Posts Tagged ‘gibbons’
other primates -some names and habits
This drill monkey carefully tended and groomed her stillborn offspring for some time after giving birth, then started to eat it
So considering that I’m feeling a little bruised by the lunacy of the USA situation, and sorry in particular for the female voters, who deserve better than this, I’ve decided to look for comfort among the bonobos and other primates. So this is largely a self-informing and self-reminding piece.
The term ‘bonobo’ has been described as meaningless, or at least accidental, because it probably comes from a shipping crate bound for Bolobo, in the DRC. This makes me wonder about other names, such as chimpanzee, gorilla and gibbon.
So – chimpanzee comes from one or both Bantu languages, Vili (ci-mpenze) and Luba-Kasai (chimpenze), the second of which is the national language of the DRC. And since they definitively refer to an ape or ‘mock-man’, they have a more authentic ring to them than the name for bonobos, though ‘pygmy chimp’ or even ‘gracile chimp’ seem to go a little far in distinguishing between the two species, which I must say I have trouble doing myself (I tend to look for the head hair parted in the middle).
The name for gorilla is particularly interesting and relatively ancient. The Carthaginian explorer-adventurer Hanno, sailing down the west coast of Africa some 2500 years ago, was told the name by the locals. It apparently means ‘hairy person’, and it has endured to this day.
So what about the most exotic and problematic (pronunciation-wise) ape name of all? Orang-Utans or orangutans are named from two different words, one Malay, ‘orang’, meaning human, the other Indonesian ‘hutan’, meaning ‘forest’. It’s interesting that the humans who lived their lives close to these other primates recognised them almost as family, and of course they were right, probably more right than European-type humans tended to be, until recently.
So, to gibbons – but I’ll interrupt myself to remind myself of the so-called scientific names of all these beasties. Our heroic bonobos are one of two species of the Pan genus, i.e Pan paniscus. Chimps (Pan troglodytes – of which there are four confirmed subspecies, and a fifth yet to be confirmed) are rather more numerous, having ranges extending from the east to the west coast of sub-saharan Africa. Gorillas come in two species, eastern and western. The eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei) are critically endangered, and the world’s largest living primate. They’re subdivided into lowland and mountain gorillas, the second of which are far less numerous. The western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla – must’ve been the first ones named?) are also subdivided, into the western lowland and the Cross River subspecies. They’re all critically endangered, naturellement. Orangs are classed in the genus Pongo – nothing to do with odour – and they were only recently considered a single species, but now there are three, P abelii, P pygmaeus and P tapanuliensis.
And so, to gibbons, of the family Hylobatidae, which, like the orangutans, are Asian apes. As of today, they’re divided into four genera and twenty species. They’re the great brachiators of the ape world. Here in Adelaide’s zoo we have a very large siamang enclosure – siamangs are the largest of the gibbons – and to watch them swing and hear them hoot is quite spine-tingling.
So I’ve just covered the ‘great apes’, apart from H sapiens. In fact there are five types – humans, bonobos, chimps, gorillas and orangutans. Gibbons are described as ‘lesser apes’, and less related to humans. But I’m particularly interested in male-female relations in all these species, and in other primates, such as female-dominated lemurs (of which there are an extraordinary 108 species). Scientific American has an interesting little online article, posted earlier this year, entitled ‘Females dominate males in many primate species’, which starts with the generally accepted claim that lemurs are outliers in the primate world, with ‘the vast majority of other primates thought to be male-dominated’. It goes on…
But a recent study in Animals calls this assumption into question. Though male power is more common overall among primate species, it’s by no means the default social dynamic. In fact, in 42 percent of the species examined in the study, primates lived in groups in which females were either dominant or on a level playing field with males.
This doesn’t strike me as surprising, for we humans have different fields in which one gender dominates over the other, and this varies within human cultures. It also doesn’t surprise me that we’ve only recently noted the value and power of females in other primate species, since we’re still being awakened to that power and value in humans. The study looked at different features that might contribute to dominance, such as sexual dimorphism, canine teeth size, and number of females simultaneously in heat, and amount of time spent in that state. Sexual dimorphism seems, however, to be the most clear-cut factor, and a little difference, as with chimps v bonobos, can make for a lot of difference. Among humans this dimorphism still exists, but in the context of massive variation, due to hugely varied diets, income levels, and the mechanisation of work. The machismo activity of hunting is going out of fashion, and male child-minding is coming into fashion, though male breast-feeding is still a way into the future, the genetic transformations required being painfully slow*.
Of course, in the vast majority if not all mammalian species, childcare both inside and immediately outside the womb is female business, which brings me to the supposedly vexed issue of abortion. The MSD Veterinary Manual defines abortion thus:
Abortion is the artificial termination of pregnancy after organogenesis is complete but before the fetus is viable. If pregnancy ends naturally before organogenesis, this is called early embryonic death.
This is a rather important distinction, as it seems that some states in the USA (e.g. Texas) have ordered that all pregnancies must be carried to term even if it is clear that there is a serious problem with organogenesis, thus endangering the mother of an already-doomed infant. It’s hard to imagine such an insanely cruel piece of legislation – it brings to mind the good old religious concept of evil. It’s unlikely though that these laws will last long – and I’m thinking in evolutionary time. Even the USA, the most religious nation in the WEIRD world, is becoming less so. They might even have a female President within the next 1000 years or so, and then in another 1000 years they might have progressed enough to have thrown out their shithouse Presidential system entirely. But I dream…
It’s probably fair to say, or at least it’s arguable, that other species don’t abort their offspring, especially if you define abortion as a very deliberate act, for other mammals aren’t deliberate in that way, but not only do they sometimes bring about an early, unviable birth due their own pregnancy sufferings, but they often abandon the runt or runts of the litter in favour of the most viable. It makes evolutionary sense, of course. But the poor, weak, barely viable siblings don’t necessarily live their life in vain, as they often serve as a delicious meal for their stronger brothers and sisters.
Anyway, more on abortion and infanticide in other primates next time, perhaps.
*That was a joke – however some human male breasts can actually produce milk
References
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/females-dominate-males-in-many-primate-species/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orangutan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylobates
Cat Bohannon, Eve: how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution, 2023