This video was made possible by Ecosia.
Start using the search engine that plants trees with every search you make at ecosia.co/HAI.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Baboon see, baboon control a railway used by multi-ton trains and thousands of passengers.
That’s how it worked in the late 1800’s in South Africa.
Back in ye olde days radios didn’t exist and since trains were loud, you couldn’t
just shout at the driver to tell them what to do.
Therefore, in the 1800s, signals were developed as a way to tell incoming trains to stations
what to do.
At first, lanterns and hand signals were used by signalmen to convey the information needed
but as technology advanced signals that could be controlled by switches and levers were
installed to ease the process.
These signals were similar to weathervanes in that they consisted of fixed posts with
movable discs or signage that could be controlled via a switch.
Various colors meant to stop or go or proceed with caution, and there were other vanes on
different axes to indicate which tracks to pull into once arriving at the stations and
various other signs meaning to take it to the left, right, to criss-cross, to cha cha
now, to cha cha again, and for everybody to clap their hands.
With the world going loco for locomotives at the time tons and tons of signalmen were
needed to ensure that the trains stuck to schedules, were in working condition, and
stuck to the proper tracks.
Signalmen, as their names imply, were also responsible for operating the levers that
would set off the signals for the trains out of the signal house.
In the 1870s, one of the signalman for the Cape Town to Port Elizabeth Mainline Railroad
in South Africa was a man named James Wilde.
Wilde went by the nickname "Jumper" because he had a habit of jumping between the cars
that would pass on the tracks and in a totally unforeseen and completely unpreventable twist
of fate, Jumper once jumped a moving railcar and fell under it losing both of his legs
in the process.
After this, Jumper continued working hobbling around on a pair of peg legs although he found
himself limited in his ability to signal trains proficiently.
Not having legs does that.
One day at the market, though, Jumper came upon a chacma baboon who'd been trained to
lead an ox-drawn wagon.
Though impressive, its intelligence isn’t particularly surprising by today’s standards.
We now know that baboons aren’t so different from humans in their brain capacity.
Baboons can keep schedules, communicate with their own language, differentiate between
scribbles and the written word, and the University of Rochester recently concluded that baboons
are actually capable of counting to an extent although I’m not sure what all the fuss
is about since I’ve been able to do that at least since I was double-one or twelve-teen.
Jumper begged and begged and finally convinced the owner to let him take the baboon and thus
the prodigious primate pair was born.
The original owner warned Jumper, however, that the baboon would refuse to work unless
he had been given plenty of brandy to drink.
They’re really just like us.
The baboon, named Jack, was first taught to observe and then respond to certain commands.
When Jumper would hold up a certain number of fingers, Jack was to pull the corresponding
lever.
From there, Jack learned that the trains were giving similar orders by the number of blats
from their whistle.
Over time, Jack realized on his known which tracks needed which signals and would double-check
his own work as he was doing it.
He also realized that conductors needed access to the coal sheds and would retrieve the key
from Jumper unbidden to give to the incoming engineers.
Now, if your job is replaceable by a monkey you really shouldn’t be expecting much job
security so surprise surprise both Jack and Jumper’s jobs eventually came under threat.
Jack was a beloved fixture of the railroad until some snobby high-society aristocrat
noticed that he was, in fact, a monkey and narc'd on the pair.
The bosses at the railway were aware that Jumper had found an assistant but were totally
in the dark about his baboon-ness.
After the Cape Town executives launched an investigation, they found out the truth about
the monkey business.
So, naturally, they tried to fire both Jumper and Jack.
Jumper begged to demonstrate Jack's cleverness and so the rail managers agreed to put him
to the test.
Jack perfectly performed his signaling abilities, even checking both directions to make sure
the incoming trains were heading to separate tracks at the station.
They were so impressed that they made Jack an official employee paying him 20 cents a
day and half a bottle of beer every week.
It's been said that in the nine years Jack worked as a signalman he never made a single
mistake, despite being constantly drunk and a monkey.
Jack became known as “Jack the Signalman” and worked and lived with Jumper in a small
cottage not far from the signal house.
He stayed there and worked for the railroad up until his death from tuberculosis in 1890
and his skull is now displayed at a museum in Grahamstown, South Africa not far from
where he worked.
Monkeys can do a lot like play the violin, ride bicycles, roller-skate, but what they
can’t do is stop the systematic and widespread deforestation of their natural habitat.
Luckily, you can and you don’t even have to spend any money or effort to do it.
Ecosia is a nonprofit search engine that uses the money generated from advertising to reforest
areas including places like Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso where there are native baboons.
It only takes about 50 searches to plant one tree so you can really easily make a difference.
Head to ecosia.co/hai to add it to your browser so you can start planting trees one search
at a time.