Lessons on longevity from monkeys WIT turns five this year and Yeoh Siew Hoon goes ape at the thought.Often when you’re involved in something too closely and for so long, you don’t see the durian from the trees anymore. And so it was with WIT-Web In Travel. I had forgotten that this year will be its fifth until Timothy O’Neil-Dunne of T2 Impact, who’s attended every WIT, reminded me. “Do you know, it’s your fifth anniversary?” he said. “That’s something to celebrate – longevity in our industry.” Coincidentally, having recently read the column by Roger Cohen on “The Meaning of Life” longevity’s been on my mind of late. In his column, Cohen compares the stories of two monkeys, Canto, 27 and Owen, 29. The pair are part of an experiment in ageing, Basically, it’s to test whether by eating fewer calories, we prolong life. “Canto gets a restricted diet with 30 percent fewer calories than usual while Owen gets to eat whatever the heck he pleases,” writes Cohen. The findings “demonstrate that caloric restriction slows aging in a primate species”. Cohen’s point however was, which was the happier monkey – low-cal Canto or high-cal Owen? “Canto looks drawn, weary, ashen and miserable in his thinness, mouth slightly agape, features pinched, eyes blank, his expression screaming, “Please, no, not another plateful of seeds!” “Well-fed Owen, by contrast, is a happy camper with a wry smile, every inch the laid-back simian, plump, eyes twinkling, full mouth relaxed, skin glowing, exuding wisdom as if he’s just read Kierkegaard and concluded that “Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”” I’ve been having quite a few encounters with monkeys lately. In the Sukau rainforest in Sabah, I saw proboscis monkeys whose long red noses led them to being nicknamed “Orang Belanda” (Dutch Man). They were as happy as could be, swinging from branch to branch, and playing with each other. They eat whenever and wherever they find food. They are curious about humans who watch them, but they leave us alone, as we should them as well. The macaques are slightly more mischievous – they come into the lodges and steal food. Sometimes, they steal things that glitter, like your watches or cameras. I don’t know if they eat them but there’s been no evidence they don’t. And no one has conducted an experiment on whether eating gadgets shorten or prolong life. The gibbons – they make a lot of noise in the morning and wake up the entire forest. Their calls remind me of children on a beach, playing Frisbee or some game that requires a lot of energy and screaming. They sound happy enough. Who wouldn’t be when you are free and wild? The apes in the Sepilok Orang Utan Sanctuary – the two I saw – don’t appear as animated. They walk sluggishly to the feeding platform and they eat the bananas without much enthusiasm. Who can eat with joy and abandon the same thing everyday and, on top of that, to be watched by hundreds of humans with their cameras pointed at you? I’d go ape at the thought. In Penang last week, I was at the Botanical Gardens and saw a troop of spectacle monkeys (pictured above right) – so-called because they are black with white rings around their eyes. They look constantly startled. In this park, there are signs telling visitors not to feed the monkeys but visitors being what they are do not obey. Here, the monkeys can sometimes turn aggressive if they expect food and you don’t have any. These are the ones that have gotten lazy because they are used to being fed. So back to WIT and longevity. Yes, it’s been five years even though it doesn’t feel so. Perhaps it’s indeed true that times flies when you’re having fun. It was fun when we started it and it continues to be fun doing it. Each year, we strive to swing to a higher branch. Each year, we search for new food for thought. And each year, we add new friends to our growing community. Yes, there are lessons to be learnt from monkeys indeed, no matter how old you are. |
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