Kindred Beings by Sheri Speede

Author:Sheri Speede
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Ten

Who’s the Boss?

Soon after their arrival Jacky and Pepe started fighting for dominance, and it continued throughout the months before Dorothy and Nama arrived. Becky enjoyed loving relationships with both males, and she was neutral in their extended contest. Because she and Pepe had grown up together since they were babies, they had a brother/sister relationship that was not overtly sexual. Jacky chose masturbation over copulation; for decades he had known nothing else. Nonetheless, the fights between the males were more frequent when Becky had her genital swelling—a descriptive term for the monthly vulvar engorgement that occurs in female chimpanzees before and during ovulation.

The violence upset Becky terribly, and she tried her best to keep the peace and to break up fights when they happened. When she sensed that Jacky or Pepe was in a menacing mood, she tried to calm them with grooming or distract them with her sexuality if she was in swelling or position her body between theirs. She screamed and slapped and tried to intervene during the heat of their battles, but she did not seem to favor one over the other. She spent time engaging socially—grooming and hugging—with both of them. I knew from reading that group support can be very important in establishing and maintaining the dominance hierarchy among chimpanzees, but in the circumstances I had read about, an established dominant male was forced to fend off challengers. The length of a male’s reign and the success or failure of his challengers was highly influenced by who was on their sides. Between Jacky and Pepe nothing was established, neither had acknowledged the dominance of the other, and the one neutral female in the small social group was not hastening an outcome. I briefly considered keeping them apart until we had a larger community of chimpanzees. I certainly would have done that if it had seemed that one needed protection from the other, but when Pepe and Jacky fought, they were both willing combatants. Neither was submitting to the other, which is all it would have taken to stop the fighting, and I kept thinking they would sort it out sooner or later. After each fight they reached a temporary truce, which usually started with Pepe making a tentative approach to groom Jacky, but sometimes it was the other way around. According to the caregivers, Pepe started more of the fights than Jacky did. In times of peace, they engaged in mutual grooming sessions and even hugged when they were excited about a favorite food or frightened by an unusual occurrence, like an airplane overhead. Sometimes weeks could pass without bloodshed, but when tension became too thick, it was vented through loud and frightening fights that served to temporarily restore calm.

The battles exacted a toll on both of them, but their wounds were mild compared to what I would see in some chimpanzees in years to come. I cleaned gaping bite wounds on Pepe’s back and arms, but nothing severe on his face. At first, Jacky didn’t seek my attention for his wounds the way Pepe did.

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