In Defense of Animals Part 7 doc

To Eat the Laughing Animal

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and insults, of hidden concerns and even considered ethical assessments.

The four nonhuman apes, our closest relatives, mirror our faces and bodies,

our hands and fingers, our fingernails and fingerprints. They make and

use tools, are capable of long-term planning and deliberate deception.

They seem to share our perceptual world. They appear to express some￾thing very much like the human repertoire of emotions. They look into a

mirror and act as if they recognize themselves as individuals, are manifestly

capable of learning symbolic language, share with us several recognizable

expressions and gestures – and they laugh in situations that might cause

us to laugh too.

So people living in the Western tradition have recently come to accept, to a

significant degree, a special bridge of kinship between apes and humans (or

to understand that from the professional biologist’s point of view humans

are actually a fifth member of the ape group). Perhaps it is because of this

recent cultural perception that Westerners are sometimes particularly sur￾prised to learn that the three African apes – chimpanzees, bonobos, and

gorillas – have long been a food source for many people living in Central

Africa’s Congo Basin (a largely forested region claimed by the nations of

Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo,

Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon).

The fact, however, should surprise no one. Around the globe, people

living in or on the edges of the world’s great forests have traditionally taken

the protein offered by wild animals: as true in Asia, Europe, and the Americas

as it is in Africa. Moreover, the exploitation of wild forest animals for food

is really no different from the widespread reliance on seafood, commonly

accepted around the world.

But the African tropical forests are particularly rich in variety and have

provided Central Africans with a very diverse wealth of game species

– collectively known as bushmeat – consumed within a very complex milieu

of traditions, tastes, habits, and cultural preferences and prohibitions. Some

religious prohibitions (notably, the Muslim prohibition against eating

primate meat) and a number of village or tribal traditions have kept apes off

the menu in a scattered patchwork across the continent. Local traditions are

often rationalized according to familiar myths, and in the case of apes these

ancient tales ordinarily evoke the theme of kinship. For example, the Oroko

of southwestern Cameroon consider that, since people are occasionally turned

into chimps, any hunter discovering and sparing a wild chimp will find

the grateful ape has deliberately chased other animals his way. Conversely,

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Dale Peterson

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killing the chimp can cast misfortune onto the hunter’s family. (Neverthe￾less, a dead chimp is still edible food for the Oroko.) The Kouyou of north￾ern Congo traditionally forbade the hunting of at least four species – gorillas,

chimpanzees, leopards, and bongo antelopes – and in the case of the two

apes, that prohibition was based upon their closeness to humans. Likewise,

the Mongandu people of north central Democratic Republic of Congo (former

Zaïre) have always, since anyone can remember, eaten everything in their

forests except for leopards, tree hyraxes, and bonobos. While their neighbors

to the south of the Luo River, the Mongo people, will happily hunt and eat

bonobos, the Mongandu say that bonobos are simply too much like people

to eat. They look human, and when actual humans are not watching, these

animals will even stand upright on their hind legs. (Chimpanzees and

gorillas also sometimes walk upright, but bonobos, in fact, are the ape most

distinguished by this surprising tendency. They will even walk considerable

distances on two legs, often when their hands are full, so the Mongandu

prohibition is based upon good observation and a sensible interpretation.)

And yet the very quality – human resemblance – that places apes on

the prohibited list for some traditions actually lands them on the preferred

list in others. Apes look like humans but possess a superhuman strength.

The combination of human resemblance and superhuman strength may

help explain why apes are, in some places, culturally valued as a food for

ambitious men who would like to acquire the strength, and perhaps also the

supposed virility, of an ape. For this reason, possibly, ape meat is strictly a

man’s meat for the Zime of Cameroon, so one tribe member told me. Baka

villagers in the southeast of that nation once told me the same thing. For the

Ewondo of Cameroon, according to one informant, women can eat gorilla

meat at any time except during pregnancy, out of concern about the effects

such potent fare might have on the unborn child. This important “mascu￾line” meat also turns out to be a special treat sometimes offered to visiting

dignitaries and other powerful men. The recently elected governor of

Cameroon’s Eastern Province was regularly served up gorilla as he toured

his new constituency. Likewise, the Bishhop of Bertoua, according to one

report, is offered gorilla hands and feet (considered the best parts) when he

goes visiting.

These food preferences, based partly upon symbolic value, blend into the

preferential logic expressed by symbolic medicine. Symbolic (or “fetish”)

medicine is a thriving business in the big cities of Central Africa; my own

experience suggests that a person can rather easily locate ape parts in the

city fetish markets. In Brazzaville, Congo’s capital, I once looked over gorilla

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