Showdown at the Ape-man Corral

BRENDA PAI/YH

Until Sat., Oct. 23, the only way to gain anything near firsthand knowledge of how large primates behave was to transfer to Ole Miss and pledge [[Delta]]KE. To my great relief, Saturday's Primate Day at the Peabody Museum of Natural History will provide an alternative less injurious to education, liver, and dignity. The event coincides with the museum's Gorillas in the Lens, a retrospective of primatologist Dian Fossey's work with mountain gorillas. This will be a great opportunity to occupy the little tyke in your life while convincing him or her to get militant in defense of our hairier cousins. And for those of us too old to subscribe to Ranger Rick, there will be two lectures. At 10 a.m., Gary Aronsen, GRD '03, will introduce his audience to primate biology and conservation. At 1 p.m., Professor of Anthropology David Watts will speak about his experiences with Fossey in Rwanda.

I recently talked to Watts and can assure you that his lecture will not disappoint. Watts has a passion for "non-human primates" and has forgotten more about them than most of us will ever know—in fact, he developed an almost personal attachment to several individuals in his study troops.

Hearing this, my thoughts turned to pitting humans and apes against each other in a contest for cultural and moral superiority. The conversation took a slightly philosophical bent when I asked Watts whether he thought apes or people were more moral creatures. He responded that morality is a question of understanding consequences. Apes do some mean things. High status males in chimpanzee groups often organize mass beatings of lower-echelon males, and male gorillas compete violently for mates. But no gorilla ever signed 98[[ring]] to a record deal and then released them on an unsuspecting civilization. Advantage, Bonzo.

Reeling from my disappointment in the human race, I decided to turn to a field in which we would surely have an advantage: sex. I heard (don't ask where) that gorillas have undescended testes. Watts informed me that while this is not true, gorillas do have the smallest testicles of any primate in relation to their body size. Humans might be vicious and petty and produce bad music, but at least we're virile. Advantage, man.

The next logical point of comparison was social behavior. Since frats take enough of a beating already, I focused on the preoccupation of certain freshmen with an inflatable cactus. I asked Watts whom he considered more intelligent: a chimp fishing for termites or a man wearing a cactus as underwear. Watts was ambivalent. The ape obviously demonstrated problem-solving capability; however, the cactus-wearing human might have had a logical reason for sporting rubber undies. As Watts put it, "Wearing the cactus may have been a form of penance to gain favor in the afterlife." Top that, King Kong. Advantage, man.

The cactus question wasn't finished, however. Would two groups of gorillas spend an entire night yelling and screaming about an inflatable object that they had stolen from each other 17 times? Probably not. For gorillas, play is a social tool. It allows individuals to bond and enhances physical skills. Play has similar importance for humans, so Watts believes that the cactus war may not have been pointless. The fact remains, however, that gorillas would not have had a cactus war in the first place. Advantage Bonzo.

We're at a deadlock. If you don't mind accepting our moral equivalency with mountain gorillas, stay in bed Saturday morning. However, if you have any hope of rehabilitating the human race by discovering something about gorillas that my talk with Watts failed to unearth, spend some time at Primate Day.

Back to A&E...