, less withdrawn, and he occasionally joined another youngster for a gentle game. Even though his improved health was due in part to the fact that we managed to give him some medication for his parasites, there is little doubt that Mel survived because of the care he received from Spindle. By the time he was four years old, however, Mel began to spend less time
with his benefactor, and gradually, during the following year, the bond between them lessened.

This was when Mel began to travel, more and more often, with Gigi. And with them, almost always, was Darbee, whose mother, Little Bee, had died in the same epidemic that had claimed Miff. Darbee has an elder brother, and I had expected him to care for her, but although she had spent much time with him during the weeks immediately following the death of their mother, the two never became really close. Instead, Darbee formed temporary attachments to two adolescents, one male and one female, before taking up with Gigi. As time went on, it became commonplace to see Gigi, Darbee and Mel together, the large, childless female in the lead, the two small motherless infants following behind.

Gigi's relationship with these orphans is of a different nature from those that she forged with younger infants in the past. In those cases it was Gigi who desired the association: she had to work not only to attract the infants themselves, but also to curry favour, to some extent, with their mothers. Now, however, it is Mel and Darbee who have chosen to attach themselves to Gigi. Gigi shows them little overt affection, and their friendly interactions are, for the most part, confined to occasional grooming. But she provides the support they need in an often unfriendly world. Woe betide any boisterous juvenile or adolescent whose rough behaviour causes one of her small wards to scream—they have Gigi to contend with. When the orphans are with her they can, to some extent, relax, knowing that she will make all decisions regarding travel routes, sleeping places, and so on. But when Gigi is pink and travelling with the big males, Mel and Darbee do not always follow her, preferring to stay on their own, away from the excitement and commotion of the larger groups.

These two infants have survived, but the psychological scars of their ordeal will never leave them. You can tell when you look into their eyes—they lack the sparkle and eager curiosity of normal youngsters of their age. In many ways they behave
like adults: their movements are deliberate, and they spend much time resting and grooming themselves. They seldom play, and when they do it is not the exuberant and boisterous play normal for their age but quiet and sedate, and they are quick to fancy hurt when none was meant. How will they behave as adults, they and the others who have suffered similar traumas in their early years? We can only find the answers by waiting, patiently waiting and watching and recording. When I first arrived at Gombe, field studies that lasted as long as one year were almost unheard of. Louis Leakey predicted it would take ten years to begin to understand the chimpanzees. How delighted he would be to see the research that grew from his wisdom moving into its fourth decade.

L
OUIS LEAKEY
sent me to Gombe in the hope that a better understanding of the behaviour of our closest relatives would provide a new window onto our own past. He had amassed a wealth of evidence that enabled him to reconstruct the physical characteristics of early humans in Africa, and he could speculate on the use of the various tools and other artifacts found at their living floors. But behaviour does not fossilize. His curiosity about the great apes was due to his conviction that behaviour common to modern man and modern chimpanzee was probably present in our common ancestor and, therefore, in early man himself. Louis was way ahead of most of his contemporaries in his thinking, and today his approach seems even more worthwhile in view of the surprising discovery that, as mentioned, human DNA differs from chimpanzee DNA by only just over one per cent.

There are many similarities in chimpanzee and human behaviour—the affectionate, supportive and enduring bonds between family members, the long period of childhood dependency, the importance of learning, non-verbal communication patterns, tool-using and tool-making, cooperation in hunting, sophisticated social manipulations, aggressive territoriality, and a variety of helping behaviours, to name but a few. Similarities in the structure of the brain and central nervous system have led to the
emergence of similar intellectual abilities, sensibilities and emotions in our two species. That this information concerning the natural history of chimpanzees has been helpful to those studying early man is demonstrated, again and again, by the frequency with which anthropological textbooks refer to the behaviour of the Gombe chimpanzees. Of course, theories regarding the behaviour of early man can never be anything but speculative—we have no time-machine, we cannot project ourselves back to the dawn of our species to watch the behaviour and follow the development of our forebears: if we seek to understand these things a little we must do the best we can with the flimsy evidence available. So far as I am concerned, the concept of early humans poking for insects with twigs and wiping themselves with leaves seems entirely sensible. The thought of those ancestors greeting and reassuring one another with kisses or embraces, cooperating in protecting their territory or in hunting, and sharing food with each other, is appealing. The idea of close affectionate ties within the Stone Age family, of brothers helping one another, of teenage sons hastening to the protection of their old mothers, and of teenage daughters minding the babies, for me brings the fossilized relics of their physical selves dramatically to life.

