My Friend the Baboon and Why I Love Primates

Today,  I feel like talking about the primates I know and why I am so interested in them.

My first encounter with primates was at the zoo as a child.  My father would say: "Let's go see your cousins, the chimps!"  Some kids may have been offended at the implied comparison between themselves and hairy, not so attractive primates.  I, on the other hand, was delighted.

Then I grew up, went on my merry way to jobs around the globe that had nothing to do with primates. Until one day at the Los Angeles zoo... I was sketching near the gorilla enclosure, as I had done every week-end for the last month, when something unusual happened.  A female gorilla sat at the edge of the enclosure, looked at me straight in the eyes and smacked her lips a few times. She then extended her left hand in my direction, as if to offer one of the leaves she was eating and smacked her lips again.  She repeated her behavior the week-end after, so without thinking I smacked my lips back at her.  We went at it for a good 3 minutes before she had enough and moved further away. 

That experience gave me a glimpse into a world I would later come to discover more intimately.  

I read about Jane Goodall and others who dedicated their lives to understanding apes and monkeys, but nothing changed dramatically the way I perceived primates until I read "Next Of Kin - My Conversations with Chimpanzees" by Roger Fouts.  

Fouts writes: "When I looked into Washoe's eyes she caught my gaze and regarded me thoughtfully, just like my own son did.  There was a person inside that ape "costume".  And in those moments of steady eye contact I knew that Washoe was a child, no matter what she looked like and no matter what acrobatics she performed in the top of a tree."

This is exactly the feeling I had when the gorilla "spoke" to me at the zoo.  There was someone in there.  I felt an urgent need to get involved.  I wanted to save the apes, raise awareness about their plight, the fact that most are on the brink of extinction.  So, when I found out there was an exotic animal shelter in my hometown where I could volunteer and do something positive for apes and monkeys, I enrolled. 

I have been volunteering for over two years now and have made many non-human primate friends.  They all have a different personality. They have their preferences for food, for their peers and for humans.  Their emotional lives are rich and complicated.

One of my best friends is a female olive baboon named Lucy.  She lip-smacks at me very hard as soon as I arrive and seems happy to see me.  We look at each other, I give her treats and we lip-smack some more.  I clean her cage and we lip-smack again.  Our relationship is simple but important to me.

I suspect it is important to her too because on a couple of occasions, she did not hesitate to show me how disappointed she was in me.  The two or three times I had to go away for a couple of weeks, she punished me when I returned by depriving me of her friendly lip-smacking.  She briefly acknowledged my presence by throwing a cold glance at me and resolutely moved away from me.  The first time it happened, I was taken aback.  I did not know what was going on.  I talked to her, offered her treats, which she refused before staring into emptiness away from me.  She clearly looked peeved.  Finally, towards the end of my shift, she came, took a treat and gave me a pitiful lip-smack, as if to say: "Alright, I forgive you this time, but don't do it again."

I now know what to expect, but I must say it does feel pretty weird to be scolded by a monkey.