The other day the whole group was feeding on leaves high up on a Ngombe tree. Kusu and Ekendi were together at the top of a smaller tree maybe 20m below the others. We’re not sure what happened but suddenly they were fighting. This wasn’t the usual play fighting but proper fighting with pig grunting and what looked like hitting and biting. I think that Kingo was as surprised as we were. He kept running along the branch 20m above them and peering over at them. Then he’d start shaking branches at them. Then he’s run further along the branch and repeat the peering and the branch shaking. Then suddenly he must’ve decided there was nothing else he could do because he suddenly sat down and starting eating the leaves of the branch he’d been shaking. The fight seemed to resolve itself very soon after.
But it seems that Ekendi is starting to stand up to Kusu. Later on that day Ekendi found a termite nest at the base of a small tree. Kusu saw that Ekendi had something exciting and rushed over. Ekendi still had his hands on the nest and Kusu pig grunts at him. I think Ekendi then had a little dilemma as he wanted to take his hand off the nest in order to eat the termites but he knew that if he did Kusu would ‘take’ the nest. He slowly took his hand off the nest. Kusu reached out and Ekendi pig grunted twice at Kusu. Then Kusu pig grunted back and Ekendi ran away.
So it seems that Kusu is ‘top juvenile’. However today Ekendi stood up to Kusu, but he had Mekome right behind him, which probably made him more courageous. Kusu was about 10m away from Ekendi and Mekome who were feeding on Ngluma fruits which were on the ground. Kusu tried to approach them to eat fruit as well and Ekendi charges up to him, stopping about 2m away, pig grunting and pig grunting. Mekome joined in and Kusu had to back off, sneaking a ngluma fruit while looking like he was eating basele!