Chimpanzee Influencers

Eighteen-year-old Julia is quite cool according to her friends and relatives. She started putting long hard stalks of grass into her hair the everyone around her was more than impressed. What’s different? Julia is a Chimpanzee.

Image by Marcel Langthim from Pixabay

• Be also sure to check out my other posts and follow me @kralizec and subscribe to my Youtube channel at Kralizec Gaming Youtube Channel

In recent times, you might have noticed that the world is in love with a completely new type of job. Influencers. People who come up with ideas that others later adopt. But it seems this isn’t just the case in humans.

All the apes around Julia soon started to adopt her behavior. First, it was her son, then two of her closest friends, and her boyfriend followed soon after. In the end, eight chimpanzees from the group of ten tried to put the grass into their ears in a perfect way. And they did it outside of her view. Edwin van Leeuwen – who focuses on chimpanzee group dynamics – said it was actually quite funny to observe.

Again and again, they tried to achieve it. But while doing so, they were constantly shuddering. So, doctor van Leeuwen decided to try it as well, and soon he understood why they were shuddering. It’s not exactly comfortable to stick some grass into your ear so it fits. But once they got the technique down they started wearing the grass very regularly and played with the grass proudly and almost ritually to make sure everyone else is impressed with their grass.

Sadly, Julia has died more than two years ago. But her spontaneous habit still lives on among the chimpanzees. It spread through Julia’s social network. This is eerily similar to how fashion trends spread through humanity’s social media.

Sources:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/science/animals-chimps-whales-culture.html

• If you like the content I’m producing about science maybe you will like the content I produce about gaming as well! Be sure to check out my other posts!