Welcome

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our Budongo web log! In camp we were feeling a little guilty about being the only ones lucky enough to experience all of the interesting and entertaining stories that make up daily life here in the Budongo forest; so we thought we’d set up a blog so that everyone else could have as much fun keeping up with the Sonso chimps as we do! We hope that this helps all of our existing friends (and hopefully some new ones..) keep track of the characters they know and love, and meet a few others along the way. We’ve filled the site with lots of interesting features about not only the chimps, but also the research and other projects here at camp. So scroll down for the latest stories or have a look around the rest of the site, and don’t forget to let us know what you think!

Features:

Who’s Who – Check out our chimp profiles in the Sonso Who’s Who pages for the latest up to date information and pictures on the members of the Sonso Chimpanzee community.

Current Research - Check out the ongoing projects at the field site.

Local Projects – See how the project has extended it’s links through the local community.

Forum - Researcher or member of staff? Enter the discussion area to see what the hot topics in field research are!

Tinka passes away

The oldest member of our Sonso community, Tinka, sadly passed away last week of natural causes at the age of 50. He led an extraordinary life that saw dramatic changes in the forest and communities around him. Born around 1960 he lived through the rise and fall of one of the largest sawmills in Africa; the Royal Albert Hall is floored in Budongo Cynometra, and for a time the majority of the mahogany exported to Europe came out of his forest. As the forest around him shrunk, the neighboring villages approached; and as he reached his teens, the terrible political turmoil that started in the 1970s meant the human pressure on the forest increased even further. As well as the logging his community now had to deal with an increasing proliferation of snares set by bush-meat hunters. Intended for small antelope and bush-pig these wire loops trap the limbs of passing chimpanzees and are pulled taught, cutting deep into the tissue of their hands and feet. Tinka sustained not one but two terrible snare injuries that led to the near total paralysis of both of his hands. Many chimpanzees have died from minor injuries to a single limb, but Tinka defied all the odds and despite these horrific injuries he continued to play an active part in community life for many years. He developed his own unique techniques to cope with the climbing, feeding and grooming activities that fill an adult chimpanzee’s daily schedule; and seeing him slowly scale the huge trees, sometimes over 30m tall, quickly put into perspective any of the minor tribulations that as field researchers we were sometimes all too ready to give up on as impossible.

Over the years he saw the rise and fall of at least 3 alpha males and the births and deaths of many community members. The constant challenge of survival without the use of his hands was enough to keep him from ever rising within the male hierarchy, but he still maintained his position within the group. In time he developed a chronic skin complaint and eye problems that left him with a permanent squint; these left him understandably short tempered and woe betides the overly boisterous young chimp who disturbed his rest. More recently the toll of coping with his numerous disabilities at such an advanced age had started to increase, and in his final years he was often found pottering about alone, slowly making his way between sites where the fruits had fallen to the ground and he could feed in peace.

We have lost several of our adult males recently and are now in the position where the alpha male Nick and his compatriot Zefa are our elder Sonso statesmen at only 28 years old! Fortunately we still have a thriving older female community with Nambi (49), Zimba (42) and Ruhara (42), all of whom have children and some grandchildren growing up at Sonso.

We will all miss Tinka, despite (or perhaps because of) his ornery nature, he was a memorable and much loved character in the Sonso community. His indomitable spirit was an unfailing source of inspiration about the possibilities that are always there if you try hard enough – or are simply too stubborn to recognize the obstacles in the way! RIP Tinka – I’m sure where ever you are there’ll be a good scratching post near-by.

Happy New Year!

Hello and Happy New Year from everyone at Sonso!  The end of last year saw a number of big changes for us: firstly our director Dr. Fred Babweteera was promoted to the post of Conservation Coordinator for African Projects at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland! A big congratulations to Fred and while we’ll all be extremely sad to see him move on from the position of director which he’s taken on for many years – it’s a fantastic opportunity for him and very nice to know that as RZSS are our main funder he’ll still be very much involved in our work in Budongo.

