Tragedy in Three Acts

Act I: Deforestation

While Katie and I were watching group Odum earlier this week, we heard loud chainsaw noises coming from the other end of Odum’s home range. Naturally, we went to that area of the forest to investigate, and what we found was devastating. An entire section of Odum’s home range (important food trees and sleep trees) was being cut down! Enormously high, beautiful, old trees were tumbling to the ground and within just a few hours there was nothing left except lumber and scattered wilting leaves... It must have taken those trees many years to grown so majestic. Just like that, there was nothing. You see, this section of trees was not technically part of the main forest. There was a small unpaved road that separated the main forest from these trees, and group Odum did not have trouble crossing from the forest to this smaller fragment to spend days feeding or nights sleeping there. Apparently, the chief of Boabeng and the chairman of the tourism committee promoted this act of deforestation despite them knowing that several groups of monkeys, including one of my study groups, live there. This was done on the basis that the small forest fragment was on private land and it now needed to be used for other purposes... to build a junior high school beside the existing elementary school. Now hold on a minute! Before you say “well people are important too and a school is certainly something that could be worth cutting down trees for”, let me just say a few things. First, there is a lot of free space to build a junior high all around the main part of the school where the elementary grades already exist, and around where the forest fragment was. Second, these people already have several schools for elementary, junior high, and high school students. I’m not sure why they needed another one... kids don’t learn much anyways and they struggle to learn basic English (most don’t speak a word of it). The level of education here is really what they need to spend money on, not on erecting new buildings where students can get more of a bad education. Third, this devastating act of deforestation actually stems from a never-ending rivalry between the villages of Boabeng and Fiema, which I won’t bore you with but which basically causes each of these villages to want to cut down one another’s trees for land development. Good luck to them! If they keep this up, soon they will have no more trees, no more monkeys, no more tourism, and no more money at all to construct schools and other buildings. I know I am speaking entirely from a western viewpoint... I mean, what do I really know about Ghanaian life and about what people really need here? I’m just a spoiled Romanian-born Canadian who knows nothing about lacking basic needs, like many people do here. However, what they are doing is not only very sad for the monkeys, but it bad business sense. People here rely on tourism from the monkeys, but they lack the common sense to think towards the future well being of their main resource. They honestly think that cutting down trees will not affect the colobus or monas at all. “There are plenty of trees” they say... “They will just move to the other ones to feed and sleep”. Local people don’t realize that, having lost places to eat, Odum will soon begin moving into the home ranges of other groups, males will fight, and monkeys may die.

The next day, it broke my heart watching the confusion on the faces of the Odum colobus monkeys as they stood in their former forest fragment where they expected to find food and shelter, only to find a catastrophe; a tree massacre...


Act II: Infanticide gets Obama

Since late May, when I began observing the new-born white infants of groups B2 and Odum, I have seen some crazy shit (pardon my French but I feel that this phrase applies perfectly in this case). The most surprising of all the things I have observed, have to do with the high amounts of negative and aggressive infant handling that I have seen females and males perform. Biting, cuffing, nipping, hitting, pushing, grabbing and pulling too hard, kicking etc., and these little guys have endured all, and preserved. I’ve watched my study infants daily over the past few months. From a distance, I have seen them turn from white, to grey, to almost black and white, I have watched them learn how – and with whom – it is appropriate to interact and I have noticed them develop particular personalities and behavioural tendencies. Due to my observations and to my obsessive passion with primatology, I’m aware that I have grown to love Obama, Remus, Nietzsche, and Kante more than any sane human primate ever should. So you can imagine how devastating it is to watch, not just one, but two of these little guys whom I love dearly, die under the circumstances of infanticidal attacks by a colobus male.

