lew (12/15/82)
The Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, has a new facility called "Tropic World" which includes a naturalistic environment for a gorilla family group. While there recently, I observed a gorilla mother make the following actions: When her baby would start to descend a vine over a ten foot precipice, she would calmly but quickly take hold of it and place it about twenty feet away. She did this about five times, seemingly ignoring the baby between times. She finally escalated her preventative measures by displacing the baby even further away - about forty feet. When the baby made its way over to the precipice again, the mother went to the bottom of the precipice by a side route and "spotted" for the baby as it descended, much in the manner of a gym coach training a youngster for a new exercise. Aside from the shameful comparison that most human parents would make by their actions in similar situations, I believe that any serious evaluation of the mother's behavior would have to credit her with a fully intelligent awareness of the situation. Language is not the only standard of intelligence! Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew P.S. Chimps are not monkeys.