Versamelde werke

[p. 1126]

The Soul of the Apeaant.

1 Means and Methods of Research

Shortly after the War, I had the opportunity of living for three years in very close proximity to a troop of wild chacma baboons (Papio Ursinus ursinus). During that time a register was made of all the adults - or nearly all - and it was thus possible to study their behaviour under very favourable conditions. During most of this time I had the invaluable assistance of a young friend and countryman who, under the most disadvantageous circumstances, had attained a remarkable knowledge of the higher African mammalia and their comparative anatomy. An untimely death unfortunately cut short his work.

The conditions under which this investigation was made were, in some respects, ideal and are hardly likely to recur in South Africa. We were living in a high, narrow valley between two parallel ranges of the central mountains of the Waterberg in the Transvaal: a stream flowed down one side of this valley and found an outlet through a gorge in the southern range. The floor was strewn with piled-up fragments of conglomerate rock which, in the course of ages, had been dislodged from the hills to shape the faces of the precipitous walls of the gorge. Both floor and walls were thickly overgrown by big timbertrees and tree-ferns. Plants grew and thrived wherever the smallest root-hold had been gained either in the soil or in the living rock. Along this gorge the stream had worn for itself a very much impeded channel to the low country.

On the right side, about a hundred feet from the floor of the gorge, the face of the cliff was split by a huge level-floored cavity. Just below this cave, against the wall of the precipice, grew a giant wild fig tree, its roots widespread over the face of the rock and its enormous branches and dense foliage completely sheltering the mouth. A slope of loose rock, which was comparatively easy to climb, stretched down from one end of the cave entrance to the floor of the gorge. The cavity formed the sleeping place of a troop of baboons.

The circumstances which rendered these clever and extremely nervous animals indifferent to the presence of their arch-foe, man, were due to a long succession of events. The War had left the area in unpeopled solitude for a number of years and, when eventually the families returned, the men were for several more years without rifles or ammunition. The baboons were very quick to

[p. 1127]

realise the helplessness of their neighbours and took full advantage of it. The orchards, gardens and grain lands were raided with incredible fearlessness.

On our arrival in the valley and during the construction of our huts near the entrance to the gorge, the babies who could walk and all the youngsters of the troop showed an insatiable and often reckless curiosity, much to the alarm and disapproval of their elders. Perched on stones within thirty yards of us, they would follow with the closest attention all our movements. These quiet times occasionally gave place to rollicking games, one of which was to approach us in a rush up to the sticking point of their courage, and from that comparatively safe distance they would indulge in the customary baboon ‘face pulling’ and threatening grimaces, or assume the attitude of conciliation.¹

The older individuals were at first very chary of approaching us. They would remain on the slopes of the hill-side, nervously calling to and ‘warning’ the more intrepid youngsters, and occasionally a big male would wake the echoes of the mountains with his tremendous voice. We experienced a great deal of difficulty in overcoming this distrust in the adults. It was my colleague who by infinite tact and patience eventually gained their confidence to such an extent that they assembled daily for several months in the immediate vicinity of the huts, where they were fed on mealies. We were thus able, in time, to approach within a few yards of them, and it was then apparent that it was we rather than the chacmas who needed to be distrustful and continually on guard. We were never actually attacked, although dangerous threats were a daily occurrence and of such a nature that in the beginning one of us had always to be armed.

But a better understanding was gradually established as we got to know each other. Eventually the baboons allowed us to climb up the slope to their sleeping place in the evening and very early morning and watch them from the roots and branches of the big fig tree. They would never, however, permit us to set foot on the floor of the cave itself. Any such attempt was at once, even in the night, countered by a threatening advance on the part of the big males, who clearly ‘meant business’.

We kept a number of tame adults and babies, some in captivity and some at liberty, at a farm-house below the mountains. We also had in captivity at different times wild adults that had been wounded by scalp-hunters² and captured alive. The behaviour of these captive baboons was studied for a period not exceeding three years.

Ideal as conditions were in one respect, we still laboured under disadvantages that were not without effect on our work. The greatest of these was - it appeared later - the want of time. As the neighbouring farmers regained possession of rifles and ammunition, observation of the troop became more and more difficult and all too soon was rendered quite impossible. Another serious disadvantage was our isolation: we had no libraries and no means of

[p. 1128]

checking what work might already have been accomplished in this field.

In this connection I would like to mention our own attitude towards the exploration of these twilight souls. We approached this investigation without any preconceived ideas, and although at the beginning inexperience may have left much to be desired in our methods, we had at least no theories to verify. We tried always to adhere to the empirical method and to avoid as far as possible the shadowy by-ways of metaphysical speculation and psychological abstraction to which research in this field seems inherently inclined. We also decided against setting ourselves an exclusively anthropomorphic criterion; but this proved to be more attractive as a theoretical basis of research than efficient as a practical means of avoiding error.

It is true that a continual reference to human mentality is not the ready highway to truth that it seems to be at the first glance. There are profound - and, to the believer in the theory of continuous mental evolution, even startling - differences in the lesser eddies of the psychic stream. The great current is beyond doubt the same in kind, however much it may differ in volume and intensity, but it is in these lesser eddies that the significance becomes obscured by a continual reference to human psychology. This we realised clearly. On the other hand, these differences excepted, the mental processes of the chacmas are generally so human-like that it proved impossible to submit them to a critical examination without accepting as a standard our common human experience.

It is necessary to state that the environment of this wild troop cannot be described as quite natural. They were completely isolated and had evidently been so for many years; the intrusion of man as a dominating element added other profound effects to those of unnatural isolation. In a systematic study of behaviour these particular conditions would have been an advantage had it been possible to compare the habits of the chacma we investigated with those living under more natural circumstances. But there were two great difficulties preventing such a comparison. The first was the problem of finding any troop where the reaction to man's intrusion had not created habits that would not have existed in his absence, and the second was the supreme difficulty of observing closely and continuously any troop not so circumstanced.

We did, however, observe some other wild troops under more natural conditions, as will be apparent in this record of a small portion of our work, which is basically an attempt to interpret some of the actions we studied in our troop compared with others less isolated, rather than a detailed description of the chacma's behaviour.