WILD LIFERS: Drawing the line on Cape Town’s baboons

Synecdoche is an unusual word but capable of some heavy lifting. Applied to the baboons of the Cape Peninsula it’s particularly appropriate. It means a part which represents a whole. In arguments over raided kitchens, fences and the removal of troops there’s a much larger question of how much room humans are willing to leave for wild animals. It brings a global conflict into a single frame: we expand into the living spaces of other species then struggle to tolerate their presence in ours.