- Anything to look cool, right?
Fashion trends can be strange. People have gone crazy over the weirdest fads, from flared jeans to shirt collars so stiff they can slice your throat open.
It’s strangely comforting to know, then, that odd fashion is not strictly a human phenomenon. Animals can engage in it too, as demonstrated by orcas that wear dead salmon as hats.
Chimps have now hopped on the fashionable bandwagon as well. A group of chimpanzees in Africa has recently started wearing sticks and blades of grass as personal decorations.
The apes stick the grass into their ears and let it dangle there. It’s like a primitive earring.
However, they’ve also started adorning a different part of their bodies. The chimps have been observed making their butts prettier — by stuffing the sticks and leaves up the chute.
The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious benefit to this behavior. As far as anyone is aware, the chimpanzees simply think an ass full of leaves looks fabulous.
Julie the Fashionista
The case of fashion-conscious chimps was recently detailed in the scientific journal Behaviour. They live in the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in northern Zambia.
Curiously, it does seem these chimps have a thing for fashion. After all, they’ve been decorating themselves for 15 years.
In 2010, a chimp called Julie became the first known chimpanzee at Chimfunshi stick a blade of grass in her ear. As with human fashion, the trend caught on quickly, and soon Julie’s entire group was wearing grass and sticks in their ears.
We called it a “fad” earlier, but the grass-in-ears trend has had shocking longevity. Some chimps in now-late Julie’s group still sport their grassy adornments — including her son.
We can’t help imagining he’s doing it to remember his old mother. It’s pretty touching.
Changing Trends
What’s strange, though, is that now another group of chimps in Chimfunshi has also started wearing grass and sticks. It’s weird because this group has no contact whatsoever with Julie’s, so they haven’t learned the behavior from the original trendsetters.
Perhaps that’s why this new group has put its own spin on the trend. They wear grass in their ears, sure, but they’re also doing it in another place.
Namely, up their butts.
The first chimp to cramp leave up his ass as a fashion statement is called Juma. You’d imagine the other chimpanzees might raise their eyebrows as a long frond of grass sticking out from between his cheeks, but instead, the complete opposite happened.
Juma’s troop must’ve loved what they saw, because the grass-in-ass trend spread like a wildfire. Now, most members in the group have sticks and leaves in their ears or butts — or sometimes both.
It Began with People
How on earth did these chimps decide to start sticking leaves into orifices that aren’t their mouths? And why do they do it?
Well, the answer to the first question is likely human influence. According to the study on strange chimp fashion, some employees at Chimfunshi reported that they occasionally clean their ears with sticks or grass if the get crud or a fly in there.
It’s possible that Julie saw an employee or employees use grass on their ears. Monkey see, monkey do, so perhaps she decided to imitate the behavior.
That said, her chimp brain likely couldn’t parse that the people were cleaning their ears. So, she did what seemed like a logical thing in her mind and simply stuck a leaf up her ear canal.
The rest is chimp fashion history.
Another human factor that may have helped the trend spread is that the chimpanzees at Chimfunshi are very well fed and cared for. Since they’re not spending every waking moment in search for their next meal, they have plenty of time for socializing and bonding with their troop.
Cultural Expression
Essentially, Chimfunshi is an ideal place for breakthroughs in chimp cultural development. And that’s probably what we’re seeing here.
After all, having a stick in your ear or anus isn’t exactly beneficial in any way. In fact, Chimfunshi staff have noticed that the chimpanzees are uncomfortable with their adornments when they start wearing them.
They’ve observed that the chimps wearing leaves in their ears for the first time often remove them and scratch the ear. Their study made no mention about the same thing happening with their butts, but come on — it has to.
Much in the same way as your ears eventually get used to new earrings, the chimpanzees accustom to having a stick up their butts. And just as your earrings have no real utility beyond looking pretty, the chimps’ ear and butt grass seems to be all about appearances.
They appear to genuinely believe a butt-ful of sticks looks nice, and they’re willing to suffer for fashion. After all, chimps do communicate with their butts, so it’s not that far-fetched to think they might find a well-chosen butt stick impressive.
And in that, they are not so different from us. A long leaf between their butt cheeks is as beautiful to them as a sparkling diamond necklace is to us.