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BATTLE OF THE BEASTS: MANDRILL VS CHIMPANZEE

BABOON

SIZE: 3-4 ft  30-110 lbs

Well, baboons have been part of our lives, whether in books or movies, for hundreds of years. We’ve read about them in tales of African adventures and how the pesky monkeys cause tons of problems and mischief.

But, wait! We’re not even talking about baboons, are we?

We’re talking about Mandrills, a super-sized baboon that only recently was given its own genus in the vast animal kingdon: Mandrillus.

Mandrills are very similar to baboons, in both behavior and looks. The difference? Let’s start with the mandrill’s colorful snout and butt. Yep, its ass is full of colors! This is to increase its visibility through the thick vegetation of the rain forests it moves through.

Their diet consists mainly of plants, insects and smaller creatures although larger males have been known to hunt and feed on smaller antelope called a duiker. A group of mandrills can really put a hurting on crops and are therefore hunted and killed by farmers in territories that have high populations of mandrill such as Gabon, Cameroon, Congo and Equatorial Guinea.

By the way, if you ask me, mandrills are some ugly bastards. Not a big fan of their looks or that multicolored ass they got but wouldn’t want to cross a mandrill anytime soon.

CHIMPANZEE

SIZE: 3-5.5 ft  80-130lbs

Seems everyone likes chimps, everyone except me. Not that I hate chimps or anything but they just don’t do much for me and I don’t really care for the “they’re part of our family tree” argument. I really don’t give a shit about that as much as I care how interested I am in them as animals.

After all, we’re all animals, right?

But there is no denying the place that chimps have in the human heart. My feelings for them are of the minority, not majority. If you didn’t know by now, a chimp is no monkey. Mandrills are, but not chimps. Nope. Chimps are apes. Great apes to be precise. They only share that family with four other members: gorillas, gibbons, orangutans and humans.

Chimps, however, are by far the most popular since they’re very closely related to humans and their behaviors are damn near identical other than the fact that they live in the forests of Africa rather than the bustling cities and suburbs people are used to.

The fascinating thing about chimps is their ability to use intricate tools in the wild to help achieve different goals for eating. They will often take a stick, shove it into a termite or anthill and allow the bugs to cover the stick before pulling it out and licking it like a popsicle. Might not sound like much to you but, believe me, that’s some highly intelligent animal behavior.

Also, it should be noted that chimps are extremely strong. As in, seven times stronger than the average human male strong. It’s for swinging and climbing and breaking branches from the trees they live amongst.

When it comes to behavior, chimps are very advanced and even form gangs in the same way humans do. These chimp gangs will maneuver through forests in a stealth manner, aiming to ambush rival chimp communities with horrific violence that would make our horror movies seems like a Disney cartoon.

They’re known to kill other chimps in territorial hostility and their favorite food is the red colobus monkeys whose carcasses they will use as a social tool within their chimp communities. Sounds like a fun-loving time with chimps, doesn’t it?

SO WHO WINS?

THE SAGE SAYS...Pitting a mandrill and chimp of equal size won’t be so easy but they meet in a forest and size one another up. The mandrill makes the first move, a series of quick movements toward the chimp, taking a nasty bite out of it each time before falling back. The chimp, beginning to sense his own vulnerability, flips out and goes apeshit (very necessarily here), grabbing the mandrill and slamming him against a tree. As the mandrill slowly comes to his senses, it’s too late. The chimp has already ripped the mandrill’s face and privates away from its body, leaving it to die in a bloody mess.

CHIMP WINS!

Tags: Africa, animal kingdom, baboon, Cameroon, chimp, chimpanzee, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, genus, gibbon, gorilla, great apes, human, mandrill, Mandrillus, monkeys, orangutan, rain forests Filed under: CULTURE