You can watch a video online, narrated by the great primatologist Jane Goodall, who, as with so many chimpanzee behaviors, was the first to observe these rituals. It’s quite a show: An adult male approaches via the riverbed with a slow, rhythmic gait, so unlike yet like our own. He throws rocks and tree branches into the falls, then catches a vine and swings above them. Finally he sits on a rock in the stream, head resting on forearms, and watches the water go by.
These performances happen several times each year, but they do not have any obvious utilitarian purpose, even as social displays; though groups of chimps sometimes participate, often it’s just a solitary individual. Given how easily a chimp might slip on the rocks, it’s quite risky. Chimps also can’t swim, and typically avoid running water. Which raises the question: What are these chimps thinking? [...]
This would seem to fit with what’s known of monkey cognition: They do think in complex ways, and certainly possess some elaborate interpersonal rituals, but they’re not quite so abstract-minded as chimps. Outside of primates, though, plenty of species have the mental potential. Quite a few cetaceans, for example, including orcas with their remarkable tribal greeting ceremonies. Ditto elephants and their burial rites. Again: we can’t know what they’re thinking, but it’s unscientific not to consider the possibility. “Perhaps numerous animals engage in these rituals,” writes ethologist Marc Bekoff in The Emotional Lives of Animals, “but we haven’t been lucky enough to see them.”
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