Colors of life (non-human)

My bed time readings happen to be more concentrated on mammals for the past ten days.

Presently I am reading Jane Goodall's "Through a window" - semi-scientific writing on behaviours of chimpanzees of Gombe (Lake Tanganiyaka); I had already read her "In the shadow of man", and remember well the chimps and their pedigree by names.

I had a non-scientific belief that Chimpanzees are different from human beings in aspects of territory maintenance. The notes in the book show that Chimpanzees are equally criminals to human beings. They threaten fellow females and males, challenge adult males for territory, some ladies kill other ladies's offsprings, plan and attack effectively, terrorize members of other communities, kill baboon infants, hunt deers (bush bucks)....., a manipulative world I would call.

Tool usage and cannibalism are landmark findings of Jane Goodall's research teams' works in Gombe stream.

I particularly loved the chapters that covered how social environments, maternal care influence development of males and their success in chimpanzee communities. It was amazing and I parallelled everything that was in the book with human beings.

But I dint find the comparison fair enough because most of the human males are monogamous in family setup. Paternal care also plays a role in child raising in human families.

However I could draw many conclusions on how primates could work (we are also primates scientifically speaking).

I no longer see Chimpanzees are cute little beings, looking more like human beings and all that sweetie stuff. They are agressive, specialists for survival and excellent candidates for community living, ofcourse an important fellow species for human beings in this planet.

I am jealous of Hugo Van Lawick, the Nat Geo photographer (and also first husband of Jane Goodall), his works and his experience close to Chimps. Though they are considered endangered, considerable effort and concentration has been given to it.

The most fascinating chapter was the interaction between Baboon troops and Chimpanzee communities. Adolescent friends from these two species, male rivals, even some funky sexual activities between these two species have been recorded and that was really fascinating. Competition for food is the major interaction key, but still Chimps only generally win the battle due to their larger size and strength.

I happen to browse through key pages of another interesting book called "Life of mammals" by David Attenborough. I had watched a few of his wildlife documentaries. I was fascinated by his videographics, but not his writings. Would rather comment they lacked some sort of interesting flow.

When I was reading this chapter on Colourful mammals, he writes that "Monkeys are the most colourful mammals of the world" I cannot attach many pictures here, but they are in here

So colors had been an interesting factor for primates. Colour changes at certain parts of the body is one of the signs that indicate the breeding peak (main is smell). For example, the pink bottoms of female Chimps, blue scrotum of certain monkeys, increased intensities of colour displays in front of nose and certain other portions of the body in mandrills (below)

,... interesting.

I could somehow correlate why elephants paint now !!!

They do only "modern"arts and it could definitely mean something for them, however it means only money or aid for us to save them. Funds are raised through sale of elephant paintings directed towards elephant conservation. I only could think over endlessly what is going on in the minds of these creatures when they act so ?....