A longitudinal assessment of vocabulary retention in symbol-competent chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Beran, Michael J; Heimbauer, Lisa A

2015-01-01

A number of studies from the 1960s to 1990s assessed the symbolic competence of great apes and other animals. These studies provided varying forms of evidence that some species were capable of symbolically representing their worlds, both through productive symbol use and comprehension of symbolic stimuli. One such project at the Language Research Center involved training chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to use lexigram symbols (geometric visual stimuli that represented objects, actions, locations, and individuals). Those studies now are more than 40 years old, and only a few of the apes involved in those studies are still alive. Three of these chimpanzees (and a fourth, control chimpanzee) were assessed across a 10-year period from 1999 to 2008 for their continued knowledge of lexigram symbols and, in the case of one chimpanzee, the continued ability to comprehend human speech. This article describes that longitudinal assessment and outlines the degree to which symbol competence was retained by these chimpanzees across that decade-long period. All chimpanzees showed retention of lexigram vocabularies, although there were differences in the number of words that were retained across the individuals. One chimpanzee also showed continual retention of human speech perception. These retained vocabularies largely consisted of food item names, but also names of inedible objects, locations, individuals, and some actions. Many of these retained words were for things that are not common in the daily lives of the chimpanzees and for things that are rarely requested by the chimpanzees. Thus, the early experiences of these chimpanzees in symbol-rich environments have produced long-lasting memories for symbol meaning, and those competencies have benefited research in a variety of topics in comparative cognition.

Responses to a simple barter task in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes.

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Brosnan, Sarah F; de Waal, Frans B M

2005-07-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) frequently participate in social exchange involving multiple goods and services of variable value, yet they have not been tested in a formalized situation to see whether they can barter using multiple tokens and rewards. We set up a simple barter economy with two tokens and two associated rewards and tested chimpanzees on their ability to obtain rewards by returning the matching token in situations in which their access to tokens was unlimited or limited. Chimpanzees easily learned to associate value with the tokens, as expected, and did barter, but followed a simple strategy of favoring the higher-value token, regardless of the reward proffered, instead of a more complex but more effective strategy of returning the token that matched the reward. This response is similar to that shown by capuchin monkeys in our previous study. We speculate that this response, while not ideal, may be sufficient to allow for stability of the social exchange system in these primates, and that the importance of social barter to both species may have led to this convergence of strategies.

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) relational matching: playing by their own (analogical) rules.

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Flemming, Timothy M; Kennedy, Erica Hoy

2011-05-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have been known to exhibit rudimentary abilities in analogical reasoning (Flemming, Beran, Thompson, Kleider, & Washburn, 2008; Gillian, Premack, & Woodruff, 1981; Haun & Call, 2009; Thompson & Oden, 2000; Thompson, Oden, & Boysen, 1997). With a wide array of individual differences, little can be concluded about the species' capacity for analogies, much less their strategies employed for solving such problems. In this study, we examined analogical strategies in 3 chimpanzees using a 3-dimensional search task (e.g., Kennedy & Fragaszy, 2008). Food items were hidden under 1 of 2 or 3 plastic cups of varying sizes. Subsequently, chimpanzees searched for food under the cup of the same relative size in their own set of cups--reasoning by analogy. Two chimpanzees initially appeared to fail the first relational phase of the task. Meta-analyses revealed, however, that they were instead using a secondary strategy not rewarded by the contingencies of the task--choosing on the basis of the same relative position in the sample. Although this was not the intended strategy of the task, it was nonetheless analogical. In subsequent phases of the task, chimpanzees eventually learned to shift their analogical reasoning strategy to match the reward contingencies of the task and successfully choose on the basis of relative size. This evidence not only provides support for the analogical ape hypothesis (Thompson & Oden, 2000), but also exemplifies how foundational conceptually mediated analogical behavior may be for the chimpanzee. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Subspecies identification of Chimpanzees Pan troglodytes (Primates: Hominidae from the National Zoo of the Metropolitan Park of Santiago, Chile, using mitochondrial DNA sequences

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J.A. Vega

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Natural populations of Chimpanzees Pan troglodytes are declining because of hunting and illegal live animal trafficking. Four subspecies of Chimpanzee have been reported: Pan troglodytes troglodytes, P.t. schweinfurthii, P.t. verus and P.t. ellioti, which have remained geographically separated by natural barriers such as the rivers Niger, Sanaga and Ubangi in central Africa. Sequence analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA has been used for the determination of these subspecies, which indirectly can also suggest their geographic origin. It was decided to identify the subspecies and the geographic origin of three captive chimpanzees of the National Zoo of the Metropolitan Park of Santiago (Chile, by analyzing their mitochondrial DNA. DNA was extracted from the saliva of three adult chimpanzees (two males and one female. After the analysis of sequences of the mitochondrial hypervariable region (HVI, a phylogenetic tree was constructed using mitochondrial sequences of known Pan troglodytes subspecies. Molecular phylogeny analysis revealed that the chimpanzees are likely to belong to three different subspecies: P.t. schweinfurthii, P.t. verus and P.t. troglodytes. Identification of subspecies of the three chimpanzees of the National Zoo of the Metropolitan Park of Santiago (Chile was possible due to mtDNA analysis. Future identification of chimpanzees will allow the development of a studbook for the chimpanzee subspecies in other Latin American zoos.

Morphology of chimpanzee pinworms, Enterobius (Enterobius) anthropopitheci (Gedoelst, 1916) (Nematoda: Oxyuridae), collected from chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, on Rubondo Island, Tanzania.

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Hasegawa, Hideo; Ikeda, Yatsukaho; Fujisaki, Akiko; Moscovice, Liza R; Petrzelkova, Klara J; Kaur, Taranjit; Huffman, Michael A

2005-12-01

The chimpanzee pinworm, Enterobius (Enterobius) anthropopitheci (Gedoelst, 1916) (Nematoda: Oxyuridae), is redescribed based on light and scanning electron microscopy of both sexes collected from the feces of chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, of an introduced population on Rubondo Island, Tanzania. Enterobius (E.) anthropopitheci is characterized by having a small body (males 1.13-1.83 mm long, females 3.33-4.73 mm long), a rather straight spicule with a ventral membranous formation in males, double-crested lateral alae in females, small eggs (53-58 by 24-28 microm), and a smooth eggshell with 3 longitudinal thickenings. Morphological comparison is made between the present and previous descriptions.

Environmental management procedures following fatal melioidosis in a captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

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Sommanustweechai, Angkana; Kasantikul, Tanit; Somsa, Wachirawit; Wongratanacheewin, Surasakdi; Sermswan, Rasana W; Kongmakee, Piyaporn; Thomas, Warissara; Kamolnorranath, Sumate; Siriaroonrat, Boripat; Bush, Mitchell; Banlunara, Wijit

2013-06-01

A 40-yr-old male captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) presented with depression and anorexia for 7 days. The tentative diagnosis, following a physical examination under anesthesia, was pneumonia with sepsis. Despite antibiotic treatment and supportive care the chimpanzee died a week following presentation. Gross pathology confirmed severe purulent pneumonia and diffuse hepatosplenic abscesses. Detected in serum at the time of the initial examination, the melioidosis serum antibody titer was elevated (> 1:512). Soil samples were collected from three sites in the exhibit at three depths of 5, 15, and 30 cm. By direct and enrichment culture, positive cultures for Burkholderia pseudomallei were found at 5 and 15 cm in one site. The other two sites were positive by enrichment culture at the depth of 5 cm. To prevent disease in the remaining seven troop members, they were relocated to permit a soil treatment with calcium oxide. The exhibit remained empty for approximately 1 yr before the chimpanzees were returned. During that period, the soil in the exhibit area was again cultured as before and all samples were negative for B. pseudomallei. Following the soil treatment in the exhibit, all chimpanzees have remained free of clinical signs consistent with melioidosis.

Imitation of the sequential structure of actions by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Whiten, A

1998-09-01

Imitation was studied experimentally by allowing chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to observe alternative patterns of actions for opening a specially designed "artificial fruit." Like problematic foods primates deal with naturally, with the test fruit several defenses had to be removed to gain access to an edible core, but the sequential order and method of defense removal could be systematically varied. Each subject repeatedly observed 1 of 2 alternative techniques for removing each defense and 1 of 2 alternative sequential patterns of defense removal. Imitation of sequential organization emerged after repeated cycles of demonstration and attempts at opening the fruit. Imitation in chimpanzees may thus have some power to produce cultural convergence, counter to the supposition that individual learning processes corrupt copied actions. Imitation of sequential organization was accompanied by imitation of some aspects of the techniques that made up the sequence.

Comparative rates of violence in chimpanzees and humans.

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Wrangham, Richard W; Wilson, Michael L; Muller, Martin N

2006-01-01

This paper tests the proposal that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans have similar rates of death from intraspecific aggression, whereas chimpanzees have higher rates of non-lethal physical attack (Boehm 1999, Hierarchy in the forest: the evolution of egalitarian behavior. Harvard University Press). First, we assembled data on lethal aggression from long-term studies of nine communities of chimpanzees living in five populations. We calculated rates of death from intraspecific aggression both within and between communities. Variation among communities in mortality rates from aggression was high, and rates of death from intercommunity and intracommunity aggression were not correlated. Estimates for average rates of lethal violence for chimpanzees proved to be similar to average rates for subsistence societies of hunter-gatherers and farmers. Second, we compared rates of non-lethal physical aggression for two populations of chimpanzees and one population of recently settled hunter-gatherers. Chimpanzees had rates of aggression between two and three orders of magnitude higher than humans. These preliminary data support Boehm's hypothesis.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use markers to monitor the movement of a hidden item.

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Beran, Michael J; Beran, Mary M; Menzel, Charles R

2005-10-01

Four chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) monitored the movement of hidden items in arrays of opaque cups. A chocolate candy was hidden in an array of four cups and temporarily presented paper markers indicated the location of the candy (which otherwise was not visible). These markers were either non-symbolic or symbolic (lexigram) stimuli that in other contexts acted as a label for the hidden candy, and the array was either rotated 180 degrees after the marker was removed or the array remained in the same location. For three of four chimpanzees, performance was better than chance in all conditions and there was no effect of the type of marker. These experiments indicate that chimpanzees can track the movement of a hidden item in an array of identical cups even when they never see the item itself, but only see a temporarily presented marker for the location of that item. However, there was no benefit to the use of symbolic as opposed to non-symbolic stimuli in this performance.

Stable nitrogen isotope analysis of dentine serial sections elucidate sex differences in weaning patterns of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Fahy, Geraldine E; Richards, Michael P; Fuller, Benjamin T; Deschner, Tobias; Hublin, Jean-Jacques; Boesch, Christophe

2014-04-01

Offspring provisioning is one of the most energetically demanding aspects of reproduction for female mammals. Variation in lactation length and weaning strategies between chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), our closest living relative, and modern human societies have been reported. When and why these changes occurred is frequently debated. Our study used stable nitrogen isotope data of tooth root dentine from wild Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, to quantify weaning in these chimpanzees and explore if infant sex plays a role in maternal investment. We analyzed serial sections of deciduous lateral incisor root dentine from four Taï chimpanzees to establish the δ(15) N signal of nursing infants; we then analyzed serial sections of first permanent mandibular molar root dentine from 12 Taï chimpanzees to provide quantitative δ(15) N data on weaning in this population. Up to 2 years of age both sexes exhibited dentine δ(15) N values ≈2-3‰ higher than adult female Taï chimpanzees, consistent with a nursing signal. Thereafter a steady decrease in δ(15) N values consistent with the onset, and progression, of weaning, was visible. Sex differences were also evident, where male δ(15) N values decreased at a significantly slower rate compared to females. Confirmation of sex differences in maternal investment among Taï chimpanzees, demonstrates the viability of using isotope analysis to investigate weaning in non-human primates. Additionally, assuming that behaviors observed in the Taï chimpanzees are illustrative of the ancestral pattern, our results provide a platform to enable the trajectory of weaning in human evolution to be further explored. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Fournier's gangrene syndrome in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

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Okeson, Danelle M; Marrow, Judilee; Carpenter, James W; Armbrust, Laura J; Ragsdale, John M; Klocke, Emily

2010-03-01

A 37-yr-old male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) was evaluated for intermittent diarrhea, scrotal swelling, and lethargy of 2 days duration. Physical examination revealed marked swelling of the scrotum and perineal tissues with mild pitting edema and crepitus. Computed tomography revealed a mixed gas and soft-tissue density extending from the caudal ventral subcutaneous tissues caudally to the scrotum and perineal tissues. Surgical exploration and castration were performed to establish drainage, and culture revealed a polymicrobial infection. A diagnosis of scrotal and fascial plane abscessation consistent with Fournier's gangrene was made. Although castration with open drainage was performed, the animal died 36 hr after surgery. Postmortem examination and histopathology revealed necrotizing fasciitis of the penis, vaginal tunic, and subcutaneous perineal and perianal tissues.

Genomic tools for evolution and conservation in the chimpanzee: Pan troglodytes ellioti is a genetically distinct population.

