Animal Week: Primates of the World

Apes, Chimpanzees, Monkeys...and Humans

Anne Pusey , director of Primate Research at the Jane Goodall Institute , was online Wednesday, April 12, at 1 p.m. ET to answer all your questions about apes, chimpanzees, monkeys and all other primates that roam the Earth.

The transcript follows.

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Arlington, Va.: What is the main focus of Gombe research these days? Have we learned more about "chimpanzee warfare" since Jane Goodall's latest research?

Anne Pusey: Research at Gombe continues to look at many different questions. Every day, Tanzanian researchers follow a chimpanzee of the Kasekela community all day, and for the last few years similar observations are made of the smaller Mitumba community that lives in the north of the park. We computerize all the data and analyze for many different questions. One of the questions that we are looking at is:

How important is kinship in social interactions? We know that mothers maintain lifelong bonds with their offspring, but do brothers continue to have special relationships as adults? Can chimps recognize their paternal relatives? Do adult relatives avoid inbreeding?

For the last few years we have been able to extract DNA from feces to determine who the fathers are. This is exciting because we can now look to see whether fathers have special relationships with their kids. You can read the blog of graduate student Emily Wroblewski who is currently at Gombe studying this question. You can find this through the Jane Goodall Institute Web site, janegoodall.org and the JGICPS/University of Minnesota Web site: discoverchimpanzees.org

These sites will also tell you about other questions we are looking at, and some of our recent papers.

As for warfare: yes, the communities continue to have aggressive interactions. Because of the small size of the park, and increasing habitat loss outside, the two communities at the north and south of the park are quite small compared to the central community. The central community sometimes goes into the territory of the two others. But while the Mitumba community only has two adult males, they are still putting up a good fight to defend themselves. They display and call when they encounter the chimps from Kasekela and are often able to put them to flight. We are able to watch all this quite closely now that the chimps of both communities are habituated. There are some young adolescent males in the Mitumba community and we are hoping that they will eventually collaborate with the older males to defend their territory.

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Washington, D.C.: Is Cheetah from Tarzan the oldest living primate in captivity? Isn't that awesome?

Anne Pusey: I was amazed to hear that Cheeta is 71. The Gombe study has been going for 46 years. We have observed two females that died in their mid-forties, but did not yet look very old. We have another, Sparrow, who is 46 and still going strong. Flo died in 1972. she looked extremely old, with teeth worn to the gums, and by comparison with these others of known age, we think she must have been well in her fifties if not sixties. So chimps even in the wild can live a long time. This also emphasizes that we have a responsibility to chimps in captivity to care for them for a very long time!

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Greenfield, Ind.: My granddaughter, 16, has been and still is determined to make a career in biology/science. She frequently has spoken about studying animal behavior, "like Jane Goodall". What are the career opportunities, and who funds such research?

Anne Pusey: There are various ways to get into field research on primates. You generally need to get an undergraduate degree in a relevant field, and then go on to graduate school. You can either do biology and take animal behavior classes, or anthropology and take classes in biological anthropology. Good sources of information on undergraduate and graduate courses are the animal behavior Web site, and the primate information Web site from the University of Wisconsin.

Career opportunities are rather limited. There are academic positions in the universities that support these kinds of studies. There are also opportunities in a number of more applied, conservation organizations. The main funding for field work by universities is the National Science Foundation, but the funds are limited and the competition for funds is fierce. Private foundations such as the Leakey Foundation, Wenner Gren Foundation, National Geographic, and the Jane Goodall Institute also provide funds for field research.

I got into the field because I was always interested in watching animals, and I studied zoology as an undergraduate. I was immensely lucky that Jane Goodall was looking for a research assistant just as I had graduated and was looking for research opportunities!

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Danbury, Conn.: Jane Goodall discovered that chimpanzees make and use tools...and it seems there are new findings of tool-using species we read about every few months or so. Is there anything new in studies of tool use among chimpanzees?

