Are Baboons "Spirtual'?

A friend is intimately acquainted with a primatologist. She (the primatologist) has spent many a year, almost a lifetime, studying baboons. She has lived with them and claims to have been accepted as one of the troop. She travels with them when she can. I'm impressed by her dedication. I wouldn't want to travel for more than a couple of days with a group of human tourists, let alone energetic lower primates. My one encounter with baboons, in a  rest area in South Africa, was unpleasant. The baboons were noisy and aggressive. Sub-Yahoos.

The primatologist told my friend the following  story. She was accompanying a troop of baboons on a trek from one feeding place to another. They came to a river that they wanted to cross. They all stopped, sat down on the ground, waited silently for about thirty minutes. Then they all arose as one and proceeded to wade across the river. 

My friend said, and I quote verbatim, "it was a spiritual moment." 

To which I immediately responded, "I don't know exactly what you mean, but I can tell you that never in a thousand years would I interpret such an event as 'spiritual'."

All of us around the table were polite, so the conversation moved on to more fruitful topics and did not become contentious.

But later, I thought, what did he (and the primatologist) mean by the word "spiritual."  And the best that I can come up with, is that they both deduced that the baboons engaged in some sort of prayer--that they paused to solicit divine intervention before setting out on a hazardous adventure.

I'm not even slightly sympathetic to that reading. In actual fact, just between us, I think it's kind of dumb.

I can think of many a reason why a congregation of baboons might assemble themselves and take a moment. Perhaps they were assessing the flow of the river. Maybe they were waiting for the current to become less strong. Or perhaps they were looking at the other bank to see if there were predators hiding in the underbrush. Or, most likely, they were simply tired and were gathering their strength.

I think that my friend wanted to believe that baboons are spiritual, because it follows that if baboons can pray to a higher power, then there's something natural and universal about belief in a deity, even if it's the Great Baboon in the Sky. Conversely, I am just as convinced that baboons are smart enough to look around carefully before taking the plunge. No supererogatory hypothesis required. 

To me, the natural and material explanation is completely obvious -- although I must admit that the primatologist who offered the spiritual explanation and the friend who repeated it are both scientists of considerable repute.

Comments

[Don Z. Block]

Ah, Darwin, what the hell did he know?

[Richard Mothpan]

Charles Darwin said, "He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke." What the hell does that mean?