Through a Window

by Jane Goodall

  Ten days after losing her infant, Melissa, using the last of her strength, climbed high into a tall, leafy mgwiza tree and there, surrounded by clusters of purple, sloe-like fruits, she made a large nest—the last she would ever make. Throughout the following day she lay, scarcely moving, while other chimpanzees, attracted by the succulent fruits, arrived, fed for an hour or so, and left. Gimble was nearby for much of the day, and sometimes groomed his mother. But he moved away during the afternoon.

  By evening, Melissa was alone. One foot hung down from her nest and every so often her toes moved. I stayed there, sitting on the forest floor below the dying female. Occasionally I spoke. I don't know if she knew I was there or, if she did, whether it made any difference. But I wanted to be with her as night fell; I didn't want her to be completely alone. As I sat there the quick tropical dusk gave place to darkness. The stars increased in number and twinkled ever more brightly through the forest canopy. There was a distant pant-hoot far across the valley, but Melissa was silent. Never again would I hear her distinctive hoarse call. Never again would I wander with her from one patch of food to the next, waiting, at one with the life of the forest, as she rested or groomed with one of her offspring. The stars were suddenly blurred and I wept for the passing of an old friend.

  The next morning I watched as Melissa took her last, laboured breath: her body shuddered, then relaxed. All around, during those last hours, the branches had swayed and rustled as youngsters played while elders fed on the luscious fruits. In the midst of life there is death. This was an appropriate setting for Melissa's passing, allegorical in its portrayal of the inevitable cycles of nature. I was deeply moved, but my tears were over. Melissa had indeed known a hard life, with many misfortunes, but she had lived fully and, for much of the time, had clearly enjoyed living. She had attained a high rank. And, most importantly, she had left a solid succession; Gimble, small but very determined, Gremlin, strong and healthy who would have other infants to carry on her mother's genes, and Goblin, top-ranking male of his community.

  16. GIGI

  GIGI, UNLIKE MELISSA, will leave no descendants. Yet it would be difficult to overstate the extent to which this large sterile female has influenced the lives of the Kasekela chimpanzees, particularly the males. Since 1965 when she became sexually mature she has produced a new pink swelling, more or less regularly, every thirty days or so. Thus for more than twenty years she has been almost continually available to the Kasekela males for the gratification of their sexual desires. During that time her over-worked sex skin has swelled and shrivelled no less than two hundred and fifty times. By contrast, Fifi swelled only thirty times during the twenty-year period following her first pinkness. As a result of this repeated and unnatural stretching Gigi's swelling today is huge when compared with those of other Gombe females.

  Right from the start Gigi radiated sex appeal. Time and again she has been the nucleus of large and excited sexual gatherings, surrounded by most of the males of her community. And once the adult males have gathered together, drawn by the magnetic presence of a sexually popular female, they are far more likely to move out to peripheral areas of their territory to patrol the boundaries. Thus Gigi's magnificent swelling has, time and again, served as a banner to rally the Kasekela males, encouraging them to perform valiant deeds in the protection and expansion of their territory.

  In one respect Gigi's sexual popularity is hard to understand, since she often pulls away from her male partners before the completion of the sexual act. And she has been doing this for twenty-odd years. I assume that the males find such behaviour irritating, as well as frustrating, but it has never seemed to dampen their ardour. There are times, too, when Gigi is extremely reluctant to comply with the sexual demands of a male and on these occasions her suitors are often remarkably patient. I remember once when Figan was trying to mate with her. Gigi, who was reclining on the ground, her provocative swelling very much in evidence, totally ignored her suitor's vigorous shaking of branches. After a few moments Figan, his hair (among other things) fully erect, stood upright and swayed branches wildly above her recumbent form. Gigi, barely glancing at him, rolled over and lay on her back, staring at the canopy above. Nonplussed, Figan sat down for a moment, occasionally shaking a small branch in a jerky, irritated sort of way as, presumably, he wondered what to do next. Gradually his branching got more violent, his hair (if it were possible) bristled even more, and there was a wild gleam in his eye that, I thought, boded ill for Gigi if she continued to ignore him much longer. Apparently Gigi got the same message, for she suddenly rose, approached Figan and crouch-presented before him. But no sooner had he begun to copulate than she pulled away, screaming, and rushed off.

  She then lay down again about ten yards from Figan, who stayed where she had left him. Presently he lay down too, and all was quiet for an hour. Then he approached Gigi again—and once more she utterly ignored his courtship. Not until he repeated his wild, branch-shaking swagger around her did she finally get up and crouch for him—but yet again she almost immediately pulled away and ran off. This time, tight-lipped and scowling, Figan followed and his courtship was a clear-cut threat. She responded quickly, but the outcome was the same. Except that Figan, thoroughly stimulated, finally completed the sexual act—into the air.

