The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

by Richard Dawkins

When I was a child of three in Nyasaland (now Malawi) we had a pet bushbaby. Percy was brought in by a local African, and was probably an orphaned juvenile. He was tiny: small enough to perch on the rim of a glass of whisky, into which he would dip his hand and drink with evident enjoyment. He slept during the day, clasping the underside of a beam in the bathroom. When his ‘morning’ came (in the evening), if my parents failed to catch him in time (which was often, because he was extremely agile and a terrific leaper) he would race to the top of my mosquito net and urinate on me from above. When leaping, for example onto a person, he did not exhibit the common bushbaby habit of urinating on his hands first. On the theory that ‘urine washing’ is for scent-marking, this would make sense given that he was not an adult. On the alternative theory that the urine improves grip, it is less clear why he didn’t do it.

Whut?