Nanny ship

This morning’s trek was fabulous. And not only because of the large number of chimpanzees that we saw. It was the group activity that we found to be so amusing!

Today Fatuma’s 2,5 year old daughter spend some quality learning time with her nanny of choice; Gwekulo. The single most popular nanny in the group, Gwekulo is liked by both babies and mothers. Sadly she has never been able to conceive children herself.

Gwekulo with Fatuma's baby sitting on the tree.

Now 50 years old, Gwekulo certainly tries to make up for that by teaching valuable life lessons to infants and spending plenty of time with them.

The lesson of this morning was how to impress other chimpanzees. This was done by pounding the back leg on the tree as loudly as possible. Although not totally visible on the picture, the scene was hilarious. As the baby tried to pound her little leg on the tree, Gwekulo watched her in satisfaction.

Fatuma's baby raising her right leg to start pounding the tree in order to impress others... 

The other lesson was pant hooting. Though chimpanzees panthoot for many reasons, this morning’s lesson focused on paying respect to higher ranking individuals. 

To the right Gwekulo is pant hooting in a submissive way. The baby is paying attention and trying vocalize too...

As alpha male Primus approached the group, Gwekulo showed how to panthoot as a form of subsmission.

Gwekulo moving forward towards Primus as she keep pant hooting.

With the baby paying attention to every detail, you can see how she makes the effort to move forward on the tree branch, trying to pant hoot in the meantime.

And after Gwekulo also Fatauma's baby move forward trying to show respect...

The scenes of this morning were totally amusing and very interesting to see - we hope to catch some more nanny ship lessons in the coming week.