  There can be no other Kasekela female who has been led off on so many consortships as Gigi. Time and again she has followed different males, usually reluctantly, to the various peripheral parts of the home range that they preferred. She has been, over the past twenty years, on forty-three such excursions that we know of: the figure is probably higher. In terms of evolutionary biology the males were "wasting their time" since no measure of reproductive success for either partner could possibly result. However, the males did not know this, so they competed for her favours in all good faith. Moreover, there is little doubt in my mind that even if they had understood they would still have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the continued presence of Gigi in their midst.

  In one other way Gigi has served the males of her community: she has helped the infants and juveniles to learn the ins and outs of the sexual act. Male chimpanzees are sexually very precocious. From the time they can totter, they show great interest in pink swellings, and they "mate" pink females zealously throughout their childhood. Of course this is just practice—a male is unlikely to be able to father a child until he is between thirteen and fifteen years of age. But it sometimes seems that Gigi prefers the small sexual advances of infant and juvenile suitors to the more vigorous demands of the adult males. Often she crouches accommodatingly as soon as one of these youngsters starts to court her—approaching with his tiny erection and imperiously shaking a little twig. Indeed, she sometimes actively solicits the sexual attentions of youngsters. Once, for example, she suddenly went over to where Prof and Wilkie were playing a boisterous game, seized Prof by his elbow, pulled him from his playmate, and then, still maintaining her grip, crouched before him. Only when he complied with her wishes did she release him.

  At other times she ignores these youngsters completely, however much they persist—and in such matters infants can be surprisingly single-minded for periods of half an hour or more. I remember one long journey when Gigi, fully swollen, was followed by three petulant juvenile suitors. Each of them was quietly whimpering to himself as he followed behind that tempting pink bottom. Each of them approached and shook branches every time she stopped. And each of them was utterly ignored by Gigi.

  In 1976 Gigi, for some reason, began to cycle less regularly and, at the same time, became for a while much less popular with the adult males. This may have been due to some hormonal upheaval—they responded to her much as though she was a female showing cycles during pregnancy. And then, one day almost two years later, I happened to be with her when she passed a strange blob of bloody, jelly-like tissue. I preserved it (in whisky, which was the only spirit I had at the time) and sent it to a reproductive biologist. He identified it as a uterine cast such as may, occasi
onally, be shed (painfully) by human females. What this meant, in Gigi's case, is not known, but afterwards she became slightly more popular with the males—provided there was not too much competition from other females.

  With the passing of the years Gigi has become increasingly irritable and unpredictable in her sexual interactions with the younger males. She still, for the most part, responds to their courtship overtures, but often she turns and hits or even attacks them once they start to mate her. There was one occasion when she turned on Prof as he copulated with her in a tree and pushed him so hard that he fell to the rocky ground some twenty feet below. After sitting motionless for a few moments, Prof threw a violent tantrum—to which no one, certainly not Gigi, paid the slightest attention. Incidents of this sort have become ever more frequent and it is scarcely surprising that the young males are less eager than before to mate with this irascible female. What makes it so puzzling is that Gigi seems as keen as ever to initiate the sexual act. Again and again she will approach a youthful suitor and solicit copulation. If he avoids her, as is often the case, she usually follows him and tries again. Once, for example, Gigi, fully pink, joined infant Beethoven and his sister, Harmony, as they fed in a tree. Gigi immediately climbed towards Beethoven, but he avoided her. After a few moments she approached once more, but he jumped into another tree. She followed him through that tree and into a third. Then she stopped and began to feed and I thought she had given up. Not a bit of it. After ten minutes or so she climbed over to him yet again, and yet again he avoided her. Gigi pursued a short way, then began to feed once more—until the siblings climbed down and started a grooming session. Gigi followed them at once and hurried after Beethoven when he tried to hide on the far side of his sister. When he then climbed rapidly up a tall tree she sat below, occasionally gazing up at him—wistfully one presumes—for the next thirty minutes. The moment he climbed down she once again approached and crouched, offering him her swelling. And this time her persistence was rewarded—one hour and twenty-five minutes after her first solicitation. That was one time when Gigi neither hit nor threatened her partner!

  It is not only infants who are sometimes intimidated by Gigi. Even adolescents are often nervous. For Gigi has become a strong and aggressive female, quite capable of putting most adolescent males firmly in their places. Although it is a fact that male chimpanzees attack more often than females do, this does not mean that there is not an aggressive streak in females. Indeed, many adolescent females go through a highly belligerent phase. But that is before they give birth. Once a female is faced with the task of nurturing a small infant, it ill behoves her to go around swaggering and fighting—she would be putting her precious baby at risk. Thus, most females become less overtly aggressive when they reach maturity.

  For Gigi, however, the situation was different, for no infant arrived to temper her naturally assertive, dominant personality. In many ways she now behaves like a male. She has a vigorous charging display, and she displays often. She stands up to threats that most females would avoid and so frequently becomes involved in fights. She represents the ultimate challenge to young males who are desperately trying to dominate the community females. She sometimes accompanies the males on their boundary patrols, not only when she is fully pink but even when she is quite flat. And whereas other females (who only go when they are pink) typically trail along in the wake of the males, Gigi often plays an active role in patrolling activities. She has joined the males in the destruction of the nests of strangers, and in the attacks on females from neighbouring communities. She even took part in some of the brutal assaults during the war with the Kahama chimpanzees.

