Well blow me down! Half a world away from the wiley baboons of the Cape Peninsula, (South Africa) here in South East Asia, Cambodia – the Angkor Wat troop of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) have similar tactics, grabbing an item and waiting for the gullible human to offer decoy food in exchange.
Co-conspirators waiting for the right break…..Here they are: the gullible people, who dished out the biscuits and note the sunglasses worn by Mr. “Oh, I am so cute, you will feed me….”, says Little Miss Long-Tail.
” Got the glasses, now what are you going to do to get them back……?”
“Let’s have a bit of a play …..”
“Maybe a dip in the water….?”
“There now, here’s the biscuit …. give me the glasses?”“The handover; got the glasses, here have some more food…..”
There you have it. Feed wild animals, habituate them to receiving food, they become pests and then they “steal” items in exchange for food. Clever creatures.
Baboons play an integral role in the ecology of Fynbos vegetation and their diet is so varied within this plant system that it may be easier to note what they don’t eat rather than the extensive list of what they do! I’ve been fortunate to sight a couple of the troops recently in the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve while out cycling and have been able to observe their foraging. After good rainfall this winter the vegetation is green and succulent and the animals are in good condition. The temperature has also been colder than usual so it’s interesting to note their thick ‘winter coats’.
A confident posture and bearing marks this alpha male. He is in peak condition and commands respect from the ranks.Layers of thick hair serve as protection from winter’s chilly temperature.Foraging on the fruit of wild olive trees, Olea europaea subsp. africana.They tuck in with gusto feasting on the ripe black olives. I too sampled a couple curious to test the flavour. Pleasant enough, the initial bite was grape-like, and then with a bitter after taste.
It was most surprising to see this plant on the menu: Cullumia squarrosa, or snake thistle. It’s a prickly little number! I had in the past seen them eating the flowers, but not the the needle like leaves. Reading a description of the plant, the inner involucral bracts are without prickles and I noted that they were only plucking off the top most growth.They certainly get a good portion of fiber in their diet. This plant is endemic to the Cape Peninsula – a coastal bush found only in the extreme south western Cape.
The Atlantic Sea is rough and powerful on the western side of the Cape Peninsula coastline and it speaks of failed and doomed fishing exploitation. Evidence of discarded fishing gear is everywhere, fishing nets, bundles of rope, plastic, gut lines, anchor weights, lobster traps. Plastic detritus is in fabric of the sand, in the dried kelp line, between the rocks. How did we get to this tipping point, how can we ever reverse the damage? The despondency of it all is so overwhelming that it makes me want to curl up and weep.
In the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve there is a coastal path along the western side of Cape Point to Olifantsbos. It is the wild side, a place of sea birds, baboons, seals. There is no way to get close to this wild Cape fur seal and free it of from that line of rope so deeply embedded into its neck.
Some visual images pack a visceral punch. In June over a period of just one fortnight, three whale entanglements in octopus trap lines occurred here in False Bay. Two Bryde whales died; a third, a juvenile humpback survived after being cut free. Photographs showed horrific injuries where ropes cut deeply into flesh and death by drowning, caused bloating. That’s not the worst of it, other whales prior to this had also died through entanglement. A tally of 8 apparently in recent years, but no one knows for sure. Activists sparked outrage over social media and Allison Thomson organised a petition addressed to our Minister of Environmental Affairs, Fisheries and Forestry to stop the octopus fishing. A temporary suspension was called while further assessment could be undertaken in this an “experimental” fishery. Without any scientific data to back up the sustainable viability of the octopus population an “exploratory” license was initially issued for a five year period for a catch of up to 50 tonnes per year. The experiment was to have been monitored by the Department, but apparently has now been running for seventeen years without any scientific oversight. How can the trophic impact to the food web be accurately assessed when one specie is targeted? Do the predators which hunt octopus – eg. seals, or otters or sharks prey instead on penguins? Have the shark species move off somewhere else? No one knows for sure what the knock on effect is on other marine species.
Through the years we have observed the octopus fishing boats laying out the gear – multiple traps fixed over long lines set with bouys and anchors. There are at least twenty-two traps over a kilometer of line attached each end to a bouy. The traps lie on the ocean bed and the submerged lines are supposed to be heavy enough to sink except for section up to the bouys. When the catch is retrieved all the traps need to be pulled up on deck to be emptied and then returned to the water and the gear reset along the edge of the kelp forests, and in some areas quite close to marine reserves.
Meanwhile apparently all the gear has been removed after the license was suspended and the officials debate the ethics of killing whale species over the economic validity of the industry.
Humpbacked whale carcass washed onto the rocky coast near Buffels Bay, Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.
Winter at the Cape Peninsula can be petulant: wild and stormy with the Atlantic sea crashing in with dramatic drift and flow contrasted with the calmest sheerest-whisper-of-wind days. Returning after months away traveling to tropical countries, this for me is the best time of year to be in Cape Town. Though home is in the southern peninsula – away from the city lights where nature shows her untrammeled face. I have written quite a few posts on Olifantsbos Beach, here , here and here. This working beach with it’s natural processes attracts diners to a veritable feast. Seabirds flock here and recently i visited hoping to photograph the African Black Oystercatchers but instead got totally distracted by a gaggle of Egyptian geese in mating mode. Their strut and ‘necking’ stole the show. Then the ostriches showed up, the buck and the baboons …..
Matching the colours of the kelp, Egyptian Geese gather into a gaggle.The Egyptian geese spectacle.
A wobble of ostrich.
This Chacma baboon troop is one of the wild troops living within the park. There are only two troops which aren’t habituated to raiding anthropogenic food sources and forage only in natural fynbos and the rock pools for shellfish. The rest of the troops are under threat one way or another, either through being attracted into residential areas or through poor conservation practice. Generally there is an overlap into their home range where human recreational facilities feature vineyards, restaurants, picnic and campsites. If baboons know they are going to get easy rewards and when residents and property owners do not secure garbage bins or adequately baboon-proof their properties / homes, baboon raiding patterns become entrenched as they will return over and over. If they learn to rely on human food it voids their inherent role in the ecosystem and disrupts their social relationships. They can become aggressive and when they have to be euthanised there is much outrage often from the humans who are the cause of the entrenched raiding patterns in the first place. While SANParks recognise the ‘res nullius’ free roaming status of baboons, there is a lack of law enforcement for fining people who feed the animals nor are there enforceable by-laws for securing garbage so ultimately it’s the baboons which suffer the consequences.
