Self-tickling chimps

Hammering nuts, eating stuff directly off stick or wiping stuff off stick manually, squashing stuff with fingers. Yes, these sound like activities you can observe during a sports night or some fraternity night when men engage in male-bonding. But I think you will find it more interesting that these behavioral traits, among many others, are what have been observed of chimpanzees in six sites across central Africa. I don’t know about you but fellows who tickle themselves earn the top spots in my list of interesting creatures and chimps are found to do so.

In an article published in Scientific American (January 2001), Andrew Whiten and Cristophe Boesch helped us better understand "culture," beyond the human to that of our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees. "Culture" for humans means many levels, from our adaptation to our environment seen in our clothes and dwellings to the expressions of our humanity in the arts and sciences. But "culture" for animals are defined by scientists specifically as behavioral traits by which you can tell where the animal lives. In the field-study they did which was directed by among many other experts, the famous Jane Goodall, they were able to enumerate many chimpanzee rituals that I found so fascinating. These include hammering nuts, pounding with pestle, fishing for termites, wiping ants off stick manually, eating ants directly off stick, removing bone marrow, sitting on leaves, fanning flies, throwing, inspecting wounds, clipping leaves to make sound to attract attention, squashing parasite on leaves and with fingers, inspecting parasites, clasping arms overhead, and knocking knuckles. These rituals proved to be present, absent, customary or habitual in chimpanzees that live in six forest sites in central Africa. They found out that these behavioral traits and their variations could locate for us the residences of the chimps. It is like being able to tell where one lived by the way he/she cooked "adobo" or by the way one does woodwork on furniture. These traits that have been observed seem to have been imitated by younger generations of chimpanzees from older ones just like human transmission of behavioral traits occur. The traits they found to be "absent" because there was no demand from the environment for it was not considered "culture" as defined previously and was labeled as "absent (for ecological reasons)."

But two traits that the scientists listed struck me. Besides things that glow, one of my most favorite things is a rainmaker. I discovered one a few years ago in a friend’s house in Puerto Princesa. I kept on tilting it to hear the crushed, crowded shells rush like waves within a tunneled vessel. One night, we gathered around their living room and sang songs about "home" and our host balanced the rainmaker gracefully in her hands to "shower" our music with more harmony. Imagine the connection I felt when I learned that chimps also "perform" raindances, (which are more of "rain-joicing" I think since they have been observed to occur at the start of a heavy downpour) when adult male chimps have been observed to perform charging motions, together with beating buttress roots (big roots protruding out of ground), dragging branches and beating the ground with loud panting cries. Around four million years between apes and humans but we both remember and rejoice in acknowledging the presence of rain.

But as I said at the start, one trait left me stomped. Chimps have been observed to tickle themselves – "a large stone or stick can be used to probe especially ticklish areas on a chimpanzee’s own body." I do not know any person who knowingly tickles herself/himself but then again, there might be and I would not be able to argue against empirical evidence if presented. But if this trait has evolved in humans to mean that she/he deliberately seeks humor to make life bearable and to laugh at herself/himself, I say "hurray!"

I don’t think we should be worried that we are closer to apes even behaviorally. Knowing this does not take away anything from our humanity. Though chimps have been observed to throw sticks and stones with a clear aim, they do this within a culture pressed on them by the demand of their immediate environment. When a human throws something, an object or an idea, in sport, in anger, in passion or in joy, it is more than the moment; it is an expression that enters the future, a leap of intention or imagination that holds meaning for him in time and space. This meaning he can transmit beyond the physical act or instrument. Mathematician J. Bronowski pondered this and put it this way in his landmark book The Ascent of Man (Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1973) in the form of an athlete with his "tool" – the pole-vault:

"Poised for that leap, the pole-vaulter is a capsule of human abilities: the grasp of the hand, the arch of the foot, the muscles of the shoulder and pelvis – the pole itself, in which energy is stored and released like a bow firing an arrow... the radical character… is the sense of foresight… the ability to fix an objective ahead and rigorously hold his attention on it… the invention of the pole, the concentration of mind at the moment before leaping that give it the stamp of humanity."

So there you need not worry. Only if you instinctively roll the entire newspaper after reading this column and hit the first person who disagrees with you should you worry that you have not evolved to the human you thought you were.