  Gigi has an outstanding hunting record. She takes part in more hunts than other females and has a greater success in capturing prey. She is even able to maintain possession of a kill in the face of vigorous efforts by adult males to steal it. There was, for example, the time when she captured a juvenile colobus monkey, and hung on to the carcass like grim death despite three violent attacks by Satan and one by Sherry. During these struggles she fell to the ground three times, locked in combat with Satan, yet managed to escape and, still clutching her prey, rushed up another tree. When Sherry then seized her kill in both hands and pulled as hard as he could, she continued to maintain her grip, even when Satan displayed vigorously around and over both of them. Eventually Sherry managed to tear off the rump and hind legs. Then Gigi was finally able to eat in peace because Satan, rather than continue to try for a share of her meat, opted to follow Sherry and take some of his!

  I think the males truly respect this tough and dauntless female, who has been such an integral member of their society for so long. And so, despite her idiosyncratic sexual behaviours, Gigi enjoys relaxed relationships with them and is a favourite grooming partner. Like the males she spends much time in noisy excited social gatherings, whereas most females, unless they are pink, prefer a more peaceful existence, choosing to spend days at a time with family members only and joining the larger groups merely for periodic spells of stimulation. Gigi, again like the males, spends a good deal of time in absolute solitude, whereas other females, after they have had their first baby (provided it lives) never experience real solitude again. For the rest of their lives they are always with one or more of their offspring. Having been a mother myself, I know full well that even a small baby can provide a sense of real companionship.

  And so Gigi, in many ways, stands alone. For, despite her many male-like characteristics she is not a male: she has never been, and she never will be, fully integrated into the camaraderie of male society. Nor can she find companionship and comfort, as other females do, within a family. Of course she was part of a family once, but that was long ago. Even when I first knew her, when she was about eight years old, her only relative appeared to be the young male Willy Wally. And he moved away to the south with the Kahama males when the community divided.

  With no infant of her own, no opportunity to create, for herself, that special group of close friends, a family unit, Gigi has instead cultivated a number of special relationships with a succession of infants. She became attracted to each of them when the infant was about one and a half years old—the age at which their mothers gave them relative freedom to interact with individuals outside the family circle. When she was with the family, and when the mother permitted it, Gigi would groom, play with or carry her current favourite. She helped to protect the infants too—she was particularly zealous in breaking up play sessions with older youngsters when they began to get too rough. In effect she assumed the role, for one infant after another, of the traditional maiden aunt.

  Those were relatively transient relationships, for as the youngsters, at around two and a half years, became increasingly boisterous and self-willed, Gigi lost interest. But more recently she developed some relationships of a more enduring nature—not only with two infants, brother and sister, but also with their mother, Patti. Gigi and Patti spent a fair amount of time together even before Patti gave birth, and afterwards, because of certain inadequacies in Patti's maternal skills, Gigi, for the first time ever, was able to make a really significant contribution to the raising of a child.

  Patti immigrated into the Kasekela community in the early seventies, so we knew nothing of her early life. In 1977 her first pregnancy ended in mystery: either the baby was stillborn, or it died during the first few days of its life. At that time Passion and Pom were still hunting newborn infants and Patti's may well have been one of their victims. About a year later she gave birth to an apparently healthy male infant who died as a result of maternal incompetence, for Patti had absolutely no idea how to look after a baby. She did support him with one hand during travel, but sometimes it was his rump that she pressed to her belly so that his head bump, bump, bumped along the ground. Once she trailed him after her by one leg. Sometimes, as she sat feeding, she reached forward for a fruit in such a way that he was crushed between her thigh and belly and made strange high-pitched noises of distress. It was hardly surp
rising that the baby was dead before the week was out.

  A year later Patti gave birth again, to another male whom we named Tapit. Although she was a better mother this time around (which was hardly difficult!) I believe that her infant owed his survival as much to his own tenacity and toughness of spirit as to Patti's care. There were so many times when it seemed that she simply didn't know how to deal with him. Often, for example, she failed to cradle him properly, and then, as she sat grooming or feeding, he would fall back onto the ground. She would let him lie there until he whimpered, whereupon she would quickly gather him up. Once she leapt from one tree to another with Tapit held back to front, his head facing her rear. He screamed loudly during this performance, and when she reached her destination she seemed concerned and sat cradling him—but he was still upside-down, with his feet under her chin and his head in her groin. During his early months incidents of this sort were quite commonplace and Tapit was often to be heard screaming as his mother travelled through the trees.

  Because he was cradled so inappropriately, Tapit often had difficulty in reaching Patti's nipples. And in this, most basic of his needs, Patti seemed quite unable to help. As he nuzzled frantically in the wrong place he would whimper, then scream, and though she often looked down at him and watched him intently she almost never adjusted his position to make things easy for him. Even when he finally located a nipple and began to nurse, it was ten to one that a sudden movement of hers would jerk the hard-won reward from his mouth.