Hooked on Primates

When I was in second grade I loved reading class.  I used to look forward to school every day just so that I could get to that hour where a teacher presented us with shelf after shelf of books to choose from.  One day I discovered a book about a gorilla.  I don’t remember picking it, but I vividly remember the decision I made right then.  I marched home and unloaded my oversized backpack to reveal a fortuitous prize.  I remember staring at the pictures of the gorilla again, and that night, over dinner, I made my announcement.  “I’m going to be a primatologist,” I told my parents, who promptly froze mid-bite to stare at their eight-year-old child and wonder how she made up a word like that.

Oh, the places a book can take a child.  Here I am, seventeen years later, just returning to my tent after a long day of chasing chimps through a rainforest.  Our luck with the chimps has been sporadic lately.  In my two weeks at the site I’ve had just a couple of one-two hour sessions with distant and hidden chimpanzees, peering at shoulders and ears through dark, leafy brush and clinging to every glimpse of shadowy figures.  This day was different.  As usual, first came the poop, fresh and beckoning, in the middle of the path.  Then came the calls, and then, this time, they were all around me.  Females with infants, males with missing digits and notched ears, and juveniles tumbling over and under branches.  All in such plain view, all so close and undisturbed by this sudden human presence.

I reached for my trusty, dirt-covered binoculars and began jotting down descriptions, sketching faces, desperately hopeful for more fresh poop.  That wish would be fulfilled.  I scrambled back and forth, crunching over fallen leaves and avoiding noisy twigs as I stood under tree after tree, peering up at new faces.  Questions began to flood my racing thoughts.  “Two females together?  Is that normal?  Who is that male, and why is he following her?  Those two look similar… are they related?  Why did he just make that vocalization?”  A single glance at the fluidity of this group, and the subtlety of each move and reaction is all it took for me to finally get it.  Chimps are complicated.  They are bewildering, frustrating, addictively curious individuals.  I can’t wait to PCR these samples.  I can’t wait to answer a question only to be bombarded with fifteen more.  I am hooked.

After a while I settled in under a branch with two males grooming above.  I could have watched them for as long as my body would allow.  I stared at their postures, their features, the places their eyes were drawn to, and I wanted to know more.  That was the moment I remembered that silly, little book, and that fascinated little girl.  Most days I secretly admit that I have not changed much at all since then.  I have a professional face, a multitude of collected scientific jargon, and closely studied sources, but none of that is what pulls me in or defines me.  All I will ever really be is a girl drawn to faces so similar and yet different from mine, a girl that knows life is best with more questions than answers.