But the study at Gombe has done far more than provide material upon which to base our speculations of prehistoric human life. The opening of this window onto the way of life of our closest living relatives gives us a better understanding not only of the chimpanzee's place in nature, but also of
man's
place in nature. Knowing that chimpanzees possess cognitive abilities once thought unique to humans, knowing that they (along with other "dumb" animals) can reason, feel emotions and pain and fear, we are humbled. We are not, as once we believed, separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by an unbridgeable chasm. Nevertheless, we must not forget, not for an instant, that even if we do not differ from the apes in kind, but only in degree, that degree is still overwhelmingly large. An understanding of chimpanzee behaviour helps to highlight certain aspects of human behaviour that
are
unique and that
do
differentiate us from the other living primates. Above all, we have developed intellectual abilities which dwarf those of even the most gifted chimpanzees. It was because the gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, was so extraordinarily large, that palaeontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would bridge this human/non-human gap. In fact, this "missing link" is comprised of a series of vanished brains, each more complex than the one before: brains that are for ever lost to science save for a few faint imprints on fossil craniums; brains that held, in their increasingly intricate convolutions, the dramatic serial story of developing intellect that has led to modern man.

Of all the characteristics that differentiate humans from their non-human cousins, the ability to communicate through the use of a sophisticated spoken language is, I believe, the most significant. Once our ancestors had acquired that powerful tool they could discuss events that had happened in the past and make complex contingency plans for both the near and the distant future. They could teach their children by explaining things without the need to demonstrate. Words gave substance to thoughts and ideas that, unexpressed, might have remained, for ever, vague and without practical value. The interaction of mind with mind broadened ideas and sharpened concepts. Sometimes, when watching the chimpanzees, I have felt that, because they have no human-like language, they are trapped within themselves. Their calls, postures and gestures, together, add up to a rich repertoire, a complex and sophisticated method of communication. But it is nonverbal. How much more they might accomplish if only they could
talk
to each other. It is true that they can be
taught
to use the signs or symbols of a human-type language. And they have cognitive skills to combine these signs into meaningful sentences. Mentally, at least, it would seem that chimpanzees stand at
the threshold of language acquisition. But those forces that were at work when humans began to speak have obviously played no role in shaping chimpanzee intellect in this direction.

Chimpanzees also stand at the threshold of another uniquely human behaviour—war. Human warfare, defined as
organized armed conflict between groups,
has, over the ages, had a profound influence on our history. Wherever there are humans they have, at one time or another, waged some sort of war. Thus it seems most likely that primitive forms of warfare were present in our earliest ancestors, and that conflict of this sort played a role in human evolution. War, it has been suggested, may have put considerable selective pressure on the development of intelligence and of increasingly sophisticated cooperation. The process would have escalated—for the greater the intelligence, cooperation and courage of one group, the greater the challenge to its enemies. Darwin was among the first to suggest that warfare may have exerted a powerful influence on the development of the human brain. Others have postulated that warfare may have been responsible for the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the great apes: hominid groups with inferior brains could not win wars and were exterminated.

Thus it is fascinating as well as shocking to learn that chimpanzees show hostile, aggressive territorial behaviour that is not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare. Some tribes, for example, carry out raids during which "they stalk or creep up to the enemy, using tactics reminiscent of hunting"—thus writes Renke Eibl-Eibesfeldt, an ethologist who has studied aggression in peoples around the world. Long before sophisticated warfare evolved in our own species, prehuman ancestors must have shown preadaptations similar—or identical—to those shown by the chimpanzees today, such as cooperative group living, cooperative territoriality, cooperative hunting skills, and weapon use. Another necessary preadaptation would have been an inherent
fear or hatred of strangers, sometimes expressed by aggressive attacks. But attacking adult individuals of the same species is always a dangerous business and, in human societies, in historical times, it has been necessary to train warriors by cultural means such as glorifying their role, condemning cowardice, offering high rewards for bravery and skill on the battle field, and emphasizing the worthiness of practising "manly" sports during childhood. Chimpanzees, however, particularly young adult males, clearly find inter-group conflict attractive, despite the danger. If young male prehumans also found excitement in encounters of this sort, this would have provided a firm biological basis for the glorification of warriors and warfare.