Our chimpanzee friends have been making changes too, with a marked shift in their range down to the far South-East of the forest, well off the existing grid-system (which makes trying to follow them on a day-to-day basis particularly interesting!). The forest quickly becomes a dense, damp, swampy tangle of climbers and roots down there and with little in fruit there seemed no clear motivation for their move – aside of course from watching the foolish bipeds with their soft hairless skin struggle through spiky wet undergrowth with it’s never ending supply of army ants… However, not long after this shift in territory they started to hunt again with regular success. As usual it was the black and white colobus monkeys that were their targets and while the young males were the main hunters, it seemed as though everyone was keen to get their share of the meat. It’s not clear yet whether or not the move represents a permanent shift in their territory (possibly following the pressure from their neighbors to the north), or just one of the regular fluctuations in their range, but we’ll be closely monitoring the situation over the next few months to find out.

Risky business – stranger females get a mixed reaction from the Sonso community

Nambi, her daughters Nora and Night, and the young sub-adult male Zalu are travelling together in the south when they hear calls near by; immediately nervous, they stop and glance around. Suddenly two strange females appear: an older adult and a young sub-adult who is in swelling, a sign that she might be coming into her fertile period. Nambi and her daughters seem relatively uninterested, but Zalu is keen to check out this attractive young newcomer and moves over to sit near the younger female.

It’s quite unusual for a strange adult female to be found in another group’s territory without being in swelling; chimpanzees can be highly territorial – brutally attacking and sometimes killing strangers that stray across into their community area. To the local females any new female represents competition for them and their offspring; however for the males, new females represent a new chance to mate. Arriving with the large pink genital swelling that signals the oestrus period is a way of attracting the favour and, by association, the protection of the community males. Straying across territory lines without it is a very risky move.

While the younger female is quite relaxed, the adult newcomer is clearly nervous and pant-grunts submissively to Nora; this seems to be the wrong move and Nambi suddenly starts to pant-hoot and scream loudly – a sure sign she’s trying to get the attention of other members of the Sonso community, not something that bodes well for the strange adult. Sure enough, within a few minutes the top two males, Nick and Musa, arrive displaying energetically. They move immediately over to the new female, but show no signs of attacking and after she pant-grunts to them they both relax.

While so far Nambi hadn’t seemed particularly bothered by the adult female, the fact that when the males turn up they appear to be accepting of this new potential competition doesn’t seem to be at all what she had in mind. She apparently decides she’s going to have to do something about this unwelcome visitor herself. The top female in the Sonso group, Nambi is a force to be reckoned with and she now attacks the strange adult, biting her in the back and leaving her bleeding. The males are still sitting on the fence; they don’t seem keen to drive off this potential new addition to their group, but they seem equally unwilling to risk incurring Nambi’s wrath by doing anything to defend the stranger. After the attack the Sonso chimps start to move away, but although this gives the strangers a clear opportunity to escape they make the strange decision to follow the Sonso group. The young sub-adult female with her swelling gets plenty of attention and avoids any real hostility, but again the adult female is not so lucky. Another big male, Zefa, arrives and starts to attack her, this time everyone joins in and she is brutally beaten and dragged along the floor.

Over the course of the day other Sonso community members come and go – two more females Janie and Juliet arrive and the adult female is attacked for a third time. Not until 4pm, when the Sonso chimps are enjoying a last feed and starting to think about finding a nesting site for the night do the two strangers disappear back into the thick undergrowth.

While the male chimpanzee hierarchy has been well documented, we are only starting to get a glimpse of the complex social dynamics that govern female community structure. DNA based paternity research suggests that some females seem to copulate outside of their community on a regular basis and observational work has shown how peripheral community females seem to juggle membership of several communities. Days like this one highlight just how little we understand about the complex social lives of our forest cousins. What could have motivated the adult female to visit a neighboring group when she wasn’t in oestrus? And why stay after the first, or second attack? What was her relationship to her young companion? Why did Zefa (the gamma male) attack her when the top two males had not – was he trying to curry favor with the powerful Sonso females? The only thing we can be certain of is that more research is required, and that we are more than happy to keep searching for the answers!