Anne Pusey: It's true that they have recently found gorillas using tools (sticks to probe the depth of streams), and in the last few years it was discovered that orangutans used tools, especially for extracting food from fruit with nasty spines.

Chimpanzees still seem to use tools for more purposes than any other non-human species. What is becoming increasingly clear as more different chimpanzee populations are studied is that different populations have different tool using techniques - in other words, different "cultures". Presumably a chimp learns a new habit, then others learn by watching it. There is a lot of recent fascinating study of the extent to which chimpanzees imitate others in captive settings. AT Gombe, we found that young female chimps learn to fish for termites more quickly than males (the males are off playing with their friends) and copy their mother's technique more closely.

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Los Angeles, Calif.: Did the Gombe staff ever confirm what exactly happened to Fifi?

Anne Pusey: Fif disappeared in 2004. Unfortunately, we never discovered what happened to her. She had moved further north, nearer the Mitumba community. Last year another older female, Patti, also moved her core area closer to the north. For some reason she went right into the territory of the Mitumba community. On one occasion she was up there in consort with an adult male. the two males of the Mitumba community found them and attacked. Her male consort fled, her 5 year old son was screaming and was apparently escorted away from the area by a young adolescent female of the Mitumba community (perhaps this was so compassionate behavior on her part). But Patti was badly attacked by the two males, and she died a few weeks later. We worry that something of this sort may have befallen Fifi, but we will never know. Her juvenile daughter Flirt is doing well in the Kasekela community. You can read about her on Emily's blog (www.janegoodall.org)

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Washington, D.C.: Thank you for all of your important work through JGI. I have three questions: Why aren't chimpanzees considered Critically Endangered by the IUCN? I feel that more needs to be done - and more quickly to stop their extinction. The JGI web site says that there are approximately 150,000 chimps left in the wild. But that's spread out over at least 20 countries! If these are all small, isolated populations then in reality they are dead populations (as there is not enough genetic diversity for them to continue). Also, what do you think of reintroduction programs as a viable conservation method? And last, how likely is it that the U.S. will ban the use of chimpanzees in biomedical labs? Again, thank you.

Anne Pusey: Lots of questions! I will answer the question about the remaining populations of chimps. There are currently several groups of scientists who are pooling their knowledge about the remaining chimp populations and coming up with action plans for their conservation. One of these is GRASP, another is the Great Apes specialist group of IUCN. There are several areas where the continuous population still numbers in the thousands (especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo). Gombe has one of the smallest populations of the areas that are considered critical for conservation. The park is only 35 square kilometers and it contains at most about 100 chimpanzees. Yet we have recently conducted a population habitat viability analysis for this population. This takes all the available information we have about the demography of the population and then runs computer simulations of what is likely to happen to the population over the next 100 years. The good news is that even this population, although it will probably decline, is unlikely to go extinct. We can also model the kinds of things that could improve its viability. One is increasing the available habitat. Currently the Jane Goodall Institute has a program, TACARE, funded by USAID that is working with villages around the park to set aside and reforest areas that will both benefit the chimpanzees and protect the watersheds. Another hopeful finding of this model was that even though the population is small, inbreeding does not become a severe problem for more than 100 years because the chimps are currently quite outbred, and they live a very long time. They also avoid breeding with close relatives.

So the bottom line is that as long as we can preserve protected areas like national parks, and work with communities outside these to preserve forest, we have some chance of ensuring that chimps will survive into the next century.

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Maryland: Hi - thanks for a very interesting chat! My son, 17 has always talked about having a monkey as a pet - spider monkey or some sort. I have always talked him out of it, with vague reasons like "they need to be in their natural habitat". I am curious as to what your thoughts are on this, and whether you have any more "scientific" reasons for not "domesticating" primates. Thanks!

Anne Pusey: It is very important NOT to have large primates as pets. They live for many years, they get very strong, and it's impossible to give them the kind of life that they need. Chimpanzees that started as pets, or were used in the entertainment industry, become unmanageable after a few years, yet they will live for another 50 or so. Fortunately for these chimps, there are increasing numbers of sanctuaries that provide a reasonable life for retired chimps in a social setting. But it is imperative that nobody adds to the numbers of these chimps by taking pets!