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Rory Bowden

Full Text Available In spite of its evolutionary significance and conservation importance, the population structure of the common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes, is still poorly understood. An issue of particular controversy is whether the proposed fourth subspecies of chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes ellioti, from parts of Nigeria and Cameroon, is genetically distinct. Although modern high-throughput SNP genotyping has had a major impact on our understanding of human population structure and demographic history, its application to ecological, demographic, or conservation questions in non-human species has been extremely limited. Here we apply these tools to chimpanzee population structure, using ∼700 autosomal SNPs derived from chimpanzee genomic data and a further ∼100 SNPs from targeted re-sequencing. We demonstrate conclusively the existence of P. t. ellioti as a genetically distinct subgroup. We show that there is clear differentiation between the verus, troglodytes, and ellioti populations at the SNP and haplotype level, on a scale that is greater than that separating continental human populations. Further, we show that only a small set of SNPs (10-20 is needed to successfully assign individuals to these populations. Tellingly, use of only mitochondrial DNA variation to classify individuals is erroneous in 4 of 54 cases, reinforcing the dangers of basing demographic inference on a single locus and implying that the demographic history of the species is more complicated than that suggested analyses based solely on mtDNA. In this study we demonstrate the feasibility of developing economical and robust tests of individual chimpanzee origin as well as in-depth studies of population structure. These findings have important implications for conservation strategies and our understanding of the evolution of chimpanzees. They also act as a proof-of-principle for the use of cheap high-throughput genomic methods for ecological questions.

Suitable habitats for endangered frugivorous mammals: small-scale comparison, regeneration forest and chimpanzee density in Kibale National Park, Uganda.

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Sarah Bortolamiol

Full Text Available Landscape patterns and chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii densities in Kibale National Park show important variation among communities that are geographically close to one another (from 1.5 to 5.1 chimpanzees/km2. Anthropogenic activities inside the park (past logging activities, current encroachment and outside its limits (food and cash crops may impact the amount and distribution of food resources for chimpanzees (frugivorous species and their spatial distribution within the park. Spatial and temporal patterns of fruit availability were recorded over 18 months at Sebitoli (a site of intermediate chimpanzee density and higher anthropic pressure with the aim of understanding the factors explaining chimpanzee density there, in comparison to results from two other sites, also in Kibale: Kanyawara (low chimpanzee density and Ngogo (high density, and furthest from Sebitoli. Because of the post-logging regenerating status of the forest in Sebitoli and Kanyawara, smaller basal area (BA of fruiting trees most widely consumed by the chimpanzees in Kanyawara and Sebitoli was expected compared to Ngogo (not logged commercially. Due to the distance between sites, spatial and temporal fruit abundance in Sebitoli was expected to be more similar to Kanyawara than to Ngogo. While species functional classes consumed by Sebitoli chimpanzees (foods eaten during periods of high or low fruit abundance differ from the two other sites, Sebitoli is very similar to Kanyawara in terms of land-cover and consumed species. Among feeding trees, Ficus species are particularly important resources for chimpanzees at Sebitoli, where their basal area is higher than at Kanywara or Ngogo. Ficus species provided a relatively consistent supply of food for chimpanzees throughout the year, and we suggest that this could help to explain the unusually high density of chimpanzees in such a disturbed site.

Different early rearing experiences have long-term effects on cortical organization in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

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Bogart, Stephanie L; Bennett, Allyson J; Schapiro, Steve

2014-01-01

-reared chimpanzees have greater global white-to-grey matter volume, more cortical folding and thinner grey matter within the cortical folds than nursery-reared animals. The findings reported here are the first to demonstrate that differences in early rearing conditions have significant consequences on brain......Consequences of rearing history in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have been explored in relation to behavioral abnormalities and cognition; however, little is known about the effects of rearing conditions on anatomical brain development. Human studies have revealed that experiences of maltreatment...... and neglect during infancy and childhood can have detrimental effects on brain development and cognition. In this study, we evaluated the effects of early rearing experience on brain morphology in 92 captive chimpanzees (ages 11-43) who were either reared by their mothers (n = 46) or in a nursery (n = 46...

First records of tool-set use for ant-dipping by Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda.

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Hashimoto, Chie; Isaji, Mina; Koops, Kathelijne; Furuichi, Takeshi

2015-10-01

Chimpanzees at numerous study sites are known to prey on army ants by using a single wand to dip into the ant nest or column. However, in Goualougo (Republic of Congo) in Central Africa, chimpanzees use a different technique, use of a woody sapling to perforate the ant nest, then use of a herb stem as dipping tool to harvest the army ants. Use of a tool set has also been found in Guinea, West Africa: at Seringbara in the Nimba Mountains and at nearby Bossou. There are, however, no reports for chimpanzees in East Africa. We observed use of such a tool set in Kalinzu, Uganda, for the first time by Eastern chimpanzees. This behavior was observed among one group of chimpanzees at Kalinzu (S-group) but not among the adjacent group (M-group) with partly overlapping ranging areas despite the fact that the latter group has been under intensive observation since 1997. In Uganda, ant-dipping has not been observed in the northern three sites (Budongo, Semliki, and Kibale) but has been observed or seems to occur in the southern sites (Kalinzu and Bwindi), which suggests that ant-dipping was invented by and spread from the southern region after the northern and southern forest blocks became separated. Use of a tool-set by only one group at Kalinzu further suggests that this behavior was recently invented and has not yet spread to the other group via migrating females.

Chimpanzee insectivory in the northern half of Uganda's Rift Valley: do Bulindi chimpanzees conform to a regional pattern?

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McLennan, Matthew R

2014-04-01

Insects are a nutritious food source for many primates. In chimpanzees, insectivory is most prevalent among communities that manufacture tools to harvest social insects, particularly ants and termites. In contrast to other long-term study sites, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Budongo Forest and Kibale National Park, Uganda, rarely eat insects and have small foraging tool kits, supporting speculation that infrequent insectivory--technically aided or otherwise--characterises chimpanzees in this part of Uganda's Rift Valley. To expand the dataset for this region, insect foraging was investigated at Bulindi (25 km from Budongo) over 19 months during two studies in 2007-2008 and 2012-2013. Systematic faecal analysis demonstrated that insectivory is a habitual foraging activity at this site. Overall levels of insect consumption varied considerably across months but were not predicted by monthly changes in rainfall or fruit intake. Unlike their Budongo and Kibale counterparts, Bulindi chimpanzees often consume ants (principally weaver ants, Oecophylla longinoda) and use sticks to dig out stingless bee (Meliponini) ground nests. In other respects, however, insectivory at Bulindi conforms to the pattern observed elsewhere in this region: they do not manufacture 'fishing' or 'dipping' tools to harvest termites and aggressive or hard-to-access ants (e.g., army ants, Dorylus spp.), despite availability of suitable prey. The Bulindi data lend support to the supposition that chimpanzees in this part of the Rift Valley rarely exploit termites and Dorylus ants, apparently lacking the 'cultural knowledge' that would enable them to do so most efficiently (i.e., tool use). The study's findings contribute to current debates about the relative influence of genetics, environment and culture in shaping regional and local variability in Pan foraging ecology.

Mineral Acquisition from Clay by Budongo Forest Chimpanzees.

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Vernon Reynolds

Full Text Available Chimpanzees of the Sonso community, Budongo Forest, Uganda were observed eating clay and drinking clay-water from waterholes. We show that clay, clay-rich water, and clay obtained with leaf sponges, provide a range of minerals in different concentrations. The presence of aluminium in the clay consumed indicates that it takes the form of kaolinite. We discuss the contribution of clay geophagy to the mineral intake of the Sonso chimpanzees and show that clay eaten using leaf sponges is particularly rich in minerals. We show that termite mound soil, also regularly consumed, is rich in minerals. We discuss the frequency of clay and termite soil geophagy in the context of the disappearance from Budongo Forest of a formerly rich source of minerals, the decaying pith of Raphia farinifera palms.

Mineral Acquisition from Clay by Budongo Forest Chimpanzees.

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Reynolds, Vernon; Lloyd, Andrew W; English, Christopher J; Lyons, Peter; Dodd, Howard; Hobaiter, Catherine; Newton-Fisher, Nicholas; Mullins, Caroline; Lamon, Noemie; Schel, Anne Marijke; Fallon, Brittany

2015-01-01

Chimpanzees of the Sonso community, Budongo Forest, Uganda were observed eating clay and drinking clay-water from waterholes. We show that clay, clay-rich water, and clay obtained with leaf sponges, provide a range of minerals in different concentrations. The presence of aluminium in the clay consumed indicates that it takes the form of kaolinite. We discuss the contribution of clay geophagy to the mineral intake of the Sonso chimpanzees and show that clay eaten using leaf sponges is particularly rich in minerals. We show that termite mound soil, also regularly consumed, is rich in minerals. We discuss the frequency of clay and termite soil geophagy in the context of the disappearance from Budongo Forest of a formerly rich source of minerals, the decaying pith of Raphia farinifera palms.

Can Chimpanzee Biology Highlight Human Origin and Evolution?

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Itai Roffman

2010-07-01

Full Text Available The closest living relatives of humans are their chimpanzee/bonobo (Pan sister species, members of the same subfamily “Homininae”. This classification is supported by over 50 years of research in the fields of chimpanzee cultural diversity, language competency, genomics, anatomy, high cognition, psychology, society, self-consciousness and relation to others, tool use/production, as well as Homo level emotions, symbolic competency, memory recollection, complex multifaceted problem-solving capabilities, and interspecies communication. Language competence and symbolism can be continuously bridged from chimpanzee to man. Emotions, intercommunity aggression, body language, gestures, facial expressions, and vocalization of intonations seem to parallel between the sister taxa Homo and Pan. The shared suite of traits between Pan and Homo genus demonstrated in this article integrates old and new information on human–chimpanzee evolution, bilateral informational and cross-cultural exchange, promoting the urgent need for Pan cultures in the wild to be protected, as they are part of the cultural heritage of mankind. Also, we suggest that bonobos, Pan paniscus, based on shared traits with Australopithecus, need to be included in Australopithecine’s subgenus, and may even represent living-fossil Australopithecines. Unfolding bonobo and chimpanzee biology highlights our common genetic and cultural evolutionary origins.

Object-based attention in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Ushitani, Tomokazu; Imura, Tomoko; Tomonaga, Masaki

2010-03-17

We conducted three experiments to investigate how object-based components contribute to the attentional processes of chimpanzees and to examine how such processes operate with regard to perceptually structured objects. In Experiment 1, chimpanzees responded to a spatial cueing task that required them to touch a target appearing at either end of two parallel rectangles. We compared the time involved in shifting attention (cost of attentional shift) when the locations of targets were cued and non cued. Results showed that the cost of the attentional shift within one rectangle was smaller than that beyond the object's boundary, demonstrating object-based attention in chimpanzees. The results of Experiment 2, conducted with different stimulus configurations, replicated the results of Experiment 1, supporting that object-based attention operates in chimpanzees. In Experiment 3, the cost of attentional shift within a cued but partly occluded rectangle was shorter than that within a rectangle that was cued but divided in the middle. The results suggest that the attention of chimpanzees is activated not only by an explicit object but also by fragmented patches represented as an object at a higher-order perceptual level. Chimpanzees' object-based attention may be similar to that of humans. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Chaînes opératoires and resource-exploitation strategies in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) nut cracking.

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Carvalho, Susana; Cunha, Eugénia; Sousa, Cláudia; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2008-07-01

We apply archaeological methods to extend our knowledge of chimpanzee material culture. The chaîne opératoire conceptual framework, as introduced by ethnography, established technology as a phased process. Prehistoric archaeology adopted this concept to elucidate technological variability in tool-making procedures, based on knowledge of tool functions or subsistence patterns. We focused on the detection of operational sequences by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) when nut cracking with lithic implements at the sites of Bossou and Diecké, Guinea, West Africa. Thus, while it has recently been claimed that chimpanzees leave behind recognizable assemblages of stone hammers that can be morphologically distinguished from Oldowan hammers, this is the first study to focus specifically on the existence of operational sequences during the utilization of stone tools by wild chimpanzees. By combining primatological and archaeological methods and examining ecological areas inhabited by different chimpanzee groups, we sought technological variability and identified variables influencing regional diversity in tool typology and technology. We compared three case studies: (1) Bossou-direct recording of experimental nut-cracking sessions; (2) Bossou- direct and indirect monitoring of nut-cracking sites in the wild; (3) Diecké-indirect monitoring of nut-cracking sites in the wild. Results suggest that chimpanzees perform sequences of repeated tool transport and nut cracking. Data show discrimination of tool functions based on tool features. We identified the most technologically complex tool for nut cracking, which was composed of four stones. We found regional diversity in chimpanzee stone assemblages. Raw-material type and tool mobility constrain technological development in human and nonhuman primates. Spatial analysis of tool distribution indicates a pattern of resource-exploitation strategy, revealing affinities with Oldowan.

Subspecies composition and founder contribution of the captive U.S. chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) population.

