Unlike humans, who came down from the trees and developed bipedal locomotion, chimpanzees have remained in the original habitat of our ancestors: the tropical rainforests of Africa. In this book, Vernon Reynolds describes in detail the work of a large number of students and senior researchers on the wild chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest Reserve in Western Uganda. The result is the most comprehensive account of the Budongo chimpanzees ever published, with a wealth of referenced material that will serve as a source of information for many years to come.
Unlike humans, who came down from the trees and developed bipedal locomotion, chimpanzees have remained in the original habitat of our ancestors: the tropical rainforests of Africa. In this book, Vernon Reynolds describes in detail the work of a large number of students and senior researchers on the wild chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest Reserve in Western Uganda. He presents a coherent and in-depth account of one chimpanzee community of more than 60 individuals living in the Sonso area in the middle of the Budongo Forest, which he and his colleagues have studied intensively over the last 15 years. The chimpanzees have never been provisioned and live in an entirely natural state. Reynolds describes their forest habitat, their diet and culture, their social organization and behaviour, their diseases, and the threats to them that derive from the actions of people in the surrounding villages, the most serious of these being the presence of snares set by hunters to catch small antelopes and pigs. As founder and head of the Budongo Forest Project, Professor Reynolds has been responsible for compiling the numerous publications, reports, and dissertations written about these chimpanzees. In this book, he combines these new and often unpublished studies with past publications about Budongo Forest. Where appropriate, he also compares the Budongo chimpanzees with wild chimpanzees studied at other sites across Africa. The result is the most comprehensive account of the Budongo chimpanzees ever published, with a wealth of referenced material that will serve as a source of information for many years to come.
Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), otherwise known as pygmy chimpanzees, are the only two species of the genus Pan. As they are our nearest relatives, there has been much research devoted to investigating the similarities and differences between them. This book offers an extensive review of the most recent observations to come from field studies on the diversity of Pan social behaviour, with contributions from many of the world's leading experts in this field. A wide range of social behaviours is discussed including tool use, hunting, reproductive strategies and conflict management as well as demographic variables and ecological constraints. In addition to interspecies behavioural diversity, this text describes exciting new research into variations between different populations of the same species. Researchers and students working in the fields of primatology, anthropology and zoology will find this a fascinating read.
Historical Remarks Bearing on the Discovery of Pan paniscus Whether by accident or by design, it was most fortunate that Robert M. Yerkes, the dean of American primatologists, should have been the first scientist to describe the characteristics of a pygmy chimpanzee, which he acquired in August 1923, when he purchased him and a young female companion from a dealer in New York. The chimpanzees came from somewhere in the eastern region of the Belgian Congo and Yerkes esti mated the male's age at about 4 years. He called this young male Prince Chim (and named his female, com mon chimpanzee counterpart Panzee) (Fig. I). In his popular book, Almost Human, Yerkes (1925) states that in all his experiences as a student of animal behavior, "I have never met an animal the equal of this young chimp . . . in approach to physical perfection, alertness, adaptability, and agreeableness of disposition" (Yerkes, 1925, p. 244). Moreover, It would not be easy to find two infants more markedly different in bodily traits, temperament, intelligence, vocalization and their varied expressions in action, than Chim and Panzee. Here are just a few points of contrast. His eyes were black and in his dark face lacked contrast and seemed beady, cold, expressionless. Hers were brown, soft, and full of emotional value, chiefly because of their color and the contrast with her light complexion.
This volume covers aspects of ecology, behavior, genetics, taxonomy, 'cultural' patterns, hunting by non-human primates, physiology, dietary chemistry, and ecotourism, in several major clades of primates from galagos and pottos, through cercopithecoids, to hominoids.
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020 "In this superbly articulate cri de coeur, Safina gives us a new way of looking at the natural world that is radically different."—The Washington Post New York Times bestselling author Carl Safina brings readers close to three non-human cultures—what they do, why they do it, and how life is for them. A New York Times Notable Books of 2020 Some believe that culture is strictly a human phenomenon. But this book reveals cultures of other-than-human beings in some of Earth’s remaining wild places. It shows how if you’re a sperm whale, a scarlet macaw, or a chimpanzee, you too come to understand yourself as an individual within a particular community that does things in specific ways, that has traditions. Alongside genes, culture is a second form of inheritance, passed through generations as pools of learned knowledge. As situations change, social learning—culture—allows behaviors to adjust much faster than genes can adapt. Becoming Wild brings readers into intimate proximity with various nonhuman individuals in their free-living communities. It presents a revelatory account of how animals function beyond our usual view. Safina shows that for non-humans and humans alike, culture comprises the answers to the question, “How do we live here?” It unites individuals within a group identity. But cultural groups often seek to avoid, or even be hostile toward, other factions. By showing that this is true across species, Safina illuminates why human cultural tensions remain maddeningly intractable despite the arbitrariness of many of our differences. Becoming Wild takes readers behind the curtain of life on Earth, to witness from a new vantage point the most world-saving of perceptions: how we are all connected.
