It’s Friday! Let’s see those pearly whites. 😄😆 📷: Shelley Weiss
While this post is tagged as “funny animals”, it’s important to point out that these are not happy animals. These are Geladas, and those faces are very serious threat display.
While most people think that seeing a monkey’s teeth means they are smiling, it’s actually a signal that someone is about to get fucked up unless they quit whatever they’re doing right now. Geladas take this to a whole other level, flipping their entire upper lip back and sometimes pulling on their scalps to exaggerate the pale markings around the eyes. Here’s a great composite image by Steve Mackay of the progression of what a threat display looks like in the species.
Did you catch that I called them monkeys? Despite being commonly known as ‘gelada baboons’, they’re actually a species of old world monkey from Ethiopia. They’re also known as ‘bleeding-heart monkeys’ because of the patch of bright red skin on their chests, which on females will brighten and blister when they’re in estrus (this is thought to be somewhat analogous to the swollen buttocks of cycling female baboons).
If you can see primate teeth – especially the canines – stop whatever you are doing, because that is an animal telling you that it is not happy and willing to defend itself.
@why-animals-do-the-thing I’m more inclined to believe you because this was my first thought. On facebook it seems like some have pointed it out but this was a response:
“Found out from their keeper that this is actually friendly. If it was unfriendly/aggressive, they’d be flashing their eyelids as well.”
Is that possible for them to smile in a “friendly” way? It seems to me the eyelids are flashing too. Kind of seems full of shit but i was interested in what you thought about that.
In any other species of money, no! In Geladas… turns out yes! Thank you for mentioning this, because it encouraged me to reach out to an SDZ zookeeper for full context. Geladas actually do have a social / greeting lip-flip that is very unique to the species, and hard for someone unfamiliar with them to discern from a threat behavior. Here’s another version of the graphic I used that the keeper sent me:
So the male on the right of the composite photo is doing a threat display, but the male in the stand-alone photo is giving a greeting display. The difference really is in how much that pale patch around the eyes is visible. The original image is taken at such an angle that it makes the eye-patches look more visible than they normally would be. The keeper I spoke to confirmed the photo is two sub-adult males and was taken as they greeted the approach of an adult male.
This is a great example of how much context and knowledge of specific situations can really matter. I put a bunch of research into my original post, and I still got it wrong – the studies I found equated any sort of visible gum tissue in gelada to an antagonistic signal. Even with a pretty solid knowledge of primate behavior and thorough investigation, it took talking to the specific animals’ caretaker to be correct. I have deleted my original response so only this updated reblog is visible – if you shared the original, please also share this update to help get the correct information out!
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