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Ely, John J; Dye, Brent; Frels, William I; Fritz, Jo; Gagneux, Pascal; Khun, Henry H; Switzer, William M; Lee, D Rick

2005-10-01

Chimpanzees are presently classified into three subspecies: Pan troglodytes verus from west Africa, P.t. troglodytes from central Africa, and P.t. schweinfurthii from east Africa. A fourth subspecies (P.t. vellerosus), from Cameroon and northern Nigeria, has been proposed. These taxonomic designations are based on geographical origins and are reflected in sequence variation in the first hypervariable region (HVR-I) of the mtDNA D-loop. Although advances have been made in our understanding of chimpanzee phylogenetics, little has been known regarding the subspecies composition of captive chimpanzees. We sequenced part of the mtDNA HVR-I region in 218 African-born population founders and performed a phylogenetic analysis with previously characterized African sequences of known provenance to infer subspecies affiliations. Most founders were P.t. verus (95.0%), distantly followed by the troglodytes schweinfurthii clade (4.6%), and a single P.t. vellerosus (0.4%). Pedigree-based estimates of genomic representation in the descendant population revealed that troglodytes schweinfurthii founder representation was reduced in captivity, vellerosus representation increased due to prolific breeding by a single male, and reproductive variance resulted in uneven representation among male P.t.verus founders. No increase in mortality was evident from between-subspecies interbreeding, indicating a lack of outbreeding depression. Knowledge of subspecies and their genomic representation can form the basis for phylogenetically informed genetic management of extant chimpanzees to preserve rare genetic variation for research, conservation, or possible future breeding. Copyright 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Cars kill chimpanzees: case report of a wild chimpanzee killed on a road at Bulindi, Uganda.

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McLennan, Matthew R; Asiimwe, Caroline

2016-07-01

Roads have broadly adverse impacts on wildlife, including nonhuman primates. One direct effect is mortality from collisions with vehicles. While highly undesirable, roadkills provide valuable information on the health and condition of endangered species. We present a case report of a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) killed crossing a road in Bulindi, Uganda, where chimpanzees inhabit forest fragments amid farmland. Details of the collision are constructed from eyewitness accounts of pedestrians. Physical examination of the cadaver indicated good overall body condition; at 40 kg, the deceased female was heavier than usual for an adult female East African chimpanzee. No external wounds or fractures were noted. Coprological assessment demonstrated infection by several gastrointestinal parasites commonly reported in living wild chimpanzees. Histopathology revealed eosinophilic enteritis and biliary hyperplasia potentially caused by parasite infection. However, eosinophilia was not widely spread into the submucosa, while egg/cyst counts suggested low-intensity parasite infections compared to healthy female chimpanzees of similar age in nearby Budongo Forest. No behavioral indicators of ill health were noted in the deceased female in the month prior to the accident. We conclude that cause of death was acute, i.e., shock from the collision, and was probably unrelated to parasite infection or any other underlying health condition. Notably, this female had asymmetrical polythelia, and, while nursing at the time of her death, had one functioning mammary gland only. In Uganda, where primates often inhabit human-dominated landscapes, human population growth and economic development has given rise to increasing motor traffic, while road development is enabling motorists to travel at greater speeds. Thus, the danger of roads to apes and other wildlife is rising, necessitating urgent strategies to reduce risks. Installation of simple speed-bumps-common on Ugandan

Mineral acquisition from clay by budongo forest chimpanzees

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Reynolds, Vernon; Lloyd, Andrew W.; English, Christopher J.; Lyons, Peter; Dodd, Howard; Hobaiter, Catherine; Newton-Fisher, Nicholas; Mullins, Caroline; Lamon, Noemie; Schel, Anne Marijke; Fallon, Brittany

2015-01-01

Chimpanzees of the Sonso community, Budongo Forest, Uganda were observed eating clay and drinking clay-water from waterholes. We show that clay, clay-rich water, and clay obtained with leaf sponges, provide a range of minerals in different concentrations. The presence of aluminium in the clay

Effects of two types and two genre of music on social behavior in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Videan, Elaine N; Fritz, Jo; Howell, Sue; Murphy, James

2007-01-01

Is music just noise, and thus potentially harmful to laboratory animals, or can it have a beneficial effect? Research addressing this question has generated mixed results, perhaps because of the different types and styles of music used across various studies. The purpose of this study was to test the effects of 2 different types (vocal versus instrumental) and 2 genres (classical vocal versus 'easy-listening' vocal) of music on social behavior in 31 female and 26 male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Results indicated that instrumental music was more effective at increasing affiliative behavior in both male and female chimpanzees, whereas vocal music was more effective at decreasing agonistic behavior. A comparison of 2 genre of vocal music indicated that easy-listening (slower tempo) vocal music was more effective at decreasing agonistic behavior in male chimpanzees than classical (faster tempo) vocal music. Agonistic behavior in females remained low (music. These results indicate that, like humans, captive chimpanzees react differently to various types and genres of music. The reactions varied depending on both the sex of the subject and the type of social behavior examined. Management programs should consider both type and genre when implementing a musical enrichment program for nonhuman primates.

Diet and seasonal changes in sympatric gorillas and chimpanzees at Kahuzi-Biega National Park.

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Yamagiwa, Juichi; Basabose, Augustin Kanyunyi

2006-01-01

Based on 8 years of observations of a group of western lowland gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri) and a unit-group of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) living sympatrically in the montane forest at Kahuzi-Biega National Park, we compared their diet and analyzed dietary overlap between them in relation to fruit phenology. Data on fruit consumption were collected mainly from fecal samples, and phenology of preferred ape fruits was estimated by monitoring. Totals of 231 plant foods (116 species) and 137 plant foods (104 species) were recorded for gorillas and chimpanzees, respectively. Among these, 38% of gorilla foods and 64% of chimpanzee foods were eaten by both apes. Fruits accounted for the largest overlap between them (77% for gorillas and 59% for chimpanzees). Gorillas consumed more species of vegetative foods (especially bark) exclusively whereas chimpanzees consumed more species of fruits and animal foods exclusively. Although the number of fruit species available in the montane forest of Kahuzi is much lower than that in lowland forest, the number of fruit species per chimpanzee fecal sample (average 2.7 species) was similar to that for chimpanzees in the lowland habitats. By contrast, the number of fruit species per gorilla fecal sample (average 0.8 species) was much lower than that for gorillas in the lowland habitats. Fruit consumption by both apes tended to increase during the dry season when ripe fruits were more abundant in their habitat. However, the number of fruit species consumed by chimpanzees did not change according to ripe fruit abundance. The species differences in fruit consumption may be attributed to the wide ranging of gorillas and repeated usage of a small range by chimpanzees and/or to avoidance of inter-specific contact by chimpanzees. The different staple foods (leaves and bark for gorillas and fig fruits for chimpanzees) characterize the dietary divergence between them in the montane forest of Kahuzi, where fruit is

Assessment of gastrointestinal parasites in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in southeast Cameroon.

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Drakulovski, Pascal; Bertout, Sébastien; Locatelli, Sabrina; Butel, Christelle; Pion, Sébastien; Mpoudi-Ngole, Eitel; Delaporte, Eric; Peeters, Martine; Mallié, Michèle

2014-07-01

We tested 114 faecal samples from wild simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-positive (n = 43) and SIV-negative (n = 71) chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in southeast Cameroon for the presence of gastrointestinal parasites by direct smear. We observed cysts from different protozoa (Entamoeba coli and Entamoeba histolytica / Entamoeba dispar, Endolimax nana, Iodamoeba butschlii, Chilomastix mesnili, Balantidium coli and Blastocystis cells) and trophozoites from Troglodytella abrassarti and Balantidium coli. Eggs from different helminths (strongylids, Ascaris lumbricoides, Abbreviata caucasica, Trichuris sp., Capillaria sp., Enterobius anthropopeci, Bertiella sp., Hymenolepis diminuta and an undetermined fluke) were also observed. Finally, we observed eggs that could not be properly identified and classified. We did not observe any differences between the SIV+ and SIV- samples except for the unidentified eggs. The studied chimpanzees were highly parasitised by strongylid (85.1% of prevalence), Troglodytella (43.8%) and Blastocystis (2.9%), and the frequency of the other parasites ranged from 0.9 to 8.8%. These high levels of parasite infections could represent an additional burden in a population where there is a high rate of the SIV virus in circulation.

Limited evidence for third-party affiliation during development in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

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Miller, Jordan A; Stanton, Margaret A; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V; Wellens, Kaitlin R; Markham, A Catherine; Murray, Carson M

2017-09-01

Examining the ontogeny of conflict-mitigating behaviours in our closest living relatives is an important component of understanding the evolutionary origins of cooperation in our species. In this study, we used 26 years of data to investigate the emergence of third-party affiliation (TPA), defined as affiliative contact given to recipients of aggression by uninvolved bystanders (regardless of initiation), in wild immature eastern chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii ) of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We also characterized TPA by mothers in the same dataset as an adult benchmark for interpreting immature TPA patterns. In summary, we found that immatures did not express TPA as measured by grooming between the ages of 1.5 and 12.0 years, and that there was limited evidence that immatures expressed TPA via play. We also found that mothers did express TPA to offspring, although mothers did not show TPA towards non-offspring. Cases of TPA by mothers to other adults were too few to analyse separately. These results contrast with findings from captive studies which found that chimpanzees as young as 6 years of age demonstrated TPA. We argue that within-species variation in the expression of TPA, both in immatures and adulthood, provides evidence that the conflict management behaviours of young chimpanzees may be heavily influenced by social, ecological and demographic factors.

High diversity at PRDM9 in chimpanzees and bonobos.

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Linn Fenna Groeneveld

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The PRDM9 locus in mammals has increasingly attracted research attention due to its role in mediating chromosomal recombination and possible involvement in hybrid sterility and hence speciation processes. The aim of this study was to characterize sequence variation at the PRDM9 locus in a sample of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: PRDM9 contains a highly variable and repetitive zinc finger array. We amplified this domain using long-range PCR and determined the DNA sequences using conventional Sanger sequencing. From 17 chimpanzees representing three subspecies and five bonobos we obtained a total of 12 alleles differing at the nucleotide level. Based on a data set consisting of our data and recently published Pan PRDM9 sequences, we found that at the subspecies level, diversity levels did not differ among chimpanzee subspecies or between chimpanzee subspecies and bonobos. In contrast, the sample of chimpanzees harbors significantly more diversity at PRDM9 than samples of humans. Pan PRDM9 shows signs of rapid evolution including no alleles or ZnFs in common with humans as well as signals of positive selection in the residues responsible for DNA binding. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: The high number of alleles specific to the genus Pan, signs of positive selection in the DNA binding residues, and reported lack of conservation of recombination hotspots between chimpanzees and humans suggest that PRDM9 could be active in hotspot recruitment in the genus Pan. Chimpanzees and bonobos are considered separate species and do not have overlapping ranges in the wild, making the presence of shared alleles at the amino acid level between the chimpanzee and bonobo species interesting in view of the hypothesis that PRDM9 plays a universal role in interspecific hybrid sterility.

Visuoauditory mappings between high luminance and high pitch are shared by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and humans

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Ludwig, Vera U.; Adachi, Ikuma; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2011-01-01

Humans share implicit preferences for certain cross-sensory combinations; for example, they consistently associate higher-pitched sounds with lighter colors, smaller size, and spikier shapes. In the condition of synesthesia, people may experience such cross-modal correspondences to a perceptual degree (e.g., literally seeing sounds). So far, no study has addressed the question whether nonhuman animals share cross-modal correspondences as well. To establish the evolutionary origins of cross-modal mappings, we tested whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) also associate higher pitch with higher luminance. Thirty-three humans and six chimpanzees were required to classify black and white squares according to their color while hearing irrelevant background sounds that were either high-pitched or low-pitched. Both species performed better when the background sound was congruent (high-pitched for white, low-pitched for black) than when it was incongruent (low-pitched for white, high-pitched for black). An inherent tendency to pair high pitch with high luminance hence evolved before the human lineage split from that of chimpanzees. Rather than being a culturally learned or a linguistic phenomenon, this mapping constitutes a basic feature of the primate sensory system. PMID:22143791

The contribution of genetics and early rearing experiences to hierarchical personality dimensions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

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Latzman, Robert D.; Freeman, Hani D.; Schapiro, Steven J.; Hopkins, William D.

2015-01-01

A reliable literature finds that traits are related to each other in an organized hierarchy encompassing various conceptualizations of personality (e.g., Big Three, Five Factor Model). Recent work suggests the potential of a similar organization among our closest nonhuman relative, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), with significant links to neurobiology suggesting an evolutionarily- and neurobiologically-based hierarchical structure of personality. The current study investigated this hierarchical structure, the heritability of the various personality dimensions across levels of the hierarchy, and associations with early social rearing experience in a large sample (N = 238) of socially-housed, captive chimpanzees residing in two independent colonies of apes. Results provide support for a hierarchical structure of personality in chimpanzees with significant associations with early rearing experiences. Further, heritabilities of the various dimensions varied by early rearing, with affective dimensions found to be significantly heritable among mother-reared apes, while personality dimensions were largely independent of relatedness among the nursery-reared apes. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the influence of both genetic and environmental factors on personality profiles across levels of the hierarchy, supporting the importance of considering environmental variation in models of quantitative trait evolution. PMID:25915132

Campylobacter troglodytis sp. nov., isolated from feces of human-habituated wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Tanzania.

