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c ame as a shock. The baby hadn't been sick. Fossey couldn't
understand what had happened to it. The naturalist and her aides
hunted through the forest, looking for the remains of the body,
expecting to find it in one of the spots where the gorilla group had
fought with a rival band. But Fossey found no corpse whatsoever at
the battle sites.
Finally, acting on a hunch, Fossey and her African helpers
collected all of the dung the gorillas had left during the previous days.
After all their years following this group the researchers were able to
identify which dung came from which gorilla. For days the humans
painstakingly sifted through the foul-smelling excrement. Finally,
Fossey found what she'd been looking for-- 133 bone and tooth
fragments from an infant gorilla. Where were these fragments? In the
deposits left by the dominant female and her eight-year-old daughter.21
The mother of the dead baby came from a social level these
female gorilla aristocrats despised. She was an outcast the well-placed
ladies frequently mocked and bullied. Her presence simply could not
be tolerated in proper company. Her child was beneath contempt.
Fossey concluded that the head female and her daughter had attacked
the infant, killed it, and eaten it.22
There was more than mere cruelty behind this murder of a
helpless baby. Effie, the aristocratic female who had apparently led the
infant-killing effort, was heavily pregnant. Three days after the brutal
incident, she gave birth to a baby of her own. Effie had acted like the
ambitious wife in a harem who fights to eliminate the children of her
rivals. Through infanticide, she had become the only female with four
children in the group at one time. She had ensured that she and her
brood would be the tribe's ruling class. By doing so, she had turned
the entire group into a support mechanism for her own brood.
Effie was very much like Livia, the most powerful woman of
Rome in the days a little less than two thousand years ago when that
city was reaching the peak of imperial power. According to Robert
Graves' careful reconstruction in I, Claudius, Livia--like Effie--was one
<< < GO > >>
10
10
10
c ame as a shock. The baby hadn't been sick. Fossey couldn't
understand what had happened to it. The naturalist and her aides
hunted through the forest, looking for the remains of the body,
expecting to find it in one of the spots where the gorilla group had
fought with a rival band. But Fossey found no corpse whatsoever at
the battle sites.
Finally, acting on a hunch, Fossey and her African helpers
collected all of the dung the gorillas had left during the previous days.
After all their years following this group the researchers were able to
identify which dung came from which gorilla. For days the humans
painstakingly sifted through the foul-smelling excrement. Finally,
Fossey found what she'd been looking for-- 133 bone and tooth
fragments from an infant gorilla. Where were these fragments? In the
deposits left by the dominant female and her eight-year-old daughter.21
The mother of the dead baby came from a social level these
female gorilla aristocrats despised. She was an outcast the well-placed
ladies frequently mocked and bullied. Her presence simply could not
be tolerated in proper company. Her child was beneath contempt.
Fossey concluded that the head female and her daughter had attacked
the infant, killed it, and eaten it.22
There was more than mere cruelty behind this murder of a
helpless baby. Effie, the aristocratic female who had apparently led the
infant-killing effort, was heavily pregnant. Three days after the brutal
incident, she gave birth to a baby of her own. Effie had acted like the
ambitious wife in a harem who fights to eliminate the children of her
rivals. Through infanticide, she had become the only female with four
children in the group at one time. She had ensured that she and her
brood would be the tribe's ruling class. By doing so, she had turned
the entire group into a support mechanism for her own brood.
Effie was very much like Livia, the most powerful woman of
Rome in the days a little less than two thousand years ago when that
city was reaching the peak of imperial power. According to Robert
Graves' careful reconstruction in I, Claudius, Livia--like Effie--was one
<< < GO > >>