We spent the weekend in a small, steep valley bisected by the Spekboom River high in the northern Drakensberg Range. The river holds trout and the valley is home to a sizeable population of Chacma Baboons, a subset of the general categorization of Savannah Baboons found throughout the continent. There were about 50 individuals that meandered across the hillside facing our cabin's porch each day. Once a young kudu buck sauntered through the troop. The river dipped between our porch and their tree perches and we were all mutually fascinated by the view. Every morning (they are diurnal), a small group clambered down the hillside to the river while others climbed trees and ate leaves and berries and barked to each other and at us. I would do the same - get my coffee, climb to the porch's top railing, stare and bark back. The three pictured above were particularly interested and stayed to watch me watch them. It was like people-spying at the airport. For anyone who has viewed primates in the wild, they have poses and movements that are eerily human. Why this surprises us (or disconcerts some) is odd - probably because of our learned impression that nature is distinctly separate from us - but it's undeniably fascinating to watch them cross arms, dangle a hand over their knee, scratch their chest - all while staring at you mimicking them (leaves and berries were their cup of coffee). They are omnivorous animals but a particularly interesting piece of this troop's diet is their intake of crawdads. Scattered along the riverbanks are the cracked shells of hundreds of crayfish that the baboons catch in the river and eat. Their cousins in the Cape Town area - 2,000 kilometers away - forage for crustaceans when the Atlantic Ocean recedes at low tide. And then there's us: prowling the riverbanks or seashore with a stick and a fly and an old instinct now called sport, all of us staring at each other with some form of amazed recognition. What's carried on the gaze in both directions is evolution.