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Kaur, Taranjit; Singh, Jatinder; Huffman, Michael A; Petrzelková, Klára J; Taylor, Nancy S; Xu, Shilu; Dewhirst, Floyd E; Paster, Bruce J; Debruyne, Lies; Vandamme, Peter; Fox, James G

2011-04-01

The transmission of simian immunodeficiency and Ebola viruses to humans in recent years has heightened awareness of the public health significance of zoonotic diseases of primate origin, particularly from chimpanzees. In this study, we analyzed 71 fecal samples collected from 2 different wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) populations with different histories in relation to their proximity to humans. Campylobacter spp. were detected by culture in 19/56 (34%) group 1 (human habituated for research and tourism purposes at Mahale Mountains National Park) and 0/15 (0%) group 2 (not human habituated but propagated from an introduced population released from captivity over 30 years ago at Rubondo Island National Park) chimpanzees, respectively. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, all isolates were virtually identical (at most a single base difference), and the chimpanzee isolates were most closely related to Campylobacter helveticus and Campylobacter upsaliensis (94.7% and 95.9% similarity, respectively). Whole-cell protein profiling, amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis of genomic DNA, hsp60 sequence analysis, and determination of the mol% G+C content revealed two subgroups among the chimpanzee isolates. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments confirmed that both subgroups represented distinct genomic species. In the absence of differential biochemical characteristics and morphology and identical 16S rRNA gene sequences, we propose to classify all isolates into a single novel nomenspecies, Campylobacter troglodytis, with strain MIT 05-9149 as the type strain; strain MIT 05-9157 is suggested as the reference strain for the second C. troglodytis genomovar. Further studies are required to determine whether the organism is pathogenic to chimpanzees and whether this novel Campylobacter colonizes humans and causes enteric disease.

Integration of a hand-reared chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) infant into a social group of conspecifics.

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Thunström, Maria; Persson, Tomas; Björklund, Mats

2013-01-01

Rejections of infants among non-human primates occasionally occur in the wild as well as in captive settings. Controlled adoptions of orphans and introductions of individuals into new groups are therefore sometimes necessary in captivity. Consequently, behavioral research on integration procedures and on the acceptance of infants by adoptive mothers is much needed. In this study, the introduction and subsequent adoption were examined in an 18-month-old hand-reared chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). The infant was introduced into an age/sex-diversified social group of conspecifics at Furuvik Zoo, Gävle, Sweden, and continuous focal data was collected during the final stage of integration, including infant care exhibited by the group members and the infant's secure base behavior. The infant was successfully integrated into the group and engaged in positive social interactions with all group members. An adult primiparous female chimpanzee formed a bond resembling a mother-infant relationship with the infant, which continues to be maintained at publication. However, the female initially showed very limited interest in the infant. It was, in fact, two other younger female group members that exhibited most infant care. The infant's secure base behavior patterns indicate that she adapted well to the new circumstances in the chimpanzee group as the integration progressed. This provides evidence that a final adopter does not necessarily initially show maternal interest and that there can be flexibility in maternal behavior in adult chimpanzee females. Moreover, the methods applied employing gradual familiarization with all the group members and the use of an integration enclosure, may have contributed to a successful result. These findings extend our knowledge of introduction procedures in captivity as well as provide information on foster mother-infant attachment in chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Produce the Same Types of 'Laugh Faces' when They Emit Laughter and when They Are Silent.

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Davila-Ross, Marina; Jesus, Goncalo; Osborne, Jade; Bard, Kim A

2015-01-01

The ability to flexibly produce facial expressions and vocalizations has a strong impact on the way humans communicate, as it promotes more explicit and versatile forms of communication. Whereas facial expressions and vocalizations are unarguably closely linked in primates, the extent to which these expressions can be produced independently in nonhuman primates is unknown. The present work, thus, examined if chimpanzees produce the same types of facial expressions with and without accompanying vocalizations, as do humans. Forty-six chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were video-recorded during spontaneous play with conspecifics at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage. ChimpFACS was applied, a standardized coding system to measure chimpanzee facial movements, based on FACS developed for humans. Data showed that the chimpanzees produced the same 14 configurations of open-mouth faces when laugh sounds were present and when they were absent. Chimpanzees, thus, produce these facial expressions flexibly without being morphologically constrained by the accompanying vocalizations. Furthermore, the data indicated that the facial expression plus vocalization and the facial expression alone were used differently in social play, i.e., when in physical contact with the playmates and when matching the playmates' open-mouth faces. These findings provide empirical evidence that chimpanzees produce distinctive facial expressions independently from a vocalization, and that their multimodal use affects communicative meaning, important traits for a more explicit and versatile way of communication. As it is still uncertain how human laugh faces evolved, the ChimpFACS data were also used to empirically examine the evolutionary relation between open-mouth faces with laugh sounds of chimpanzees and laugh faces of humans. The ChimpFACS results revealed that laugh faces of humans must have gradually emerged from laughing open-mouth faces of ancestral apes. This work examines the main evolutionary

An evaluation of video cameras for collecting observational data on sanctuary-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Hansen, Bethany K; Fultz, Amy L; Hopper, Lydia M; Ross, Stephen R

2018-05-01

Video cameras are increasingly being used to monitor captive animals in zoo, laboratory, and agricultural settings. This technology may also be useful in sanctuaries with large and/or complex enclosures. However, the cost of camera equipment and a lack of formal evaluations regarding the use of cameras in sanctuary settings make it challenging for facilities to decide whether and how to implement this technology. To address this, we evaluated the feasibility of using a video camera system to monitor chimpanzees at Chimp Haven. We viewed a group of resident chimpanzees in a large forested enclosure and compared observations collected in person and with remote video cameras. We found that via camera, the observer viewed fewer chimpanzees in some outdoor locations (GLMM post hoc test: est. = 1.4503, SE = 0.1457, Z = 9.951, p sanctuaries to facilitate animal care and observational research. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Cladistic analyses of behavioural variation in wild Pan troglodytes: exploring the chimpanzee culture hypothesis.

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Lycett, Stephen J; Collard, Mark; McGrew, William C

2009-10-01

Long-term field studies have revealed considerable behavioural differences among groups of wild Pan troglodytes. Here, we report three sets of cladistic analyses that were designed to shed light on issues relating to this interpopulation variation that are of particular relevance to palaeoanthropology. In the first set of analyses, we focused on the proximate cause of the variation. Some researchers have argued that it is cultural, while others have suggested that it is the result of genetic differences. Because the eastern and western subspecies of P. troglodytes are well differentiated genetically while groups within the subspecies are not, we reasoned that if the genetic hypothesis is correct, the phylogenetic signal should be stronger when data from the eastern and western subspecies are analysed together compared to when data from only the eastern subspecies are analysed. Using randomisation procedures, we found that the phylogenetic signal was substantially stronger with in a single subspecies rather than with two. The results of the first sets of analyses, therefore, were inconsistent with the predictions of the genetic hypothesis. The other two sets of analyses built on the results of the first and assumed that the intergroup behavioural variation is cultural in nature. Recent work has shown that, contrary to what anthropologists and archaeologists have long believed, vertical intergroup transmission is often more important than horizontal intergroup transmission in human cultural evolution. In the second set of analyses, we sought to determine how important vertical transmission has been in the evolution of chimpanzee cultural diversity. The first analysis we carried out indicated that the intergroup similarities and differences in behaviour are consistent with the divergence of the western and eastern subspecies, which is what would be expected if vertical intergroup transmission has been the dominant process. In the second analysis, we found that the

Campylobacter troglodytis sp. nov., Isolated from Feces of Human-Habituated Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Tanzania ▿

Science.gov (United States)

Kaur, Taranjit; Singh, Jatinder; Huffman, Michael A.; Petrželková, Klára J.; Taylor, Nancy S.; Xu, Shilu; Dewhirst, Floyd E.; Paster, Bruce J.; Debruyne, Lies; Vandamme, Peter; Fox, James G.

2011-01-01

The transmission of simian immunodeficiency and Ebola viruses to humans in recent years has heightened awareness of the public health significance of zoonotic diseases of primate origin, particularly from chimpanzees. In this study, we analyzed 71 fecal samples collected from 2 different wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) populations with different histories in relation to their proximity to humans. Campylobacter spp. were detected by culture in 19/56 (34%) group 1 (human habituated for research and tourism purposes at Mahale Mountains National Park) and 0/15 (0%) group 2 (not human habituated but propagated from an introduced population released from captivity over 30 years ago at Rubondo Island National Park) chimpanzees, respectively. Using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, all isolates were virtually identical (at most a single base difference), and the chimpanzee isolates were most closely related to Campylobacter helveticus and Campylobacter upsaliensis (94.7% and 95.9% similarity, respectively). Whole-cell protein profiling, amplified fragment length polymorphism analysis of genomic DNA, hsp60 sequence analysis, and determination of the mol% G+C content revealed two subgroups among the chimpanzee isolates. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments confirmed that both subgroups represented distinct genomic species. In the absence of differential biochemical characteristics and morphology and identical 16S rRNA gene sequences, we propose to classify all isolates into a single novel nomenspecies, Campylobacter troglodytis, with strain MIT 05-9149 as the type strain; strain MIT 05-9157 is suggested as the reference strain for the second C. troglodytis genomovar. Further studies are required to determine whether the organism is pathogenic to chimpanzees and whether this novel Campylobacter colonizes humans and causes enteric disease. PMID:21278267

Chimpanzee pinworm, Enterobius anthropopitheci (Nematoda: Oxyuridae), maintained for more than twenty years in captive chimpanzees in Japan.

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Hasegawa, Hideo; Udono, Toshifumi

2007-08-01

The chimpanzee pinworm, Enterobius anthropopitheci (Gedoelst, 1916), was found in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, reared in Kumamoto Primate Research Park, Sanwa Kagaku Kenkyusho Co., Ltd., Kumamoto, Japan, in 2006. Because the chimpanzees in this institution originated from chimpanzees imported from Africa before 1984, it is considered that E. anthropopitheci infection has persisted for more than 20 yr in the chimpanzees. Analysis of pinworm specimens preserved in the institution revealed that transition of predominant pinworm species occurred, responding to the change of anthelmintics used for pinworm treatment. Present dominance of E. anthropopitheci is surmised to be caused by fenbendazole, which has been adopted from 2002. Scarcity of mixed infection with E. anthropopitheci and Enterobius vermicularis suggests interspecific competition between the pinworms.

Chimpanzee malaria parasites related to Plasmodium ovale in Africa.

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Linda Duval

Full Text Available Since the 1970's, the diversity of Plasmodium parasites in African great apes has been neglected. Surprisingly, P. reichenowi, a chimpanzee parasite, is the only such parasite to have been molecularly characterized. This parasite is closely phylogenetically related to P. falciparum, the principal cause of the greatest malaria burden in humans. Studies of malaria parasites from anthropoid primates may provide relevant phylogenetic information, improving our understanding of the origin and evolutionary history of human malaria species. In this study, we screened 130 DNA samples from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla from Cameroon for Plasmodium infection, using cytochrome b molecular tools. Two chimpanzees from the subspecies Pan t. troglodytes presented single infections with Plasmodium strains molecularly related to the human malaria parasite P. ovale. These chimpanzee parasites and 13 human strains of P. ovale originated from a various sites in Africa and Asia were characterized using cytochrome b and cytochrome c oxidase 1 mitochondrial partial genes and nuclear ldh partial gene. Consistent with previous findings, two genetically distinct types of P. ovale, classical and variant, were observed in the human population from a variety of geographical locations. One chimpanzee Plasmodium strain was genetically identical, on all three markers tested, to variant P. ovale type. The other chimpanzee Plasmodium strain was different from P. ovale strains isolated from humans. This study provides the first evidence of possibility of natural cross-species exchange of P. ovale between humans and chimpanzees of the subspecies Pan t. troglodytes.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Produce the Same Types of ‘Laugh Faces’ when They Emit Laughter and when They Are Silent

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Davila-Ross, Marina; Jesus, Goncalo; Osborne, Jade; Bard, Kim A.

