They Grow Up So Fast

I was confronted with a startling scene recently. We researchers gradually become dulled to the violent and melodramatic lives of monkeys. Yet, there are still little moments when we are momentarily taken over by human partiality, and are surprised.

On this day, I watched in amazement as a juvenile male baboon mounted a receptive adult female, and began to have sex with her.

When baboons copulate, the male will almost always stand on the back legs of the female, his foot cradled in her knee joint, like so:

Unless the male is a really meaty boy, the female is a Lolita, and the dude's feet can thus reach all the way to the ground, they will always copulate in this position. And they'll try their darnedest to follow protocol, no matter what.

Take my little tyke for example. He was probably less than 2 year old. He looked old enough to still be suckling; I wouldn't have been surprised if after he did the dirty deed he ran back for a quick nip of milk to get his strength back.

This guy is struggling for all his worth to get up onto those knee-pits, but for the life of him, he could only manage one leg. So he made the most of the deal and began thrusting madly... successfully impregnating the vast span of air between the adult female's vulva and his undersized phallus. Its all for the best, as there is a good chance that this female was an aunt or grandmother.

They start young, there's no denying that.