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THE HARD LIFE OF A DOMINANT
THE HARD LIFE OF A DOMINANT
Samantha (10 years old), four-month pregnant, starts to moan, rising the volume and changing to fear screams. Emilio (8 years old) is coming back through the tunnel to the main enclosure, after a lot of hours in the open area with the electric fence. Guga (9 years old), father of the future child, is late to come back. Emilio enters the enclosure and a mess of screams and cries explodes. Emilio assaults Samantha. Dolores (12 years old), her sister, defends her. From outside we try to isolate Samantha in a bed room and Emilio chases her. Guga comes back in a hurry and furiously looks for Emilio, who runs away and tries to shake off the dominant's punches. He manages to do it in part, running to the open area.
Ten minutes later, in the bed room in a very hot day, Guga, Samantha and Dolores were laid down in the cold tile floor. Emilio enters - he was already calm - and lies down together with the others. Guga examines him to check if he had punched him too much, Dolores gives a cuddle and Samantha, the wanted one, nudges his leg. The peace had come back to the primates.
Minutes later Billy (5 years old), the youngest of the group, who is still a baby, enters, but Samantha does not want him to. Dolores, who is his adopted mother, fights for him to enter and Billy goes wherever Guga hugs him. Guga examines him and let he lies down together. The peace is interrupted some minutes later, when Carolina (6 years old), Billy's sister, arrives. Now the ones who do not enjoy the arrival are the females, who are jealous of her. She is not a teenager yet, but she already gets along very well with the males and Guga protects her. Dolores and Samantha try to intimidate and to banish her. Cláudio (7 years old), the third male and already a teenager, defends her and Guga gets out and allow her to enter.
In half an hour, Guga, the dominant, who had never been trained to be so, had to manage a multiple conflict of personalities and vanities. Guga wins a yogurt bottle and drinks a lot of it. Claudio asks for a nip and Guga gives him the rest of the bottle. Later, one liter of bottled juice is offered to him and he lets Emilio take it. He receives a weekly magazine, takes a look and Carolina asks to leaf through it, and he lets her take it.
Those who still think that being a dominant is a good business must put themselves in Guga's place for at least 24 hours, and maybe they would resign the position. Everyone in this chimpanzee group is an orphan. Except for Dolores, who lived in a circus for eight years, all of them are in the sanctuary since they were babies and grew up together. Today Guga is the dominant, he copulates with Dolores and Samantha, but allows the other males to do it too. Today he protects Samantha, as long as he knows she is pregnant and should not suffer with the males' harassment. During the morning, the three teenage males stay out of the main enclosure, in a fence area of 3 thousand square meters, where they see the daily routine in the sanctuary and have access to the area called as School. The three females and Billy, who protects his sister Carolina from the anger of the two sisters Samantha and Dolores, stay in the enclosure.
Guga has learnt one thing: to be a dominant, he must be tolerant and only uses force in extreme situations, to put order. He has to manage the vanities, tastes and preferences of all of them, pleasing the others whenever it is possible. This results in stress and since he became a teenager and won the responsibility of command the group, he started to pull out hair of his arms and legs, which gives him a weird appearance, different from the rest of the group. But this practice allows him to concentrate in himself and to forget, for a few minutes, to manage a so diverse group, with so varied behaviors.
Sometimes we sit with Guga, in the calm of the School, and he comes to do grooming in me, like a demonstration of care of a son towards his father. And I remember when he was an innocent baby, with no duties and who played all the time. And today, when he is not 10 years old yet, he has to lead a team that becomes more complicated each day that passes. "This is the hard life, my son, of a dominant", I whisper to him and know that he understands me.
Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International
Photo: Guga, EmÃlio, Cláudio, Billy Jr, Carolina, Samantha and Dolores