Budongo chimps provide new evidence for the debate on chimpanzee culture

Is culture uniquely human? Many people would instinctively answer yes, but there is now a well established body of research that questions whether we may be wrong to assume this. Over the years a number of behaviours have been proposed as the answer to the puzzle of what makes us human – planning, tool use – all have fallen by the wayside as observations of their use by other species ruled them out. In recent years some of the hottest scientific debate has centered around the question of culture. Frequently hindered by the lack of agreement over what exactly culture is, there is still no doubt that the debate has stimulated exciting observations and experimental research in species that range from chimpanzees to crows. Some primatologists argue that there are group-specific behaviours seen in chimpanzees that can not be explained away by ecological or genetic factors; these must be transmitted socially from generation to generation, and that this constitutes a form of culture.

Observations such as the nut-cracking in wild west African chimps inspired a body of experimental research – now Sonso PhD researcher Thibeaud Gruber has added to the debate with new evidence recently published in the journal Current Biology. He and his colleagues present the findings from a series of experiments conducted with two Ugandan chimpanzee communities: one in Kanyawara and here with our own Sonso group. Both groups are the same sub-species of chimpanzee and live in similar forest environments but show some interesting behavioural differences. Kanyawara chimpanzees regularly use stick tools to extract honey, a behaviour never seen at Sonso. When both groups were presented with the same controlled task of extracting honey from holes that had been drilled in logs, the Kanyawara chimps spontaneously manufactured stick-tools while the Sonso chimps used either their fingers or the leaf sponges that are normally used for collecting drinking water from tree holes. Given the absences of differences in genetic or environmental factors, the researchers concluded that the chimps must be relying on their local cultural knowledge to solve the new task.

For more information the full article is currently available in the online journal of Current Biology as: Gruber et al. 2009. Wild Chimpanzees Rely on Cultural Knowledge to Solve an Experimental Honey Acquisition Task.

Hawa heads for the top..

Over the years we’ve seen Hawa grow from a shy sub-adult male into a more confident member of the male hierarchy, but he has always been a laid-back easy going individual who with his long limbs and dark face was almost more reminiscent of a bonobo than a chimpanzee. He was still very much dominated by the other young males of his own age such as Squibs and Kato and could often be found hanging out with the younger juveniles.

The recent increase in hunting over the past 18months revealed another side to his personality; a very keen hunter he was often to be found up in the trees chasing the black and white colobus monkeys through the high canopy. Sadly for him though his low rank meant that even when he caught the monkeys he rarely got to keep any of the meat and instead would spend hours begging for the smallest scrap of bone from the adults.

Whether or not it was this newfound interest in hunting that awakened his competitiveness or whether it was just his ‘time’ a radical change has happened. His body started to fill out and as those long thin arms suddenly bulked up everyone else in the community started to sit up and take notice of just how big a chimp he has grown into. He started to display at everyone apart from the top three adult males and even when the alpha Nick came crashing through with one of his typically boisterous displays sending other chimps scattering, Hawa barely batted an eye-lid. Now having dominated his old rivals such as Squibs and forged new alliances with young females like Nora, he has risen to the 4^th ranking position and a couple of weeks ago succeed in holding on to a monkey even when the alpha male Nick started to display at him. At the time Zefa seemed almost to assist him by leaning over him, and while Nick eased off momentarily Hawa seized his moment and took off with the meat. Nick and Zefa were quick to chase after him, pant-hooting and drumming loudly but all to no avail – Hawa was long-gone. We’re sure getting to pick at the choicest bits of his dinner in peace will only encourage him to continue in his new political career!