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Boulder, Colo.: I saw Jane Goodall speak at the ESRI conference last year. I thought the plans to use GIS technology to promote chimpanzee conservation were fascinating. Can you talk about that?

Anne Pusey: The new technologies that allow us to get a better understanding of what habitats are left are very important. Satellite images are getting more and more detailed, and they allow us both to see what the habitat of different areas look like now, and how they have changed from images taken in the past. They also allow us to monitor the effects of conservation interventions. The Jane Goodall Institute is investing in these kinds of technologies. Their conservation director, Lilian Pintea is working with other chimp researchers to produce detailed maps of different areas with chimpanzees, as well as working with the Gombe area, both to plan conservation efforts around the park, and to provide feedback on the success of the different conservation programs.

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Monroe, Conn.: How is the experience of studying chimpanzees at Gombe different today than it was when Jane Goodall was there in the 1960s?

Anne Pusey: In some ways studying the chimps is the same, and in some ways very different from when Jane started. The chimps still carry on their daily routines, getting up in the morning, foraging, meeting their companions, grooming, raising their babies,sometimes fighting,etc. But the vegetation at Gombe has got much thicker than when Jane started (probably because fire has been controlled for many decades), so it is hard work following the chimps as they travel (see Emily's blog). Living in Gombe is in some ways more comfortable for researchers now. There are concrete houses that are solar powered. The lake has fewer hazards as there are no crocodiles any more. One of the joys of working at Gombe is being able to swim in the lake after a hard day!

Also, more people visit Gombe. Tourists are allowed in small numbers. To prevent disease transmission (because chimps can get most human diseases) both researchers and tourists follow strict rules about keeping a distance from the chimps and not going into the forest if they are sick.

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New York, N.Y.: Is there any organization that oversees captive chimpanzee sanctuaries or other types of retirement facilities?

Anne Pusey: I am most familiar with the organization within Africa: PASA. See:

 PASA

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Ooy, Netherlands: Our chimplike ancestors got to be so special animals by developing names for things. But I heard chimps have specific cries for specific kinds of food. You could say: those cries are names for that food. How much names (including special signs or gestures) have chimps in total?

Anne Pusey: This is a very interesting question. In several species, like vervet monkeys, it has been shown that they have special calls for different predators (this is even true for some birds). We know less about whether chimpanzees have different calls for anything in their environment. Certainly we can tell when they are alarmed by something like a python. However, scientists have not definitively demonstrated that their long-distance pant-hoots signify different objects. Their calls are different depending on whether they are moving or in a tree. In contrast to the wild chimps, captive chimps have been taught to use more than a hundred symbols for different objects and words, so the capability is there. We need more research on this subject!

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Fairfax, Va.: I was at the Think Tank recently, and had to report a nutty woman who was harassing the orangutans with excessive photo-taking.

Because orangutans have natural silver "eyeshadow", this enhances their eye expression. Their eyelid fluttering is particularly emphasized, and I keep thinking it means something, it's so visible from a distance.

Anybody studied this?

Anne Pusey: I don't know about any studies of this in orang utans. Many monkeys (for example baboons) have light colored eye-lids, and use these in social signals -exposing them in baboons signifies submission or greeting.

I have been struck by the difference between bonobos and chimps in the color of their sclerotics (the white part of the eye in humans). These seem to be lighter in bonobos. There are studies of humans showing that the whites of the eye make it easier to see the direction of gaze. Following gaze direction is important in understanding what another individual sees, and possibly interpreting it's future behavior.

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Anne Pusey: Thanks to everyone for these interesting questions. I am sorry I was not able to get to all of them. The most important thing we can do for chimpanzees and other endangered species is to keep their plight in the public eye. Tell your friends how interesting they are, how important they are for helping us understand our own place in nature, how they deserve to persist in the world! Support conservation efforts, and emphasize that the use of apes in the entertainment industry is cruel and demeaning.

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