The Baby Baboon that Made Me Mother
Monthly Challenge — Baby Wild Animals: Being peed on by a baboon, showering with one and more
In a wildlife sanctuary close to Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, the keeper and I took three young baboons for a daily “bush walk” to integrate them into their natural environment. Immediately, the youngest baboon — Pixie — glued herself onto me. Apparently, I had been adopted as a temporary mother. Apart from being jumped on by other half-grown baboons, the baby baboon Pixie showed me just how close we are to other animals.
Upon opening the cage, she always jumped right into my arms, and a few seconds later she was up on my shoulder. In the bush, the three young baboons played around: jumping onto us from branches nearby, chasing each other, stuffing their chubby cheeks with seeds, nuts, and everything edible they could find. The latter made them look like greedy chipmunks.
Pixie would not stop eating. Her belly was always as round as a balloon and still, her stuffed cheeks would give away her stocked-up secret food stash. Lying on her back on my legs, while being belly-rubbed, she happily flickered her eye-lids shut to the luxurious and free massage. Often she also groomed me — this is how baboons within a troop enforce social bonds. She relentlessly tried to get rid of one of my birthmarks while grooming. Meanwhile, the keeper communicated with the three rascals. Noises that sounded like a fusion of human chuckling and a bird’s call. The connection he had with them was admirable and their mutual understanding was deep — they were like siblings.
Quite often will baboons — especially young ones — pee on you when you carry them around. Carrying Pixie around on my shoulder means she peed right onto my shoulder or pants. At first, I was grossed out, but as it happened repetitively over the course of the next few days, I changed my approach towards it. The baboon pee quickly dried in the Zimbabwean sun and I was able to shower in the evening: I noticed how futile my grossed-out-ness had been.
Once, I took Pixie up to my room in the sanctuary because she just would not let go. In the evening I wanted to shower — as she had already peed on me — but she would not let go. If I left her in the room, she would scream to be lifted back up again. It was a full-time babysitter job. Finally, I decided to take her to the shower with me and hoped I could put her down while showering. No, that did not work either. She started whining and somehow found a way to just jump back up again. Annoyed and exhausted, I decided to shower with Pixie on my shoulder, leaning awkwardly to the right in order to not shower her as well. She was extremely content with the attention she had received.
Baboons are pack animals. This means, that if the sanctuary gets any new baboons (some injured, abandoned, etc.), they are added to the pack of baboons that already was in the sanctuary. This process continues until the number of baboons held is enough to form a pack (usually around 30 and up to 200 baboons in the wild). The whole pack is then released back into the wild. Their social structure is highly complex and hierarchical: the set-up of a Chacma baboon troop (Pixie’s species) is multi-male and multi-female. In this structure, each male and female has multiple mates. In a multi-male-multi-female social structure, each baboon is ranked with a “social status” — like peasants and nobility in the medieval age. They know exactly to whom they need to be submissive. While matured male baboons leave the troop to find another, females stay in the pack until “death do them part”. Females are ranked according to birth: a mature female ranks just below her mother in the pack.
Generally, baboons and other monkey species have an extremely bad reputation. Even in literature: in The Jungle Book Kipling describes macaque and gibbon monkeys as arrogant and untrustworthy. In the story, Mowgli believes that the monkeys have the “madness” which is deemed the worst thing a wild animal can have. They are known to steal, annoy and make a lot of noise. For those reasons humans often intentionally poison or kill them.
They are not the nuisances they are portrayed as. I was overtaken by their similarities to humans. As said, their social structure is impressive, they groom each other and given the right circumstances will build a connection with you (as Pixie did) and they openly share emotions.
Without fail, the grown baboons came to greet their care-keeper, giving him hugs and kisses.
Pixie with your stuffed cheeks, I will remember you forever.
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