2015-01-01

The ability to flexibly produce facial expressions and vocalizations has a strong impact on the way humans communicate, as it promotes more explicit and versatile forms of communication. Whereas facial expressions and vocalizations are unarguably closely linked in primates, the extent to which these expressions can be produced independently in nonhuman primates is unknown. The present work, thus, examined if chimpanzees produce the same types of facial expressions with and without accompanying vocalizations, as do humans. Forty-six chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were video-recorded during spontaneous play with conspecifics at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage. ChimpFACS was applied, a standardized coding system to measure chimpanzee facial movements, based on FACS developed for humans. Data showed that the chimpanzees produced the same 14 configurations of open-mouth faces when laugh sounds were present and when they were absent. Chimpanzees, thus, produce these facial expressions flexibly without being morphologically constrained by the accompanying vocalizations. Furthermore, the data indicated that the facial expression plus vocalization and the facial expression alone were used differently in social play, i.e., when in physical contact with the playmates and when matching the playmates’ open-mouth faces. These findings provide empirical evidence that chimpanzees produce distinctive facial expressions independently from a vocalization, and that their multimodal use affects communicative meaning, important traits for a more explicit and versatile way of communication. As it is still uncertain how human laugh faces evolved, the ChimpFACS data were also used to empirically examine the evolutionary relation between open-mouth faces with laugh sounds of chimpanzees and laugh faces of humans. The ChimpFACS results revealed that laugh faces of humans must have gradually emerged from laughing open-mouth faces of ancestral apes. This work examines the main evolutionary

Characterization of a new simian immunodeficiency virus strain in a naturally infected Pan troglodytes troglodytes chimpanzee with AIDS related symptoms

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Aghokeng Avelin F

2011-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Data on the evolution of natural SIV infection in chimpanzees (SIVcpz and on the impact of SIV on local ape populations are only available for Eastern African chimpanzee subspecies (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, and no data exist for Central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes, the natural reservoir of the ancestors of HIV-1 in humans. Here, we report a case of naturally-acquired SIVcpz infection in a P.t.troglodytes chimpanzee with clinical and biological data and analysis of viral evolution over the course of infection. Results A male chimpanzee (Cam155, 1.5 years, was seized in southern Cameroon in November 2003 and screened SIV positive during quarantine. Clinical follow-up and biological analyses have been performed for 7 years and showed a significant decline of CD4 counts (1,380 cells/mm3 in 2004 vs 287 in 2009, a severe thrombocytopenia (130,000 cells/mm3 in 2004 vs 5,000 cells/mm3 in 2009, a weight loss of 21.8% from August 2009 to January 2010 (16 to 12.5 kg and frequent periods of infections with diverse pathogens. DNA from PBMC, leftover from clinical follow-up samples collected in 2004 and 2009, was used to amplify overlapping fragments and sequence two full-length SIVcpzPtt-Cam155 genomes. SIVcpzPtt-Cam155 was phylogenetically related to other SIVcpzPtt from Cameroon (SIVcpzPtt-Cam13 and Gabon (SIVcpzPtt-Gab1. Ten molecular clones 5 years apart, spanning the V1V4 gp120 env region (1,100 bp, were obtained. Analyses of the env region showed positive selection (dN-dS >0, intra-host length variation and extensive amino acid diversity between clones, greater in 2009. Over 5 years, N-glycosylation site frequency significantly increased (p Conclusions Here, we describe for the first time the clinical history and viral evolution of a naturally SIV infected P.t.troglodytes chimpanzee. The findings show an increasing viral diversity over time and suggest clinical progression to an AIDS-like disease, showing that

Chimpanzee autarky.

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Sarah F Brosnan

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth--and even much of our human culture--yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully understand the phenomenon. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes are an interesting test case as they are an intelligent species, closely related to humans, and known to participate in reciprocal interactions and token economies with humans, yet they have not spontaneously developed costly barter.Although chimpanzees do engage in noncostly barter, in which otherwise value-less tokens are exchanged for food, this lack of risk is not typical of human barter. Thus, we systematically examined barter in chimpanzees to ascertain under what circumstances chimpanzees will engage in costly barter of commodities, that is, trading food items for other food items with a human experimenter. We found that chimpanzees do barter, relinquishing lower value items to obtain higher value items (and not the reverse. However, they do not trade in all beneficial situations, maintaining possession of less preferred items when the relative gains they stand to make are small.Two potential explanations for this puzzling behavior are that chimpanzees lack ownership norms, and thus have limited opportunity to benefit from the gains of trade, and that chimpanzees' risk of defection is sufficiently high that large gains must be imminent to justify the risk. Understanding the conditions that support barter in chimpanzees may increase understanding of situations in which humans, too, do not maximize their gains.

Chimpanzee autarky.

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Brosnan, Sarah F; Grady, Mark F; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; Beran, Michael J

2008-01-30

Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth--and even much of our human culture--yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully understand the phenomenon. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an interesting test case as they are an intelligent species, closely related to humans, and known to participate in reciprocal interactions and token economies with humans, yet they have not spontaneously developed costly barter. Although chimpanzees do engage in noncostly barter, in which otherwise value-less tokens are exchanged for food, this lack of risk is not typical of human barter. Thus, we systematically examined barter in chimpanzees to ascertain under what circumstances chimpanzees will engage in costly barter of commodities, that is, trading food items for other food items with a human experimenter. We found that chimpanzees do barter, relinquishing lower value items to obtain higher value items (and not the reverse). However, they do not trade in all beneficial situations, maintaining possession of less preferred items when the relative gains they stand to make are small. Two potential explanations for this puzzling behavior are that chimpanzees lack ownership norms, and thus have limited opportunity to benefit from the gains of trade, and that chimpanzees' risk of defection is sufficiently high that large gains must be imminent to justify the risk. Understanding the conditions that support barter in chimpanzees may increase understanding of situations in which humans, too, do not maximize their gains.

Comprehension of functional support by enculturated chimpanzees Pan troglodytes

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Anna M. YOCOM, Sarah T. BOYSEN

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Studies of causal understanding of tool relationships in captive chimpanzees have yielded disparate findings, particularly those reported by Povinelli & colleagues (2000 for tool tasks by laboratory chimpanzees. The present set of experiments tested nine enculturated chimpanzees on three versions of a support task, as described by Povinelli (2000, during which food rewards were presented in different experimental configurations. In Experiment 1, stimulus pairs included a choice between a cloth with a reward on the upper right corner or with a second reward off the cloth, adjacent to a corner, with the second pair comprised of a cloth with food on the upper right corner, and a second cloth with the reward on the substrate, partially covered. All subjects were successful with both test conditions in Experiment 1. In a second study, the experimental choices included one of two possible correct options, paired with one of three incorrect options, with the three incorrect choices all involving varying degrees of perceptual containment. All nine chimpanzees scored significantly above chance across all six conditions. In Experiment 3, four unique conditions were presented, combining one of two possible correct choices with one of two incorrect choices. Six of the subjects scored significantly above chance across the four conditions, and group performance on individual conditions was also significant. Superior performance was demonstrated by female subjects in Experiment 3, similar to sex differences in tool use previously reported for wild chimpanzees and some tool tasks in captive chimpanzees. The present results for Experiments 2 & 3 were significantly differed from those reported by Povinelli et al. (2000 for laboratory-born, peer-reared chimpanzees. One contribution towards the dramatic differences between the two study populations may be the significant rearing and housing differences of the chimpanzee groups. One explanation is that under

Terrestrial nest-building by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): implications for the tree-to-ground sleep transition in early hominins.

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Koops, Kathelijne; McGrew, William C; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Knapp, Leslie A

2012-07-01

Nest-building is a great ape universal and arboreal nesting in chimpanzees and bonobos suggests that the common ancestor of Pan and Homo also nested in trees. It has been proposed that arboreal nest-building remained the prevailing pattern until Homo erectus, a fully terrestrial biped, emerged. We investigated the unusual occurrence of ground-nesting in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), which may inform on factors influencing the tree-to-ground sleep transition in the hominin lineage. We used a novel genetic approach to examine ground-nesting in unhabituated chimpanzees at Seringbara in the Nimba Mountains, Guinea. Previous research showed that ground-nesting at Seringbara was not ecologically determined. Here, we tested a possible mate-guarding function of ground-nesting by analyzing DNA from shed hairs collected from ground nests and tree nests found in close proximity. We examined whether or not ground-nesting was a group-level behavioral pattern and whether or not it occurred in more than one community. We used multiple genetic markers to identify sex and to examine variation in mitochondrial DNA control region (HV1, HV2) sequences. Ground-nesting was a male-biased behavior and males constructed more elaborate ("night") nests than simple ("day") nests on the ground. The mate-guarding hypothesis was not supported, as ground and associated tree nests were built either by maternally-related males or possibly by the same individuals. Ground-nesting was widespread and likely habitual in two communities. We suggest that terrestrial nest-building may have already occurred in arboreally-adapted early hominins before the emergence of H. erectus. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Measuring Hair Cortisol Concentrations to Assess the Effect of Anthropogenic Impacts on Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Carlitz, Esther H D; Miller, Robert; Kirschbaum, Clemens; Gao, Wei; Hänni, Daniel C; van Schaik, Carel P

2016-01-01

Non-human primates face major environmental changes due to increased human impacts all over the world. Although some species are able to survive in certain landscapes with anthropogenic impact, their long-term viability and fitness may be decreased due to chronic stress. Here we assessed long-term stress levels through cortisol analysis in chimpanzee hair obtained from sleeping nests in northwestern Uganda, in order to estimate welfare in the context of ecotourism, forest fragmentation with human-wildlife conflicts, and illegal logging with hunting activity (albeit not of primates), compared with a control without human contact or conflict. Concerning methodological issues, season [F(2,129) = 37.4, p < 0.0001, r2 = 0.18] and the age of nests [F(2,178) = 20.3, p < 0.0001, r2 = 0.11] significantly predicted hair cortisol concentrations (HCC). With regard to effects of anthropogenic impacts, our results neither showed elevation of HCC due to ecotourism, nor due to illegal logging compared to their control groups. We did, however, find significantly increased HCC in the fragment group compared to chimpanzees living in a nearby intact forest [F(1,88) = 5.0, p = 0.03, r2 = 0.20]. In conclusion, our results suggest that hair cortisol analysis is a powerful tool that can help understanding the impact of anthropogenic disturbances on chimpanzee well-being and could be applied to other great ape species.

Problem Solving in the Presence of Others: How Rank and Relationship Quality Impact Resource Acquisition in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

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Cronin, Katherine A.; Pieper, Bridget A.; van Leeuwen, Edwin J. C.; Mundry, Roger; Haun, Daniel B. M.

2014-01-01

In the wild, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are often faced with clumped food resources that they may know how to access but abstain from doing so due to social pressures. To better understand how social settings influence resource acquisition, we tested fifteen semi-wild chimpanzees from two social groups alone and in the presence of others. We investigated how resource acquisition was affected by relative social dominance, whether collaborative problem solving or (active or passive) sharing occurred amongst any of the dyads, and whether these outcomes were related to relationship quality as determined from six months of observational data. Results indicated that chimpanzees obtained fewer rewards when tested in the presence of others compared to when they were tested alone, and this loss tended to be greater when paired with a higher ranked individual. Individuals demonstrated behavioral inhibition; chimpanzees who showed proficient skill when alone often abstained from solving the task when in the presence of others. Finally, individuals with close social relationships spent more time together in the problem solving space, but collaboration and sharing were infrequent and sessions in which collaboration or sharing did occur contained more instances of aggression. Group living provides benefits and imposes costs, and these findings highlight that one cost of group living may be diminishing productive individual behaviors. PMID:24695486

Problem solving in the presence of others: how rank and relationship quality impact resource acquisition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes.

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Katherine A Cronin

Full Text Available In the wild, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes are often faced with clumped food resources that they may know how to access but abstain from doing so due to social pressures. To better understand how social settings influence resource acquisition, we tested fifteen semi-wild chimpanzees from two social groups alone and in the presence of others. We investigated how resource acquisition was affected by relative social dominance, whether collaborative problem solving or (active or passive sharing occurred amongst any of the dyads, and whether these outcomes were related to relationship quality as determined from six months of observational data. Results indicated that chimpanzees obtained fewer rewards when tested in the presence of others compared to when they were tested alone, and this loss tended to be greater when paired with a higher ranked individual. Individuals demonstrated behavioral inhibition; chimpanzees who showed proficient skill when alone often abstained from solving the task when in the presence of others. Finally, individuals with close social relationships spent more time together in the problem solving space, but collaboration and sharing were infrequent and sessions in which collaboration or sharing did occur contained more instances of aggression. Group living provides benefits and imposes costs, and these findings highlight that one cost of group living may be diminishing productive individual behaviors.

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees

OpenAIRE

Warneken, Felix; Rosati, Alexandra G.

2015-01-01

The transition to a cooked diet represents an important shift in human ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities, including causal reasoning, self-control and anticipatory planning. Do humans uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? We address whether one of humans' closest relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), possess the domain-general cognitive skills needed to cook. Across nine studies, we show that chimpanzees: (i) prefer...

