Although she cut her teeth studying capuchins, Vanessa Woods now has her heart set on bonobos. Photo: Vanessa Woods

Blood-sucking ticks, deathly silent snakes and enough killer bee stings to give one a permanent allergy – life in the jungle does not sound like the typical holiday destination for a graduating student. But Vanessa Woods took on the challenge, spending time in the jungles of Costa Rica studying the capuchin monkey. The experience taught her a great deal about not only the monkeys, but about herself and human behaviour.

Twenty-nine-year-old Vanessa studied literature and marine biology before doing a Graduate Certificate in Science Communication at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) at ANU. The course gave her new skills in science writing and research, and acted as a stepping stone to her later success in science communication. “The CPAS course was amazing. There’s nothing else like it around”, Vanessa says. “I’d barely written anything before the course, but now, four years after finishing it, I’ve written four books and for all sorts of international publications.” In addition to her writing, her experience at ANU has launched Vanessa into television appearances on the ABC’s Catalyst program and the Lifestyle channel.

After volunteering at Taronga Zoo and spending time in Uganda on a chimpanzee research trip, the call of the wild had already struck a chord with Vanessa. But what struck next – a messy break up with her long-term boyfriend – left her in emotional turmoil. Instead of devouring a bucket of ice cream and spending a month in bed, she jumped on a plane and headed off to the Central American jungle of Costa Rica. “I’m often asked, ‘How did a girl like you end up in Costa Rica?’” Vanessa says. “I got dumped. Quit my job, packed a bag and went to study monkeys I knew nothing about.”

Costa Rica was a shock to Vanessa, who admits that at the time she didn’t know her cotton-topped tamarin from her capuchin. “While my first sensation was one of familiarity, it ended up being completely different to Africa. We did completely different work, all the animals were different, and the capuchins were ugly and aggressive. It was completely overwhelming. I spend the first three months wondering what I was doing there.”

She may have expected beautiful surroundings and the simple life of the primate, but Vanessa soon realised the similarities between life in the Costa Rican jungle and life at home. “I thought to myself, why study such an ugly monkey? The answer is sex. The capuchins have interesting sex lives.” What she faced was more Bold and the Beautiful than David Attenborough. “I saw a low ranking female have sex with the new alpha male. The alpha female, Murder, went crazy. Then the new alpha male went on to have sex with Carnage, the old alpha male. All this can happen in 30 seconds.”

With a love of reality television, Vanessa soon recognised that the ‘human’ social habits of alliances, backstabbing and promiscuity were evident in the lives of the animal kingdom. The hierarchies that existed were similar to those of humans, with the scandals that you may expect to exist between two involved office workers being mirrored in the life of capuchin monkeys.

But it was not only the monkeys in the jungle who behaved in this way. After being isolated with the same group of researchers 24/7, Vanessa found that before too long the human observers also took on the sexual world of scandal and hierarchy. “Your relationships with people are extremely intense, all the time. Not only that, but things escalate. The only way to move up the hierarchy was to have sex with someone higher than you. But I don’t know why we cared, because there were no benefits of better food or a later start in the morning. Sex was just there and you were always intensely involved – it really mattered to you where you were. I don’t know why.”

This experience taught Vanessa a lot about culture, with the social lives of the monkeys and humans more similar than expected. But perhaps more importantly, the environment in Costa Rica taught Vanessa more about herself. “You can’t hide who you are any more when you live in the jungle. No make-up, no cars, and it doesn’t matter where you came from. There are no material trappings to disguise yourself – it’s just you. That brings with it a lot of psychological pressure.”

Vanessa says that learning how to deal with this pressure was one of the biggest lessons garnered from living among the monkeys. “To deal with the pressure, you have to have friends”, she says. “I mean, more than friends back home where you just meet for a coffee every once in a while. The capuchin monkeys constantly maintain their friendships. You need to take care of someone; people need to be important to you. After 10 months I realised we need people, we’re social animals. You simply can’t do everything alone.”

After realising so much about herself and leaving the world of the capuchin monkey, Vanessa did not expect that her next study would be more focused on sex and relationships than the last. Then she met the lesser-known cousin of the chimpanzee.

The bonobo, a species of ape, lives solely in the Congo. Vanessa likens them to a chimpanzee, but without the fighting and war. “A male chimpanzee will kill every baby he doubts as his own. The bonobos live in a very peaceful society. There is no war. No babies are killed. Females aren’t beaten. In fact, females dominate the society.”

Humans share 97 per cent of their DNA with that of both the chimpanzee and the bonobo. So how can a species so similar to the chimpanzee behave so differently? Simple, Vanessa argues: they have lots of sex. A bonobo will have sex for any reason, and with anyone. And they seem to be all the better for it, living peacefully without the aggression of other great apes.

Despite their relaxed promiscuity, the bonobo is a species in serious trouble. Being unique to the Congo, the animals are still being poached and eaten. Unfortunately, the unassuming apes simply can’t reproduce fast enough to counteract the damage.

To save the bonobo, Vanessa sees respect and education as the key. “Hundreds of Congolese school children are now coming through Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary every year,” she says. “These animals are Congolese, so it’s fantastic to see that kids are being educated to respect the animals and be proud of them.” Furthermore, The Democratic Republic of Congo has recently held its first democratic election, and is coming out of 10 years of civil war. “As a result, I hope more is done to save the bonobo from now on”, Vanessa says.

Vanessa documented her experience in Costa Rica in a book, It’s Every Monkey for Themselves, in which she combines scientific study with personal experience. She manages to reach the perfect balance between research findings and personal confession, documenting the lives and loves of the capuchin monkey as well as those of human researchers. Each side of the story is as juicy as the other. “I originally had the book as fiction, but after my experience my focus moved to what makes us so monkey-like”, she says. “Through life, you quarrel. You copulate. You stab each other in the back. Slowly, the differences between you and the monkeys – the differences you assumed would always be there – disappear.”

Source: ANU Reporter