of having Julius close by.58 Father and son were separated by mesh cages and both were heavily medicated so they could tolerate each other’s presence.
THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE CAGE
The whole process was messy and confusing for Julius. For the time being, he lived in Vennesla in the evenings and overnight, but spent his days in the cage at the zoo. He was a human by night and a chimpanzee by day. For five- and three-year-old Ane and Siv Moseid, it was hard to understand why Julius was being forced to sit alone and afraid in a cage for so many hours a day when it was obvious that he loved being with them. On November 18, Julius became hysterical when he was put into the cage, baring his teeth at Edvard, howling constantly and only stopping when he was taken out again. The cage procedure had reached a complete standstill. The team resolved to be firm and consistent, keeping him in the cage even if he howled, though one of them was allowed to sit inside with him for up to two hours a day in order to ensure his safety.59 And on December 3, 1980, the day—or rather the night—finally came when Julius was scheduled to spend his first night in the cage. Julius gave Edvard his most pitiful look once he realized he was going to be left alone. As Moseid turned off the light and went home for the evening, he could hear Julius’s sobs in the dark cage.60
It was hard for people to drift off to sleep in Vennesla that night. Emotionally, Julius was a kind of younger brother to the Moseid sisters. They couldn’t imagine any other way of categorizing him. And you don’t put your brother into a cage. They were angry with their dad. How could he do something so pointlessly hurtful to someone they loved so much? For Marit Moseid, the process was no less challenging than for her two daughters. After all, she had been the one to carry out the bulk of the daily responsibilities regarding Julius. She and Julius had developed a very close bond, and he was now like a third child in the family. While he had lived at their home, she had changed Julius’s diapers, as she had for both Ane and Siv, bathed all three children, fed them in the evenings, brushed their teeth and put them to bed. And now suddenly, her youngest was sent off to live in a cage. She found it hard to think about it in a professional context. For Edvard Moseid, the zoo director who was frequently required to make tough decisions about various animals, the situation was not quite as awful. But even he didn’t find it easy.
No one knows how Julius fared that night, what time he calmed down, and when he finally fell asleep. When his keepers came in the next morning, they found that he had broken his other front tooth during the night, perhaps from crying with a gaping mouth and then throwing himself against the floor or bars. Nandrup had to be called in again. The operation went well, but Julius continued to harm himself. He bled from his mouth every day, Grete Svendsen noted. Was he deliberately trying to hurt himself? Those on his rehabilitation team speculated whether or not he intended to inflict self-harm.61 They were at a loss. The cage procedure was going so badly that they considered skipping it altogether. Should they jump straight into the next phase: introducing Julius to the community? Such an introduction would be very risky, of course. Dennis was a threat and several of the other chimpanzees appeared to have lost patience with the howling guest next door.
The rehabilitation team voted to introduce Julius to a selected chimp, and chose the five-year-old female, Bølla. She was the right gender and the right age. She was also the one who had previously cared so much for Julius the first time he was rejected by Sanne. The team decided first to test the effects of the calming agent Vallergan on Julius for a few days after which they planned to give Bølla Rohypnol to put her to sleep and then present Julius to the sleeping female.
On December 15, 1980, Bølla was taken out and isolated from the other chimpanzees, but things did not go according to the plan. The original idea was to sedate her through her food but separation from the other chimps made her so angry and uneasy that Bølla refused to eat. Meanwhile, Julius raged inside his cage, howling with his jaw stretched wide and exposing his two missing front teeth. He tried flinging himself against the bars, but Moseid had padded them with plastic to keep him from harming himself. Because Bølla refused to take her sedatives through food, they had to lead her unmedicated into the room alongside Julius’s cage. The veterinarian Gudbrand Hval brought another medication that could be administered through a blowpipe, and the new plan was to sedate her with the blowpipe in the cage. However, she became so remarkably calm in the presence of Julius that both Moseid and Glad were at once struck by the same thought: What if they tried putting both chimps together without sedatives? What would happen if they opened the shutter door, leaving both Julius and Bølla alone together?
They decided to take a chance and opened the shutter. Bølla could now go in to Julius and Julius could go out to Bølla. Edvard’s and Billy’s eyes were fixed on every move. Bølla was the one to finally take initiative. She calmly made her way in to Julius’s cage. He howled, but was much less hysterical than Glad and Moseid had expected. Bølla surprised them and acted gently and curiously rather than being threatening or scary. She reached out to Julius and he quieted down. When Julius once again began to howl, Bølla reacted by being strict, rattling his bed until he became quiet again. Then they both went into the larger cage together. Julius provoked Bølla by assuming a fight position, but Bølla took it as playfulness and did not let herself be drawn in. Billy Glad believed Dennis would instantly have killed Julius for attempting such a stance.
At 2:25 p.m., they touched. For the first time in almost a year, Julius once again had physical contact with a member of his own species. At three o’clock, their play became more heated, so Moseid and Glad decided to separate them. The separation went well. When each of them was in their own cage, the door between them was shut. Bølla was allowed to rejoin the other chimpanzees and was fortunately spared any kind of punishment for being outside of the group with Julius. Julius accompanied Edvard home to Vennesla.
The next day, Bølla and Julius were placed together again, this time for a half hour. In the evening, Glad came to visit Julius after he was back safely in his own cage. Julius was allowed to come out and interact with him and several other keepers before Glad had to return him to his cage. Once inside, Julius sat sucking his thumb and thinking. Glad thought that Julius looked pensive. “Maybe he’s sitting there pondering and starting to understand that he perhaps isn’t a human after all,” Glad speculated that evening.62
Could Glad be right? Could Julius, in fact, be speculating about what he was? Chimpanzees are among the few species of animals with the ability to self-reflect. Studies have shown that most mammals—with the exception of chimpanzees, orangutans and humans—have difficulties in understanding the concept of mirrors. Other mammal species are tempted to try grabbing the individual they see in the mirror, to walk behind the mirror to look for the creature, or they are frightened by the strange “other” animal. The American psychologist Gordon Gallup conducted a clever experiment in the 1970s in which various animals received a mark on their foreheads without realizing it and were thereafter confronted with a mirror. Chimpanzees, orangutans and human children, eighteen months or older, noticed the mark in the mirror. They touched their own foreheads with their hands, trying to understand what it was and to wipe it off; in other words, they understood that the reflections in the mirror were themselves. Other animals and younger children did not grasp the connection. These three species possess a mental capacity that is rare in the animal world, one marked by the ability to be aware of and recognize one’s self.63
There’s nothing particularly surprising about the chimpanzee’s ability to recognize itself in a mirror. The entire social etiquette around which a chimpanzee community is structured is built upon the self-awareness of each member. Each chimp is aware of how the others perceive it and how its own behavior is interpreted by the others, as well as how to behave in order to reach a desired outcome. Chimpanzees display fear by exposing both their upper and lower teeth. In conflict situations in which it is beneficial to appear fearless, researchers have observed chimpanzees’ feverish and mostly futile attempts to hide their fear responses with their hands. Frans de Waal described how, Luit, a male chimpanzee in the Arnhem zoo, pulled his lips together with his hands in order to hide his teeth and fear response from his rival. Luit didn’t succeed at first, though, and was instead overcome by fear, exposing his teeth, but he continued to try pulling his lips together again. Only on his third attempt was he able to discipline his face enough so that he could go out in the