Landsat ETM+ and SRTM Data Provide Near Real-Time Monitoring of Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes Habitats in Africa

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Samuel M. Jantz

2016-05-01

Full Text Available All four chimpanzee sub-species populations are declining due to multiple factors including human-caused habitat loss. Effective conservation efforts are therefore needed to ensure their long-term survival. Habitat suitability models serve as useful tools for conservation planning by depicting relative environmental suitability in geographic space over time. Previous studies mapping chimpanzee habitat suitability have been limited to small regions or coarse spatial and temporal resolutions. Here, we used Random Forests regression to downscale a coarse resolution habitat suitability calibration dataset to estimate habitat suitability over the entire chimpanzee range at 30-m resolution. Our model predicted habitat suitability well with an r2 of 0.82 (±0.002 based on 50-fold cross validation where 75% of the data was used for model calibration and 25% for model testing; however, there was considerable variation in the predictive capability among the four sub-species modeled individually. We tested the influence of several variables derived from Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+ that included metrics of forest canopy and structure for four three-year time periods between 2000 and 2012. Elevation, Landsat ETM+ band 5 and Landsat derived canopy cover were the strongest predictors; highly suitable areas were associated with dense tree canopy cover for all but the Nigeria-Cameroon and Central Chimpanzee sub-species. Because the models were sensitive to such temporally based predictors, our results are the first to highlight the value of integrating continuously updated variables derived from satellite remote sensing into temporally dynamic habitat suitability models to support  near real-time monitoring of habitat status and decision support systems.

Measuring Hair Cortisol Concentrations to Assess the Effect of Anthropogenic Impacts on Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes.

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Esther H D Carlitz

Full Text Available Non-human primates face major environmental changes due to increased human impacts all over the world. Although some species are able to survive in certain landscapes with anthropogenic impact, their long-term viability and fitness may be decreased due to chronic stress. Here we assessed long-term stress levels through cortisol analysis in chimpanzee hair obtained from sleeping nests in northwestern Uganda, in order to estimate welfare in the context of ecotourism, forest fragmentation with human-wildlife conflicts, and illegal logging with hunting activity (albeit not of primates, compared with a control without human contact or conflict. Concerning methodological issues, season [F(2,129 = 37.4, p < 0.0001, r2 = 0.18] and the age of nests [F(2,178 = 20.3, p < 0.0001, r2 = 0.11] significantly predicted hair cortisol concentrations (HCC. With regard to effects of anthropogenic impacts, our results neither showed elevation of HCC due to ecotourism, nor due to illegal logging compared to their control groups. We did, however, find significantly increased HCC in the fragment group compared to chimpanzees living in a nearby intact forest [F(1,88 = 5.0, p = 0.03, r2 = 0.20]. In conclusion, our results suggest that hair cortisol analysis is a powerful tool that can help understanding the impact of anthropogenic disturbances on chimpanzee well-being and could be applied to other great ape species.

[Comparison of the Latissimus dorsi insertions on the iliac crest in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and in man].

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Vacher, C; Ben Hadj Yahia, S; Braun, M; Journeau, P

2014-03-01

Comparing to other primates, one of the most important specificities of the human anatomy are consequences of bipedalism. Although bone consequences are well known (lumbar lordosis, horizontal position of the foramen magnum, lengthening of the lower limbs, reduction of the pelvis, specialization of the foot), consequences of our locomotion on the Latissimus dorsi are still unclear. One dissection of a chimpanzee Latissimus dorsi (Pan troglodytes) has been performed and compared to 30 human Latissimus dorsi dissections (10 fresh cadavers and 20 formoled cadavers). In each dissection, the existence of direct muscular insertions on the iliac crest has been investigated and the constitution of the thoracolumbar fascia has been described. In chimpanzee dissection, a muscular direct insertion of the Latissimus dorsi was present on the iliac crest of 9 cm long. The TLF was made of the superficial and the deep fascias of the Latissimus dorsi and the superficial fascia of the erector spinae muscles which was deeper. In man, there was no direct muscular insertion of the Latissimus dorsi in 90 % of cases, the TLF was constituted the same way. This study suggests that the Latissimus dorsi has been separated from the iliac crest in man during the evolution because of the permanent bipedalism and that it stayed inserted on the iliac crest in chimpanzee because of the brachiation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Evidence for cultural differences between neighboring chimpanzee communities.

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Luncz, Lydia V; Mundry, Roger; Boesch, Christophe

2012-05-22

The majority of evidence for cultural behavior in animals has come from comparisons between populations separated by large geographical distances that often inhabit different environments. The difficulty of excluding ecological and genetic variation as potential explanations for observed behaviors has led some researchers to challenge the idea of animal culture. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, crack Coula edulis nuts using stone and wooden hammers and tree root anvils. In this study, we compare for the first time hammer selection for nut cracking across three neighboring chimpanzee communities that live in the same forest habitat, which reduces the likelihood of ecological variation. Furthermore, the study communities experience frequent dispersal of females at maturity, which eliminates significant genetic variation. We compared key ecological factors, such as hammer availability and nut hardness, between the three neighboring communities and found striking differences in group-specific hammer selection among communities despite similar ecological conditions. Differences were found in the selection of hammer material and hammer size in response to changes in nut resistance over time. Our findings highlight the subtleties of cultural differences in wild chimpanzees and illustrate how cultural knowledge is able to shape behavior, creating differences among neighboring social groups. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Socially transmitted diffusion of a novel behavior from subordinate chimpanzees

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Watson, Stuart K; Reamer, Lisa A; Mareno, Mary Catherine

2017-01-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) demonstrate much cultural diversity in the wild, yet a majority of novel behaviors do not become group-wide traditions. Since many such novel behaviors are introduced by low-ranking individuals, a bias toward copying dominant individuals ("rank-bias") has been proposed...... as an explanation for their limited diffusion. Previous experimental work showed that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) preferentially copy dominant over low-rank models. We investigated whether low ranking individuals may nevertheless successfully seed a beneficial behavior as a tradition if there are no "competing...

Training a young Chimpanzee to attend to acoustic stimuli

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bierens de Haan, J.A.

1949-01-01

For certain reasons I wished to train a young chimpanzee to choose from two similar boxes the one characterised by the ticking of a metronome inside it. My subject was a young male chimpanzee (Pan leucoprymnus Lesson), approximately three years old, Tommy by name. He was a good-natured chap, quite

Perceived differences between chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) facial expressions are related to emotional interpretation.

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Waller, Bridget M; Bard, Kim A; Vick, Sarah-Jane; Smith Pasqualini, Marcia C

2007-11-01

Human face perception is a finely tuned, specialized process. When comparing faces between species, therefore, it is essential to consider how people make these observational judgments. Comparing facial expressions may be particularly problematic, given that people tend to consider them categorically as emotional signals, which may affect how accurately specific details are processed. The bared-teeth display (BT), observed in most primates, has been proposed as a homologue of the human smile (J. A. R. A. M. van Hooff, 1972). In this study, judgments of similarity between BT displays of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and human smiles varied in relation to perceived emotional valence. When a chimpanzee BT was interpreted as fearful, observers tended to underestimate the magnitude of the relationship between certain features (the extent of lip corner raise) and human smiles. These judgments may reflect the combined effects of categorical emotional perception, configural face processing, and perceptual organization in mental imagery and may demonstrate the advantages of using standardized observational methods in comparative facial expression research. Copyright 2007 APA.

Maternal Behavior by Birth Order in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Increased Investment by First-Time Mothers.

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Stanton, Margaret A; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V; Pusey, Anne E; Goodall, Jane; Murray, Carson M

2014-08-01

Parental investment theory predicts that maternal resources are finite and allocated among offspring based on factors including maternal age and condition, and offspring sex and parity. Among humans, firstborn children are often considered to have an advantage and receive greater investment than their younger siblings. However, conflicting evidence for this "firstborn advantage" between modern and hunter-gatherer societies raises questions about the evolutionary history of differential parental investment and birth order. In contrast to humans, most non-human primate firstborns belong to young, inexperienced mothers and exhibit higher mortality than laterborns. In this study, we investigated differences in maternal investment and offspring outcomes based on birth order (firstborn vs. later-born) among wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodyte schweinfurthii ). During the critical first year of life, primiparous mothers nursed, groomed, and played with their infants more than did multiparous mothers. Furthermore, this pattern of increased investment in firstborns appeared to be compensatory, as probability of survival did not differ by birth order. Our study did not find evidence for a firstborn advantage as observed in modern humans but does suggest that unlike many other primates, differences in maternal behavior help afford chimpanzee first-borns an equal chance of survival.

The bonobo genome compared with the chimpanzee and human genomes

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Prüfer, Kay; Munch, Kasper; Hellmann, Ines; Akagi, Keiko; Miller, Jason R.; Walenz, Brian; Koren, Sergey; Sutton, Granger; Kodira, Chinnappa; Winer, Roger; Knight, James R.; Mullikin, James C.; Meader, Stephen J.; Ponting, Chris P.; Lunter, Gerton; Higashino, Saneyuki; Hobolth, Asger; Dutheil, Julien; Karakoç, Emre; Alkan, Can; Sajjadian, Saba; Catacchio, Claudia Rita; Ventura, Mario; Marques-Bonet, Tomas; Eichler, Evan E.; André, Claudine; Atencia, Rebeca; Mugisha, Lawrence; Junhold, Jörg; Patterson, Nick; Siebauer, Michael; Good, Jeffrey M.; Fischer, Anne; Ptak, Susan E.; Lachmann, Michael; Symer, David E.; Mailund, Thomas; Schierup, Mikkel H.; Andrés, Aida M.; Kelso, Janet; Pääbo, Svante

2012-01-01

Two African apes are the closest living relatives of humans: the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus). Although they are similar in many respects, bonobos and chimpanzees differ strikingly in key social and sexual behaviours1–4, and for some of these traits they show more similarity with humans than with each other. Here we report the sequencing and assembly of the bonobo genome to study its evolutionary relationship with the chimpanzee and human genomes. We find that more than three per cent of the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee genome than these are to each other. These regions allow various aspects of the ancestry of the two ape species to be reconstructed. In addition, many of the regions that overlap genes may eventually help us understand the genetic basis of phenotypes that humans share with one of the two apes to the exclusion of the other. PMID:22722832

New evidence on the tool-assisted hunting exhibited by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in a savannah habitat at Fongoli, Sénégal

Science.gov (United States)

Pruetz, J. D.; Bertolani, P.; Ontl, K. Boyer; Lindshield, S.; Shelley, M.; Wessling, E. G.

2015-01-01

For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution of hominin hunting, given their phylogenetic relatedness and challenges reconstructing extinct hominin behaviour from palaeoanthropological evidence. Among chimpanzees, adult males are usually the main hunters, capturing vertebrate prey by hand. Savannah chimpanzees (P. t. verus) at Fongoli, Sénégal are the only known non-human population that systematically hunts vertebrate prey with tools, making them an important source for hypotheses of early hominin behaviour based on analogy. Here, we test the hypothesis that sex and age patterns in tool-assisted hunting (n=308 cases) at Fongoli occur and differ from chimpanzees elsewhere, and we compare tool-assisted hunting to the overall hunting pattern. Males accounted for 70% of all captures but hunted with tools less than expected based on their representation on hunting days. Females accounted for most tool-assisted hunting. We propose that social tolerance at Fongoli, along with the tool-assisted hunting method, permits individuals other than adult males to capture and retain control of prey, which is uncommon for chimpanzees. We assert that tool-assisted hunting could have similarly been important for early hominins. PMID:26064638

Changes in Frontoparietotemporal Connectivity following Do-As-I-Do Imitation Training in Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes).

Science.gov (United States)

Pope, Sarah M; Taglialatela, Jared P; Skiba, Sara A; Hopkins, William D

2018-03-01

Human imitation is supported by an underlying "mirror system" principally composed of inferior frontal, inferior parietal, and superior temporal cortical regions. Across primate species, differences in frontoparietotemporal connectivity have been hypothesized to explain phylogenetic variation in imitative abilities. However, if and to what extent these regions are involved in imitation in nonhuman primates is unknown. We hypothesized that "Do As I Do" (DAID) imitation training would enhance white matter integrity within and between frontoparietotemporal regions. To this end, four captive chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) were trained to reproduce 23 demonstrated actions, and four age-/sex-matched controls were trained to produce basic husbandry behaviors in response to manual cues. Diffusion tensor images were acquired before and after 600 min of training over an average of 112 days. Bilateral and asymmetrical changes in frontoparietotemporal white matter integrity were compared between DAID trained subjects and controls. We found that imitation trained subjects exhibited leftward shifts in both mean fractional anisotropy and tract strength asymmetry measures in brain regions within the mirror system. This is the first report of training-induced changes in white matter integrity in chimpanzees and suggests that frontoparietotemporal connectivity, particularly in the left hemisphere, may have facilitated the emergence of increasingly complex imitation learning abilities.

Delay of Gratification by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Working and Waiting Situations

Science.gov (United States)

Beran, Michael J.; Evans, Theodore A.

