Everyone is very excited and rubber-necking the way people do around a semi-tragedy.  Glitter, a female chimpanzee famous for being the other half of a pair of twins (the other is Golden…can we all agree these are horrible names?), just gave birth.  Unlike baboons who flaunt their reproductive status like the first middle school girl to get boobs, chimps are quite secretive about whether they are pregnant or not.  If a female baboon is ready to conceive her butt gets crazy huge and pink.  If she subsequently succeeds in getting knocked up, her swelling goes down but her butt maintains a rosy red hue that acts as a giant hand wave in the air saying, “I’m PREGNANT!”  Chimps, on the other hand, have noticeable swellings, but will have a few fake ones after they get pregnant, leaving most of the researchers scratching their chins and debating whether she looks bigger than before.  Anyway, there were many who believed Glitter was pregnant but all were surprised to find that she’d popped the little one out last night.

But that’s not the drama.  The drama is Glitter’s mom, Gremlin (seriously, who is naming these animals?).  Gremlin is the fugliest chimp I have ever seen, with a big ol’ dangly lip and a lazy eye.  And she has stolen Glitter’s baby.  A fairly successful mother, Gremlin has an older daughter, Gaia, the twins, an adolescent son, Gimli (a member of The Lord of the Rings naming scheme), and a baby named Gizmo.  Many years back when Gaia had her first child (after helping her mother raise the two twins), Gremlin took the baby, despite the fact that she had a small one of her own.  Without access to the good, fatty milk of it’s real mother, the baby died.  A year or two later, Gaia had her second child.  And Gremlin took it.  And it died.  On the third go-around, though, Gaia read her mom the riot act and managed to keep little Google (I actually think Google paid money for this christening), who is still alive and kicking.  So, to be fair, baby-stealing is kind of Gremlin’s MO.  But now it’s Glitter who’s having to deal with it.

Curious, I hiked out to the site of the drama with a couple other researchers.  There we found a collection of females all a’grooming away.  Soon a large male, Titan, lumbered in and everyone got generally excited before resuming grooming.  The little kids played.  Gremlin groomed and occasionally walked around, cradling her little grandchild who was having trouble hanging on.   To be honest, I expected fireworks.  I expected concerted efforts on Glitter’s part to get her baby back.  I expected angry shouts from her mother as she ran off with the baby.  But instead Glitter seemed almost entirely unaware of the fact that the baby was even hers.  Now, I imagine giving birth is not something one easily forgets, but Glitter seems to have brushed herself off, thought, “Well, that was weird,” and continued on her merry way.  Meanwhile, the weak little baby, possibly premature, is stuck with its crazy grandmother and, unfortunately, probably won’t survive the week.