In the Oligocene, when Africa and South America
Were closer than they are today but still
Divided by the narrowing Atlantic's chimera
Of open ocean—a small and humble rill
Of primates crossed the water.
Not by swimming—
No primate swims a thousand miles of sea—
But on the rafts of vegetation, the brimming
And storm-uprooted mats of tree
And vine and tangled forest that the rivers
Of western Africa washed out
Into the ocean's current—the delivers
Of the accidental devout
And terrified castaways who found themselves
Adrift on a floating island, carried
By the westward current's shelves
Of equatorial flow—the harried
And unlikely colonists who landed
On South America's eastern shore
And found a continent empty-handed
Of any primate—an open floor
For radiation.
From these castaways
The New World monkeys bloomed—Platyrrhinos,
The broad-nosed ones, whose nasal ways
And outward-facing nostrils were the signos
Of their divergence from the Old World line—
A small anatomical flag
That marked the thirty-million-year design
Of separate evolution's rag
And banner.
And Platyrrhinos invented the fifth limb:
The prehensile tail—the gripping,
Wrapping, hanging, reaching whim
Of a tail that could support the slipping
And swinging body in the canopy
Like a safety rope and a third hand—
No Old World monkey achieved this canopy
Technology—the demand
Of the South American rainforest's tall
And continuous cover drove the solution:
The tail that grasps, that will not fall,
That adds a revolution
To the primate's arboreal toolkit.
Alouattos—the howler monkey—owned
The forest's acoustic circuit:
The hyoid bone enlarged and moaned
And resonated with a bass
That carried for three miles through the trees—
The loudest land animal, the face
Of territorial defense at ease:
No need to fight when the howl
Announces your presence and your claim
To every troop within the prowl
Of the forest—the howler's game
Was energy conservation: why fight
When you can simply out-shout
The competition through the night
And the dawn—the metabolic clout
Of the leaf-eating, slow-moving, loud
And economical howler, who solved
The problem of territory with the cloud
Of his voice and never involved
His body in the violence of dispute.
Cebos—the capuchin—was the genius:
The tool-user, the absolute
And unmatched intelligence of the simian genius
Among the New World monkeys—Cebos
Cracked nuts with stones, probed crevices
With sticks, and the capuchin's tableaux
Of problem-solving filled the devices
Of the forest with the monkey's invention—
Not taught by anyone, not inherited
In any gene, but the reinvention
In each generation of the merited
And clever use of the world's objects
As extensions of the hand.
And Callithrinos—the marmoset—the projects
Of the tiniest monkey in the land:
A hundred grams of cooperative breeding,
The father carrying the twins
On his back while the mother was feeding
And recovering—the marmoset's wins
Were in the family: the cooperative
Group where everyone helped raise
The young, the older siblings' operative
Role in childcare—the maze
Of the marmoset's social economy
Was the most cooperative of all primates:
A family-based taxonomy
Of shared labor, the estimates
Of which even the human could admire.
Honor Platyrrhinos—the castaways
Who crossed the ocean on a raft of mire
And forest, and built in South America's maze
Of rainforest a parallel universe
Of primate intelligence—the howler's voice,
The capuchin's tools, the marmoset's purse
Of cooperative care—a different choice
From the Old World's path, but no less
Accomplished in the art of being primate.