Infanticide, which occurs in many species such as lions, is an adaptive strategy that occurs in the ursine colobus monkeys at BFMS. Sometimes, when a new male ousts the old male in a group and takes over as the alpha, he may kill all of the young infants sired by the previous male so that he can mate with the infants’ mothers sooner. Breastfeeding inhibits ovulation, so while a female has a baby that is still nursing, the new male is not able to mate with her and spread his seeds. In a species such as the ursine colobus monkey, in which male-male competition for females is high, the new male doesn’t have time to wait for the females to raise their young, wean them, and then begin ovulating. From an adaptive perspective, it is in the new male’s best interest to kill off the small infants of the previous alpha so that he can have his own offspring faster... otherwise, who knows if he would get the opportunity later on.

The first attack on an infant actually occurred while Katie and I were doing a focal animal sample, which is sort of lucky actually (in a twisted “good for my data collection” sort of way) as such rare events as infanticide are rarely captured during an actual focal sample. Before the attack, Obama (who turned out to be a female and who was named before her sex could be visibly determined) was being held by his mom while also being ‘approached interactively’ (i.e. touched, groomed, peered at) by her bigger brother Oahu. This was an ordinary scene and one that I often observed daily, as Oahu, who is a playful and cute juvenile male, was often interested in interacting with – and in holding – his baby sister. This particular scenario however turned horribly wrong when a colobus male came bounding towards them from the right side of the branch on which they were sitting, snatched Obama aggressively, and bit her tiny body on the back of her head and spine. The male’s entire mouth had literally encapsulated the small figure of Obama; the tiny thing didn’t even have time to squeal. The scene was intensified by the fact that little Oahu, Ophelia (the baby’s mom), and two other adult females who were in proximity jumped on the male’s back and began biting, grabbing, and fighting him, in an attempt to save baby Obama. A second or two later, the male dropped the infant (who fell more than 20 meters to the ground). Seconds after that the male also dropped to the ground as contact fighting from the other monkeys caused him to lose his balance and crash to the forest floor. In a state of what I assume was complete shock and despair, Ophelia jumped down from the tree and went to retrieve her infant, who was still alive but barely. For a few moments Obama looked dead; there was blood all over her back and her tiny head was tilted limply to the side. When she came to, it was evident that although little Obama had not died immediately from the attack she would not make a recovery. Her body was left paralyzed from the arms down, she could only just hold on to her mother’s fur to be carried, and her bite wound was deep (it nearly reached halfway through her torso!).

Katie and I watched Obama for the rest of the day and for 2 days after that continuously (when the forest conditions permitted it). I can honestly say these days have been the hardest for me to endure. I’m surprised Katie could even understand what I was dictating to her during our focal samples, amidst my sobbing and crying! Each focal had some sort of horrifying event. Obama, not being able to move and being left by his mother alone many times (she was annoyingly stupid in how she chose to care for her crippled infant) fell from 30 meter high trees and hitting several branches on the way down. Sometimes she could hang from branches with her tiny hands, but after a while she would get tired and she was too weak to stay like that for long and she would slip and fall! Ophelia tried holding her as much as possible, but it was evident that after a while she was torn between feeding herself (it was hard foraging while holding Obama) and taking care of her completely dependent infant. Ophelia even rejected and pushed Obama away from her once while she was feeding, only to retrieve her baby 30 seconds later when she remembered that Obama was crippled and needed to be held at all times. Allomothering, which could have allowed Ophelia some free time to feed, kind of stopped after the infanticidal incident occurred. Although there was some interest in the baby, no one tried to allomother. I am aware that this is only my own personal interpretation of what I saw, but the others seemed a little freaked out by the crippled baby, who was almost always whimpering and crying. This was the other tough thing to handle; the constant distressed squeals emitted by Obama, which only intensified when Ophelia carried her from place to place. Due to her inability to use her legs to grasp on to Ophelia’s belly, Obama’s little body kept dangling down, off of her mother’s torso, hitting every branch on which Ophelia would walk or jump on.