2009-01-01

We tested four chimpanzees in a self-control task in which food rewards accumulated as long as they were not eaten. In one condition, the chimpanzees had to perform a computer task that directly led to the delivery of the food rewards. In another condition, working on the computerized task was not required and any such work was not linked to the delivery of rewards. The third condition offered no computerized task (chimpanzees simply waited for food rewards to be delivered). Three of four chimpanzees showed no effect of the work scenario on delay of gratification. The one chimpanzee that showed an influence of work scenario on self-control was the overall poorest performing animal. This animal delayed gratification the longest, however, when work was required and reward delivery was directly linked to that work. Therefore, although there is little evidence linking delay of gratification to work requirements in chimpanzees, chimpanzees with lower overall self-control might benefit from having some work available if reward accumulation is contingent on performing that work. PMID:19084581

Gastrointestinal parasite infections and self-medication in wild chimpanzees surviving in degraded forest fragments within an agricultural landscape mosaic in Uganda.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Matthew R McLennan

Full Text Available Monitoring health in wild great apes is integral to their conservation and is especially important where they share habitats with humans, given the potential for zoonotic pathogen exchange. We studied the intestinal parasites of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii inhabiting degraded forest fragments amid farmland and villages in Bulindi, Uganda. We first identified protozoan and helminth parasites infecting this population. Sixteen taxa were demonstrated microscopically (9 protozoa, 5 nematodes, 1 cestode, and 1 trematode. DNA sequence analysis enabled more precise identification of larval nematodes (e.g. Oesophagostomum stephanostomum, O. bifurcum, Strongyloides fuelleborni, Necator sp. Type II and tapeworm proglottids (genus Bertiella. To better understand the ecology of infections, we used multidimensional scaling analysis to reveal general patterns of association among parasites, climate, and whole leaf swallowing-a prevalent self-medicative behaviour at Bulindi linked to control of nodular worms (Oesophagostomum spp.. Prevalence of parasites varied with climate in diverse ways. For example, Oesophagostomum sp. was detected in faeces at higher frequencies with increasing rainfall but was most clearly associated with periods of low temperature. Certain parasites occurred together within chimpanzee hosts more or less frequently than expected by chance. For example, the commensal ciliate Troglodytella abrassarti was negatively associated with Balantidium coli and Oesophagostomum sp., possibly because the latter taxa make the large intestine less suitable for T. abrassarti. Whole leaves in faeces showed independent associations with the prevalence of Oesophagostomum sp., Strongyloides sp., and hookworm by microscopic examination, and with egestion of adult O. stephanostomum by macroscopic inspection. All parasites identified to species or genus have been reported in wild chimpanzees inhabiting less-disturbed environments than

Efficient search for a face by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Science.gov (United States)

Tomonaga, Masaki; Imura, Tomoko

2015-07-16

The face is quite an important stimulus category for human and nonhuman primates in their social lives. Recent advances in comparative-cognitive research clearly indicate that chimpanzees and humans process faces in a special manner; that is, using holistic or configural processing. Both species exhibit the face-inversion effect in which the inverted presentation of a face deteriorates their perception and recognition. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that humans detect human faces among non-facial objects rapidly. We report that chimpanzees detected chimpanzee faces among non-facial objects quite efficiently. This efficient search was not limited to own-species faces. They also found human adult and baby faces--but not monkey faces--efficiently. Additional testing showed that a front-view face was more readily detected than a profile, suggesting the important role of eye-to-eye contact. Chimpanzees also detected a photograph of a banana as efficiently as a face, but a further examination clearly indicated that the banana was detected mainly due to a low-level feature (i.e., color). Efficient face detection was hampered by an inverted presentation, suggesting that configural processing of faces is a critical element of efficient face detection in both species. This conclusion was supported by a simple simulation experiment using the saliency model.

Genetic influences on receptive joint attention in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hopkins, William D; Keebaugh, Alaine C; Reamer, Lisa A

2014-01-01

Despite their genetic similarity to humans, our understanding of the role of genes on cognitive traits in chimpanzees remains virtually unexplored. Here, we examined the relationship between genetic variation in the arginine vasopressin V1a receptor gene (AVPR1A) and social cognition in chimpanzees...... cognition task was significantly heritable. Furthermore, males with one DupB(+) allele performed significantly better and were more responsive to socio-communicative cues than males homozygous for the DupB- deletion. Performance on a non-social cognition task was not associated with the AVPR1A genotype....... The collective findings show that AVPR1A polymorphisms are associated with individual differences in performance on a receptive joint attention task in chimpanzees....

Untrained chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii fail to imitate novel actions.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Claudio Tennie

Full Text Available Social learning research in apes has focused on social learning in the technical (problem solving domain - an approach that confounds action and physical information. Successful subjects in such studies may have been able to perform target actions not as a result of imitation learning but because they had learnt some technical aspect, for example, copying the movements of an apparatus (i.e., different forms of emulation learning.Here we present data on action copying by non-enculturated and untrained chimpanzees when physical information is removed from demonstrations. To date, only one such study (on gesture copying in a begging context has been conducted--with negative results. Here we have improved this methodology and have also added non-begging test situations (a possible confound of the earlier study. Both familiar and novel actions were used as targets. Prior to testing, a trained conspecific demonstrator was rewarded for performing target actions in view of observers. All but one of the tested chimpanzees already failed to copy familiar actions. When retested with a novel target action, also the previously successful subject failed to copy--and he did so across several contexts.Chimpanzees do not seem to copy novel actions, and only some ever copy familiar ones. Due to our having tested only non-enculturated and untrained chimpanzees, the performance of our test subjects speak more than most other studies of the general (dis-ability of chimpanzees to copy actions, and especially novel actions.

Untrained Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Fail to Imitate Novel Actions

Science.gov (United States)

Tennie, Claudio; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael

2012-01-01

Background Social learning research in apes has focused on social learning in the technical (problem solving) domain - an approach that confounds action and physical information. Successful subjects in such studies may have been able to perform target actions not as a result of imitation learning but because they had learnt some technical aspect, for example, copying the movements of an apparatus (i.e., different forms of emulation learning). Methods Here we present data on action copying by non-enculturated and untrained chimpanzees when physical information is removed from demonstrations. To date, only one such study (on gesture copying in a begging context) has been conducted – with negative results. Here we have improved this methodology and have also added non-begging test situations (a possible confound of the earlier study). Both familiar and novel actions were used as targets. Prior to testing, a trained conspecific demonstrator was rewarded for performing target actions in view of observers. All but one of the tested chimpanzees already failed to copy familiar actions. When retested with a novel target action, also the previously successful subject failed to copy – and he did so across several contexts. Conclusion Chimpanzees do not seem to copy novel actions, and only some ever copy familiar ones. Due to our having tested only non-enculturated and untrained chimpanzees, the performance of our test subjects speak more than most other studies of the general (dis-)ability of chimpanzees to copy actions, and especially novel actions. PMID:22905102

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) display limited behavioural flexibility when faced with a changing foraging task requiring tool use.

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Harrison, Rachel A; Whiten, Andrew

2018-01-01

Behavioural flexibility, the ability to alter behaviour in response to environmental feedback, and to relinquish previously successful solutions to problems, is a crucial ability in allowing organisms to adapt to novel environments and environmental change; it is essential to cumulative cultural change. To explore this ability in chimpanzees, 18 individuals ( Pan troglodytes ) were presented with an artificial foraging task consisting of a tube partially filled with juice that could be reached by hand or retrieved using tool materials to hand. Effective solutions were then restricted in the second phase of the study by narrowing the diameter of the tube, necessitating the abandonment of previously successful solutions. Chimpanzees showed limited behavioural flexibility in comparison to some previous studies, increasing their use of effective techniques, but also continuing to attempt solutions that had been rendered ineffective. This adds to a literature reporting divergent evidence for flexibility (the ability to alter behaviour in response to environmental feedback, and to relinquish previously successful solutions to problems) versus conservatism (a reluctance or inability to explore or adopt novel solutions to problems when a solution is already known) in apes.

Differential serotonergic innervation of the amygdala in bonobos and chimpanzees.

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Stimpson, Cheryl D; Barger, Nicole; Taglialatela, Jared P; Gendron-Fitzpatrick, Annette; Hof, Patrick R; Hopkins, William D; Sherwood, Chet C

2016-03-01

Humans' closest living relatives are bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), yet these great ape species differ considerably from each other in terms of social behavior. Bonobos are more tolerant of conspecifics in competitive contexts and often use sexual behavior to mediate social interactions. Chimpanzees more frequently employ aggression during conflicts and actively patrol territories between communities. Regulation of emotional responses is facilitated by the amygdala, which also modulates social decision-making, memory and attention. Amygdala responsiveness is further regulated by the neurotransmitter serotonin. We hypothesized that the amygdala of bonobos and chimpanzees would differ in its neuroanatomical organization and serotonergic innervation. We measured volumes of regions and the length density of serotonin transporter-containing axons in the whole amygdala and its lateral, basal, accessory basal and central nuclei. Results showed that accessory basal nucleus volume was larger in chimpanzees than in bonobos. Of particular note, the amygdala of bonobos had more than twice the density of serotonergic axons than chimpanzees, with the most pronounced differences in the basal and central nuclei. These findings suggest that variation in serotonergic innervation of the amygdala may contribute to mediating the remarkable differences in social behavior exhibited by bonobos and chimpanzees. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Object permanence in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and children (Homo sapiens).

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Call, J

2001-06-01

Juvenile and adult orangutans (n = 5; Pongo pygmaeus), chimpanzees (n = 7; Pan troglodytes), and 19- and 26-month-old children (n = 24; Homo sapiens) received visible and invisible displacements. Three containers were presented forming a straight line, and a small box was used to displace a reward under them. Subjects received 3 types of displacement: single (the box visited 1 container), double adjacent (the box visited 2 contiguous containers), and double nonadjacent (the box visited 2 noncontiguous containers). All species performed at comparable levels, solving all problems except the invisible nonadjacent displacements. Visible displacements were easier than invisible, and single were easier than double displacements. In a 2nd experiment, subjects saw the baiting of either 2 adjacent or 2 nonadjacent containers with no displacements. All species selected the empty container more often when the baited containers were nonadjacent than when they were adjacent. It is hypothesized that a response bias and inhibition problem were responsible for the poor performance in nonadjacent displacements.

Distal Communication by Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence for Common Ground?

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Leavens, David A; Reamer, Lisa A; Mareno, Mary Catherine; Russell, Jamie L; Wilson, Daniel; Schapiro, Steven J; Hopkins, William D

2015-01-01

van der Goot et al. (2014) proposed that distal, deictic communication indexed the appreciation of the psychological state of a common ground between a signaler and a receiver. In their study, great apes did not signal distally, which they construed as evidence for the human uniqueness of a sense of common ground. This study exposed 166 chimpanzees to food and an experimenter, at an angular displacement, to ask, "Do chimpanzees display distal communication?" Apes were categorized as (a) proximal or (b) distal signalers on each of four trials. The number of chimpanzees who communicated proximally did not statistically differ from the number who signaled distally. Therefore, contrary to the claim by van der Goot et al., apes do communicate distally. © 2015 The Authors. Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Cultural differences in ant-dipping tool length between neighbouring chimpanzee communities at Kalinzu, Uganda.

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Koops, Kathelijne; Schöning, Caspar; Isaji, Mina; Hashimoto, Chie

2015-07-22

Cultural variation has been identified in a growing number of animal species ranging from primates to cetaceans. The principal method used to establish the presence of culture in wild populations is the method of exclusion. This method is problematic, since it cannot rule out the influence of genetics and ecology in geographically distant populations. A new approach to the study of culture compares neighbouring groups belonging to the same population. We applied this new approach by comparing ant-dipping tool length between two neighbouring communities of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the Kalinzu Forest, Uganda. Ant-dipping tool length varies across chimpanzee study sites in relation to army ant species (Dorylus spp.) and dipping location (nest vs. trail). We compared the availability of army ant species and dipping tool length between the two communities. M-group tools were significantly longer than S-group tools, despite identical army ant target species availabilities. Moreover, tool length in S-group was shorter than at all other sites where chimpanzees prey on epigaeic ants at nests. Considering the lack of ecological differences between the two communities, the tool length difference appears to be cultural. Our findings highlight how cultural knowledge can generate small-scale cultural diversification in neighbouring chimpanzee communities.

Pestle-pounding and nut-cracking by wild chimpanzees at Kpala, Liberia.

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Ohashi, Gaku

2015-04-01

Bossou in Guinea is one of the longitudinal study sites of wild chimpanzees, and is located only a few kilometers away from the national border between Guinea and Liberia. The forests in the area spread over the national border of Guinea, and the Bossou chimpanzees have been found to use the neighboring Liberian forest. Local assistants and I started surveying these forests in Liberia, and found that additional groups of chimpanzees lived in Nimba County, Liberia. The present study reports tool use behaviors by chimpanzees living in forests of the Kpala area in Nimba County. We directly observed pestle-pounding behavior, which had been confirmed only in the Bossou group of wild chimpanzees. Moreover, we heard sounds of nut-cracking, and successfully filmed chimpanzees cracking open oil palm nuts with stones. The uniqueness of stone-tool use behaviors has been emphasized with the group of chimpanzees that have been longitudinally studied at Bossou, but the behaviors probably have a wide distribution in this area. Emigrant chimpanzees are thought to contribute to the propagation of the cultural tool-use behaviors. It is also thought that, if the distantly located groups share similar cultural behaviors, there might be genetic exchange between them. Conservation efforts should be needed not only at Bossou, but also in a wider area including nonprotected forests beyond the national border.

Chimpanzees create and modify probe tools functionally: A study with zoo-housed chimpanzees.

