How the Apes Crossed the Road
All the discussion about giving Great Apes new rights in Spain reminded me of an interesting “traffic study” of sorts that had been done involving chimpanzees — with whom we share 98% of our DNA — in Guinea.
In a fascinating report, a group of researchers set out to learn how a recently enlarged road, running through the territory of a 12-strong chimp colony, might have changed their behavior. After all, roads have been known to have had quite negative effects on wildlife. Interestingly, though, the chimps seemed to “draw on a phylogenetically-old principle of protective socio-spatial organization to produce flexible, adaptive and cooperative responses to risk.” In other words, they learned to cross the road.
As this delightful video clip shows, the chimps have a well-established routine, with alpha males acting as crossing guards of sorts, scanning both ways and herding their charges across. Apparently, the chimps are not afraid of humans but are less likely to come near the road when vehicles are present. In the short term, this is a good survival strategy (if traffic grows it’s easy to imagine problems developing for the chimps.)
When I contacted Kimberley Hockings, a researcher at the University of Stirling and one of the authors of the study, she noted that in some 30 years the researchers “had never observed any chimpanzee fatalities on the road.” On the large road, she noted, “the chimpanzees tended to cross either immediately if no vehicles or people were present, or on occasion would wait up to around 9 minutes if they perceived the degree of risk to be high.” As with human pedestrians, females tended to take fewer risks than males.
If the apes have managed this adaptation to modern circumstances (and will the Spanish charter lead to their being given rights as pedestrians), I imagine it’s only a matter of time before one of them will be able to say, a la Ratso Rizzo upon being encroached upon in the crosswalk, “hey, I’m walking here!”
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Pedestrians, Traffic Wonkery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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January 20th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Nice piece, but what are these rights that have been given to Great Apes by the Spanish Government?
January 23rd, 2009 at 8:05 am
Just another note: perhaps some of these Apes are also driving in Spain, read the article and you’ll get the gist:
Driving in Spain and the Trouble With Spanish Drivers
Driving in Spain is a lot of the time pleasurable, smooth new roads with few fellow drivers to look out for, allowing one to take in the beautiful, changing countryside, but at other times it can also be a nerve racking experience, navigating bone shaking routes where you try not to blink in case you cause irreparable damage to body and machinery!
In recent times the Spanish have invested heavily on new toll motorways with the intention of removing traffic from the heavily congested national routes that seem to run through every town no matter where you are heading.
Unfortunately, it seems that the average Spanish motorist resents having to pay for his driving pleasures and continues to use the national routes therefore, allowing the more affluent to benefit from the faster, smoother and obviously emptier toll roads thus avoiding a lot of the Spanish drivers.
Spanish drivers are by no means the worst in the world but they do have many habits and mannerisms that will make you both cringe and chuckle; they possess the same love of the horn embraced by so many other nations’ drivers, (the Italians spring to mind). But their use of the horn doesn’t seem to be for notifying another driver of a serious driving infringement but instead to remind people that they are sitting at a red light or that Real Madrid or Barcelona or whoever they have pledged their allegiance to, has just scored a goal!
I think most drivers would agree that round-a-bouts are quite simple to use, but they seem to be a complete mystery to many Spanish drivers, on many occasions, a happy- go- lucky Spaniard in the right hand lane will decide that he is turning left, often with no indication, the result of this being the screeching of quickly applied foot brakes from vehicles traveling in the left hand lane with the intention of carrying straight on. Amazingly though, this type of manoeuvre, as mentioned earlier, is apparently deemed quite acceptable by the average Spanish motorist and the barrage of horns one would expect is never heard.
The Spanish have rather a crazy way of overtaking also, or at least the speed merchants amongst them do. Many of the major roads in Spain are dual carriageways and at times you will need to overtake slower traffic. It is at this time that you are likely to encounter the presence of ‘loco’ driver. You will go through your overtaking procedure - mirror, indicate, manoeuvre -and then, as if by magic, a quick look in your rear view mirror reveals that you have a car practically riding your bumper with its left indicator flashing like there’s no tomorrow. My advice, pull in as soon as humanly possible and let the lunatic past! Strangely enough this is also deemed acceptable practice!
I would say on the whole though, having driven in the UK, driving in Spain is vastly more enjoyable with far fewer vehicles and far less road rage and once you get used to the quirkiness of the Spanish driver (for want of a better description) it is a lot safer as well.
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