Wife's Feed and Monkey Dynamics in the Jungle - Must Read

Our last trip to Bandhavgarh (April 2006) was another learning experience. It is amazing how in spite of the fact that this was our sixth trip in just over a year, there is always something new to learn about the jungle and its inhabitants. While we were on a safari ride into the jungle, Dhruv - our friend and resident naturalist gave us an insight into the behaviour of animals.

While driving through, we decided to stop, turn off the car engine and just listen to the sounds of jungle. We stopped near a family of monkeys that to us seemed to be playing and jumping among the trees. That's when Dhruv began explaining what was actually happening. Now monkeys have a hierarchy and follow the system of one alpha male with many females and their babies. The babies are known as black babies (these are very young - infants and still haven't developed their coat of hair and are just black in colour) and the others are the older ones but fully developed adults. The alpha male is easy to spot as he is huge compared to the females.

The alpha male is the guardian of the rest of the group and has to time and again ensure that the rest of his family is safe. All the children in the group are fathered by him.  Every now and then, this group is attacked by a band of monkeys who are all male. They basically try and drive the alpha male away so that they can take over the group. While we sat there watching the group, a band of males were trying to lure the alpha male into a fight. In this case, this case the alpha male emerged the winner. The females had huddled around the black babies forming a protective ring around them. The young males were shaking and screaming in fear and egging their father to do something about the situation.

The alpha male goes chasing the band and drives them away either by fighting them or making sounds that are aggressive. Now in case the alpha male is unable to protect his family and emerges as the loser, he is driven away from the area. He eventually joins another band of male monkeys but this time is of the lowest rank. Meanwhile the females who are taken over are raped by the band of male monkeys into submission and one among them emerges as the leader and drives the rest of the males away, and thus takes over as the new alpha male. And then follows one of the cruelest behaviour in the animal kingdom. The new alpha male kills all the black male babies - the females are spared. And the older male babies either manage to get away and join a band of male monkeys or are killed by the new alpha male. The pregnant females because of the stress caused by the entire episode hang by trees and bang their stomachs against the trees and induce self abortions.

This was a revelation to us and made us look at the monkeys in a completely new light. We can't wait to go back and learn something new about other animals. And we found out on our way out of the park as we passed by one area that we had just missed by less than ten minutes the rarest fight between a bear and a female tiger!