When Species Collide

Humans have the ability to alter their environment like no other living creature. In the process we invade the territories given over to the other creatures we share space with, and often with unanticipated consequences. There are the many instances of people bemoaning the fact that they've discovered rats, squirrels, mice and even raccoons in their attics. Or the presence of skunks living under the porch of a house discovered and presenting a true dilemma of avoidance. And it slowly occurs to them how cleverly opportune, and flintily determined these creatures can be.

People living in the country see their small pets somehow mysteriously disappear, and then discover the presence of coyotes having made themselves comfortable in the area. And then, of course, those more rustic dwellers, people like Chris Czajkowski, who described in excruciating detail in her book Nuk Tessli "The Life of a Wilderness Dweller" what it's like to discover that, while out trekking with her dogs, a bear has ransacked her isolated cabin and its contents.

Then there's the newly-distributed story of an Australian family waking one dark night to discover that a kangaroo had somehow disoriented itself to the point where it smashed through the out-of-doors into the window of the parents' bedroom. Forewarned by their dog, they nonetheless had no reason to anticipate this neighbourly drop-by, and were none too pleased when the glass-injured animal began bouncing on their bed. With them, and their little daughter under the blankets.

When the frightened animal made its way to their son's bedroom, the heroic man of the house grappled with the frantic-to-escape and bleeding creature. It was finally persuaded to decamp, leaving its bloody trail throughout the house, and with the children's father sporting scratches on his legs and buttocks. Who knows what the moral of that story might be? Listen to your dog, if his name is Vronsky?

And now, in Sweden, researchers have finally come to the studied realization that chimpanzees, held in captivity, can become somewhat aggrieved at their prisoner status, and don't exactly appreciate being gawked at, when zoo-goers are permitted entry. Santino, a male chimpanzee whose misfortune it is to live at the Furuvik Zoo, pre-planned his futile revenge on those who visit to torment him with their unwanted taunts and awed reaction when he pelts them with ... feces, stones.

He has been observed to calmly gather stones in preparation for the daily incursion of zoo-gawkers. When confronted by the people who gather to view their primal ancestor, he becomes increasingly agitated, then begins pelting them with the assembled stones. In the absence of stones he has been observed to carefully gather dried turds. The association must seem appropriate to his primate mind.