Clade 1: Introduction to a New Animal.

So, here we go…

I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa just short of a week ago. Flight was fine, blah blah blah. Met at the airport, blah blah blah.

The World Cup, for those of you not savvy to the most popular sport in the world, is to be hosted by South Africa in a few short months. June, I believe. This is very apparent upon arrival to the country. It’s everywhere. They advertise it on the inside of the bathroom stalls, as if to say, “We KNOW you’ll be here for a minute, and since we have your attention, have you heard about the World Cup?”

I was greeted by my boss, a guy named Matt Lewis. He’s a grad student at the U of Cape Town. It was late, so we went to his house, in what he described as the suburbs. The neighborhood had an entrance sign (that screams suburbs). The median was landscaped (again SUUUUBURBS!). All the houses were nice, modest, and landscaped (suburbs). Oh and there were laser grids patrolling each front yard (subur….wait what the hell!). Evidently Ronald Regan is in charge of home security in the suburbs of Cape Town. Point illustrated: South Africa is a bit grittier than the newly remodeled, brushed stainless steel airport and the flashy World Cup veneer would have you believe. Regardless, Matt’s home was great, and he and his mom made me feel right at home.

I met up with my friend Sam the next day. He’s the guy who tipped me off about the job. He and his gal Lindsay showed me around Cape Town a bit. It was more of a drinking and appetizer tour, than an historical immersion. Fine with me. Another day for logistics and food buying, and we were in the Cape Point National Reserve.

Here is a very brief synopsis of the work:

Baboons are monkeys (red backsides, not blue. The blue one is the Mandrill and the Drill, found in the tropics of equatorial western Africa. Close, but different). They live in troops of many males and females. They spend their days looking for and eating different foods. In this part of South Africa, some of the baboons eat marine life, such as limpets and shark eggs. Matt wants to know how much of their diet is made up of marine invertebrates, and if that changes anything we think we know about baboons as a species.

We go out each day to the place where we left the baboons to sleep and watch them wake up. They get up really early. We then follow them around all day and record their behavior for 3 minutes every 7 minutes. We do this all day. From about 6:15 am to about 7pm. Every 7 minutes. This is a relatively typical conversation leading into a behavior scan:

Observer 1: The Coen Brother’s film, The Big Lebowski, is clearly a metaphor for Operation Desert Storm, with The Dude playing the role of the clueless American populous…

Observer 2: Male, adult, rocky outcrop, social, copulate. Female, sub-adult, rocky outcrop, social, copulate…

Observer 1: Slow down! Did you say sub adult or juvenile?

And so on…

The baboons don’t really care that we are there. These particular baboons don’t see humans as potential food sources…yet. Not like they would eat us, but other troops will swipe your bag in a heart beat.

Sometimes they get pissed at each other and fight. Like, for REAL fight. Blood and gashes. So far the only way I know how to differentiate between individuals is with names such as gash head, gash face, and gash arm. Oh, there’s scar face too. I think he was gash face last month.

The do some really, really gross stuff too. Like deviant G.R.O.S.S. stuff. I don’t want to get into it. You can ask me later, but not over dinner.

Sometimes they involve us in the fights. We carry sticks for this purpose. Not to beat the baboons with, because that wouldn’t do anything, but because they get confused when you hold a stick out toward them as the charge you. They’ll get right up to it and then just stop, look at it, and walk away. We don’t have to yell or make ourselves look tough or anything. Just don’t look them in the eyes, and hold out a long stick. They’ll probably disregard the stick someday, but hopefully not in the next month.

There are tiny little baby baboons everywhere. They look like little furry human babies that can jump like 10 feet in the air. That would seriously freak me out. Walk up to a woman pushing a stroller, coo at her infant, and then stand back as it dunked a basketball. Weird.

So that’s what I do. It’s absolutely beautiful here. I like everybody. I sleep like a rock every night, and walk with baboons for 12 hours every day. I love it.