Katie and I were watching Obama when she died… in her mother’s arms during a peaceful resting session. When it was time for the group to move on to another area of the forest, and Ophelia got up to start travelling, Obama just fell off her torso. The infant hit two branches on the way down. I burst into tears at this point. It was one of the most excruciatingly painful things I have ever seen. Ophelia did not leave her baby for several hours. She kept going to Obama, then moving a bit towards her group, then back down to the ground where her baby was lying. Finally it got really dark and she began to panic and kept fidgeting about the branches of the tree above her baby. She also started to emit these weird noises that I have never heard a colobus monkey make… low, drawn out grunts. In the darkness they had a haunting quality about them that I now wish I could erase from my memory. But I can’t … I will never forget any of this. When it was pitch black, her fear got the better of her and she went to spend the night with her group a few hundred meters away.

I know I may sound a bit melodramatic; some might say “they are only animals after all”. However, we are also animals and colobus monkeys are our close relatives. When I look in their eyes, I recognize a bit of myself in them. It is almost like looking at and communicating with another human being. It is clear to me that these monkeys possess a level cognition that is higher than just primal instinct. I know they aren’t human beings and they may not have a consciousness like we do, but they certainly aren’t like dogs, cats etc. There is something more in their intelligence that creeps me out sometimes… they understand things and I even feel like they know me. These tiny infants, whom I love dearly, mean as much to me as any human baby ever has (obviously I do not have children).

In the morning, at 6 am, Ophelia was back with Obama, and this time she was there with the baby’s father (Don Quixote) as well, while the rest of the group was still several hundred meters away. I thought the fact that Don Quixote had joined Ophelia on her return was very sweet. The paternal instinct is always given much less credit that the maternal instinct. Although Don Quixote could have been there for a few other reasons than just to watch over Obama or to provide support for the grieving mother, I chose to believe that he was also mourning the loss of his baby girl.
After more than 20 hours, Ophelia finally left Obama’s body. Katie and I waited another hour or so before we went closer to search for it. I needed to cut in with sterile razor blades and get tissue samples from the thigh muscles so that we could send them to the genetics lab in Iowa where my colleagues are working! An opportunity to get actual tissue from a monkey is very rare, and a chance like this should not be passed. I tried to set aside my emotional mambo jumbo and I managed get what we needed… I am a little scarred by the experience though. Later, we called the Fetish Priest of Boabeng village so that he could take the baby’s body away and bury it in the BFMS Monkey Cemetery as is the local custom. I wonder if he thought that the cuts on either side of the baby’s thigh seemed unusual…


Act III: Infanticide gets Remus

Remus, the other small infant in group B2 was also attacked by an infanticidal male the day after Obama’s attack. Katie and I were not present for it this time. After reading Act II, you are probably not keen on hearing any more details about a dying colobus infant. I will say, that much like Obama, Remus is also paralyzed from the waist down but he seems a bit more mobile. Remus can move her arms and hold on better to her mother Roxy than Obama could with Ophelia. I’m not getting my hopes up or anything; it is unlikely that Remus will live for much longer, although it would be super cool if she survived despite her paralysis and learned to live independently as a crippled colobus monkey for many years. I bet tourism at Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary would skyrocket, as everyone would just have to see Remus the Crippled Colobus in action! However, she is still too little and too dependent on Roxy to support herself. Sometimes Remus’ mom is a little smarter than Ophelia was; she places Remus between branches or in the crotches of trees so that she Remus can support herself with her arms and head. Other times Roxy is completely clueless and lets Remus hang there for 15-20 minutes before the baby gets tired, slips, and falls from the tree. Ugh! I cringe even thinking about this. Yesterday, in order to feed without her encumbering crippled infant, Roxy placed Remus on an inclined palm frond. Naturally, as Remus wriggled about and cried she began slipping… she rolled down the palm frond and fell 30 meters to the ground. Roxy freaked out in surprise and retrieved her baby immediately but I wonder how many more times she will do that before a fall will be fatal! The saddest part for me is that I will basically have to wait and find out. I will keep watching Remus as I must continue collecting data until that fateful day.