Three days. I’d hiked through the forest, up and down mountains over rivers, and through masses of thorns, all without a single chimpanzee sighting. I’d expected this though. These chimpanzees are some of the most elusive, dispersed groups in the world. For well over a decade, researchers have endured this harsh habitat with its unique coctail of deep mud, dark, dense forest, burning, dizzying savanna, and steep mountains in the hopes of grabbing just a fraction of the new information that this unique population holds. Many have faced disappointment though, and few have walked away with the wealth of observations their questions would require.
Still, knowing this did not seem to impede my welling frustration. That may be because the other researchers had not found a group for three straight weeks now. Their steps were dragging, their breaths seemed heavy, and their eyes were moving from the treetops to their feet with increasingly hopeless gazes. This mood can penetrate and deflate the hopes of anyone quickly, and I could feel my own feet begin to gain mass.
Then I found a sample. As my tired eyes followed my heavy toes I could hardly believe what laid before me: a wadge! When chimpanzees eat, like us, they do not swallow large seeds and fibrous material. Their digestive system is just as generalized as ours, and cannot handle these materials. After rolling them around in their mouths into a wadded ball, they spit the mass to the ground, leaving a little gift of DNA-containing cheek cells behind. I dropped to the ground and began digging into my pack for collection materials. Just as the latex of a sterile glove snapped against my skin we heard a rustle. It was subtle and decisive, not obnoxious enough to be colobus, but too dense and low for a baboon or red-tailed monkey. All four of our sets of eyes snapped in that direction, then darted to one another. Our bodies were frozen, and you could not even sense a single exhale. Then, I saw Joel’s lips part to a smile and Alimose’s brow raised from furrowed to thrilled. It was a chimpanzee, then another, then a scream that even a child could not mistake for any other species.
We were surrounded by a group of 10-20 individuals. It was difficult to see much. Most of them were on the ground, hidden deep in the leafy, thorn-filled underbrush of the forest floor. But could you ever hear them. The sounds were like a dream, so loud and deep that it vibrated my core. Each set of minutes alternated between deceptive stillness and dramatic vocal displays.
Eventually the vocalizing disintegrated to silence. The group was at rest, so we sat and waited. After forty minutes or so the rustling began again. A party was cautiously approaching on the ground, clearly quite wary of our presence. Dark masses rustled leaves closer and closer, until they froze. I felt desperate to look as unthreatening as possible. Because I have no experience with chimps, I resorted to the postures I knew used to calm the gorillas that I worked with at the zoo. I turned my side to them, and relaxed all of my core muscles until my spine curved forward, and my shoulders collapsed into my chest. I grabbed the nearest half-eaten fruit, inspecting it, then bringing it to my face. I carefully pulled my eyes over to the bushes and felt my heart skip before my stomach rose. Two deep, black eyes framed between perfect, large ears and a thick, rounded brow stared back at me. The intense curiosity of those deep eyes was something that I have only ever witnessed in a human child. The juvenile quickly broke my gaze and scurried forward to glue himself to the path of a female with an infant clinging desperately to her back. Those eyes will surely be the premise of the rest of my career with chimpanzees.
We tried to keep up, but within an hour the group seemed to dissolve into the thick forest air. Our group trekked back to camp in silence, feet bouncing and eyes lit with hope.
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