Primates with Guns and Rulers

Or how to stop playing the human supremacy game

An adventure in primate feeding

One time in India, the family whose car I was passengering in stopped on a winding mountain road. We were driving down from the famous Neelkanth temple in Uttarakhand.

The family got out of the car and went around back to open the trunk.

I watched as they emerged with large plastic bags full of food scraps and dumped the scraps in the middle of the road.

Everyone scrambled back into the car.

We didn’t speak a common language. So I was left to guess what was happening. It seemed that they were making some kind of offering. But to whom?

We all waited expectantly.

After a couple of minutes, a dozen or so monkeys dropped down out of the trees onto the tarmac.

They raced toward the mounds of semi-decayed food. What ensued could have been a parody of human greed. Except it wasn’t a parody; it was just what primates do.

I watched with fascination as frenetic monkeys stuffed their mouths with food without chewing or swallowing — stuffing and stuffing in maniacal attempts to get it all for themselves and leave as little as possible for their…