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Hopper, Lydia M; Tennie, Claudio; Ross, Stephen R; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V

2015-02-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use tools to probe for out-of-reach food, both in the wild and in captivity. Beyond gathering appropriately-sized materials to create tools, chimpanzees also perform secondary modifications in order to create an optimized tool. In this study, we recorded the behavior of a group of zoo-housed chimpanzees when presented with opportunities to use tools to probe for liquid foods in an artificial termite mound within their enclosure. Previous research with this group of chimpanzees has shown that they are proficient at gathering materials from within their environment in order to create tools to probe for the liquid food within the artificial mound. Extending beyond this basic question, we first asked whether they only made and modified probe tools when it was appropriate to do so (i.e. when the mound was baited with food). Second, by collecting continuous data on their behavior, we also asked whether the chimpanzees first (intentionally) modified their tools prior to probing for food or whether such modifications occurred after tool use, possibly as a by-product of chewing and eating the food from the tools. Following our predictions, we found that tool modification predicted tool use; the chimpanzees began using their tools within a short delay of creating and modifying them, and the chimpanzees performed more tool modifying behaviors when food was available than when they could not gain food through the use of probe tools. We also discuss our results in terms of the chimpanzees' acquisition of the skills, and their flexibility of tool use and learning. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Task design influences prosociality in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes.

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Bailey R House

Full Text Available Chimpanzees confer benefits on group members, both in the wild and in captive populations. Experimental studies of how animals allocate resources can provide useful insights about the motivations underlying prosocial behavior, and understanding the relationship between task design and prosocial behavior provides an important foundation for future research exploring these animals' social preferences. A number of studies have been designed to assess chimpanzees' preferences for outcomes that benefit others (prosocial preferences, but these studies vary greatly in both the results obtained and the methods used, and in most cases employ procedures that reduce critical features of naturalistic social interactions, such as partner choice. The focus of the current study is on understanding the link between experimental methodology and prosocial behavior in captive chimpanzees, rather than on describing these animals' social motivations themselves. We introduce a task design that avoids isolating subjects and allows them to freely decide whether to participate in the experiment. We explore key elements of the methods utilized in previous experiments in an effort to evaluate two possibilities that have been offered to explain why different experimental designs produce different results: (a chimpanzees are less likely to deliver food to others when they obtain food for themselves, and (b evidence of prosociality may be obscured by more "complex" experimental apparatuses (e.g., those including more components or alternative choices. Our results suggest that the complexity of laboratory tasks may generate observed variation in prosocial behavior in laboratory experiments, and highlights the need for more naturalistic research designs while also providing one example of such a paradigm.

Production of grooming-associated sounds by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at Ngogo: variation, social learning, and possible functions.

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Watts, David P

2016-01-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) use some communicative signals flexibly and voluntarily, with use influenced by learning. These signals include some vocalizations and also sounds made using the lips, oral cavity, and/or teeth, but not the vocal tract, such as "attention-getting" sounds directed at humans by captive chimpanzees and lip smacking during social grooming. Chimpanzees at Ngogo, in Kibale National Park, Uganda, make four distinct sounds while grooming others. Here, I present data on two of these ("splutters" and "teeth chomps") and consider whether social learning contributes to variation in their production and whether they serve social functions. Higher congruence in the use of these two sounds between dyads of maternal relatives than dyads of non-relatives implies that social learning occurs and mostly involves vertical transmission, but the results are not conclusive and it is unclear which learning mechanisms may be involved. In grooming between adult males, tooth chomps and splutters were more likely in long than in short bouts; in bouts that were bidirectional rather than unidirectional; in grooming directed toward high-ranking males than toward low-ranking males; and in bouts between allies than in those between non-allies. Males were also more likely to make these sounds while they were grooming other males than while they were grooming females. These results are expected if the sounds promote social bonds and induce tolerance of proximity and of grooming by high-ranking males. However, the alternative hypothesis that the sounds are merely associated with motivation to groom, with no additional social function, cannot be ruled out. Limited data showing that bouts accompanied by teeth chomping or spluttering at their initiation were longer than bouts for which this was not the case point toward a social function, but more data are needed for a definitive test. Comparison to other research sites shows that the possible existence of grooming

Intranasal Oxytocin Failed to Affect Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) Social Behavior

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Calcutt, Sarah E.; Burke, Kimberly; de Waal, Frans B. M.

2017-01-01

Oxytocin has been suggested as a treatment to promote positive social interactions in people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). However, it is difficult to test this effect outside of the laboratory in realistic social situations. One way to resolve this issue is to study behavioral changes in closely related species with complex social relationships, such as chimpanzees. Here, we use captive, socially housed chimpanzees to evaluate the effects of oxytocin in a socially complex environment. After administering intranasal oxytocin or a placebo to an individual chimpanzee (total n = 8), she was returned to her social group. An experimenter blind to the condition measured the subject's social behavior. We failed to find a behavioral difference between conditions. As one of the goals for oxytocin administration as a treatment for ASD is increasing prosocial behaviors during ‘real world’ encounters, it is problematic that we failed to detect behavioral changes in our closest living relatives. However, our null findings may be related to methodological challenges such as determining an effective dose of oxytocin for chimpanzees and how long oxytocin takes to cross the blood-brain barrier. Thus, more research on intranasal oxytocin dosing and uptake are needed to continue exploring whether oxytocin changes social behavior in naturalistic settings and as a treatment for ASD. PMID:28845444

Where to nest? Ecological determinants of chimpanzee nest abundance and distribution at the habitat and tree species scale.

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Carvalho, Joana S; Meyer, Christoph F J; Vicente, Luis; Marques, Tiago A

2015-02-01

Conversion of forests to anthropogenic land-uses increasingly subjects chimpanzee populations to habitat changes and concomitant alterations in the plant resources available to them for nesting and feeding. Based on nest count surveys conducted during the dry season, we investigated nest tree species selection and the effect of vegetation attributes on nest abundance of the western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus, at Lagoas de Cufada Natural Park (LCNP), Guinea-Bissau, a forest-savannah mosaic widely disturbed by humans. Further, we assessed patterns of nest height distribution to determine support for the anti-predator hypothesis. A zero-altered generalized linear mixed model showed that nest abundance was negatively related to floristic diversity (exponential form of the Shannon index) and positively with the availability of smaller-sized trees, reflecting characteristics of dense-canopy forest. A positive correlation between nest abundance and floristic richness (number of plant species) and composition indicated that species-rich open habitats are also important in nest site selection. Restricting this analysis to feeding trees, nest abundance was again positively associated with the availability of smaller-sized trees, further supporting the preference for nesting in food tree species from dense forest. Nest tree species selection was non-random, and oil palms were used at a much lower proportion (10%) than previously reported from other study sites in forest-savannah mosaics. While this study suggests that human disturbance may underlie the exclusive arboreal nesting at LCNP, better quantitative data are needed to determine to what extent the construction of elevated nests is in fact a response to predators able to climb trees. Given the importance of LCNP as refuge for Pan t. verus our findings can improve conservation decisions for the management of this important umbrella species as well as its remaining suitable habitats. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Favorable ecological circumstances promote life expectancy in chimpanzees similar to that of human hunter-gatherers.

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Wood, Brian M; Watts, David P; Mitani, John C; Langergraber, Kevin E

2017-04-01

Demographic data on wild chimpanzees are crucial for understanding the evolution of chimpanzee and hominin life histories, but most data come from populations affected by disease outbreaks and anthropogenic disturbance. We present survivorship data from a relatively undisturbed and exceptionally large community of eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda. We monitored births, deaths, immigrations, and emigrations in the community between 1995 and 2016. Using known and estimated ages, we calculated survivorship curves for the whole community, for males and females separately, and for individuals ≤2 years old when identified. We used a novel method to address age estimation error by calculating stochastic survivorship curves. We compared Ngogo life expectancy, survivorship, and mortality rates to those from other chimpanzee communities and human hunter-gatherers. Life expectancy at birth for both sexes combined was 32.8 years, far exceeding estimates of chimpanzee life expectancy in other communities, and falling within the range of human hunter-gatherers (i.e., 27-37 years). Overall, the pattern of survivorship at Ngogo was more similar to that of human hunter-gatherers than to other chimpanzee communities. Maximum lifespan for the Ngogo chimpanzees, however, was similar to that reported at other chimpanzee research sites and was less than that of human-hunter gatherers. The absence of predation by large carnivores may contribute to some of the higher survivorship at Ngogo, but this cannot explain the much higher survivorship at Ngogo than at Kanyawara, another chimpanzee community in the same forest, which also lacks large carnivores. Higher survivorship at Ngogo appears to be an adaptive response to a food supply that is more abundant and varies less than that of Kanyawara. Future analyses of hominin life history evolution should take these results into account. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights

Conservatism and "copy-if-better" in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Call, Josep

2017-05-01

Social learning is predicted to evolve in socially living animals provided the learning process is not random but biased by certain socio-ecological factors. One bias of particular interest for the emergence of (cumulative) culture is the tendency to forgo personal behaviour in favour of relatively better variants observed in others, also known as the "copy-if-better" strategy. We investigated whether chimpanzees employ copy-if-better in a simple token-exchange paradigm controlling for individual and random social learning. After being trained on one token-type, subjects were confronted with a conspecific demonstrator who either received the same food reward as the subject (control condition) or a higher value food reward than the subject (test condition) for exchanging another token-type. In general, the chimpanzees persisted in exchanging the token-type they were trained on individually, indicating a form of conservatism consistent with previous studies. However, the chimpanzees were more inclined to copy the demonstrator in the test compared to the control condition, indicating a tendency to employ a copy-if-better strategy. We discuss the validity of our results by considering alternative explanations and relate our findings to the emergence of cumulative culture.

Sexual exchange relationships in captive chimpanzees

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hemelrijk, C.K.; Van Laere, G.J.; Van Hooff, J.A.R.A.M.

1992-01-01

In a group of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), we studied whether females received more social benefits from males when they were in oestrus than at other times and whether males distributed their beneficial acts especially to females with whom they mated more frequently. When in oestrus,

Bipedal tool use strengthens chimpanzee hand preferences

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Braccini, Stephanie; Lambeth, Susan; Schapiro, Steve

2010-01-01

The degree to which non-human primate behavior is lateralized, at either individual or population levels, remains controversial. We investigated the relationship between hand preference and posture during tool use in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) during bipedal tool use. We experimentally induced...

Chimpanzees routinely fish for algae with tools during the dry season in Bakoun, Guinea.

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Boesch, Christophe; Kalan, Ammie K; Agbor, Anthony; Arandjelovic, Mimi; Dieguez, Paula; Lapeyre, Vincent; Kühl, Hjalmar S

2017-03-01

Wild chimpanzees regularly use tools, made from sticks, leaves, or stone, to find flexible solutions to the ecological challenges of their environment. Nevertheless, some studies suggest strong limitations in the tool-using capabilities of chimpanzees. In this context, we present the discovery of a newly observed tool-use behavior in a population of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) living in the Bakoun Classified Forest, Guinea, where a temporary research site was established for 15 months. Bakoun chimpanzees of every age-sex class were observed to fish for freshwater green algae, Spirogrya sp., from rivers, streams, and ponds using long sticks and twigs, ranging from 9 cm up to 4.31 m in length. Using remote camera trap footage from 11 different algae fishing sites within an 85-km 2 study area, we found that algae fishing occurred frequently during the dry season and was non-existent during the rainy season. Chimpanzees were observed algae fishing for as little as 1 min to just over an hour, with an average duration of 9.09 min. We estimate that 364 g of Spirogyra algae could be retrieved in this time, based on human trials in the field. Only one other chimpanzee population living in Bossou, Guinea, has been described to customarily scoop algae from the surface of the water using primarily herbaceous tools. Here, we describe the new behavior found at Bakoun and compare it to the algae scooping observed in Bossou chimpanzees and the occasional variant reported in Odzala, Republic of the Congo. As these algae are reported to be high in protein, carbohydrates, and minerals, we hypothesize that chimpanzees are obtaining a nutritional benefit from this seasonally available resource. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The effects of captive versus wild rearing environments on long bone articular surfaces in common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes

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Kristi L. Lewton

2017-08-01

Full Text Available The physical environments of captive and wild animals frequently differ in substrate types and compliance. As a result, there is an assumption that differences in rearing environments between captive and wild individuals produce differences in skeletal morphology. Here, this hypothesis is tested using a sample of 42 captive and wild common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes. Articular surface areas of the humerus, radius, ulna, femur, and tibia were calculated from linear breadth measurements, adjusted for size differences using Mosimann shape variables, and compared across sex and environmental groups using two-way ANOVA. Results indicate that the articular surfaces of the wrist and knee differ between captive and wild chimpanzees; captive individuals have significantly larger distal ulna and tibial plateau articular surfaces. In both captive and wild chimpanzees, males have significantly larger femoral condyles and distal radius surfaces than females. Finally, there is an interaction effect between sex and rearing in the articular surfaces of the femoral condyles and distal radius in which captive males have significantly larger surface areas than all other sex-rearing groups. These data suggest that long bone articular surfaces may be sensitive to differences experienced by captive and wild individuals, such as differences in diet, body mass, positional behaviors, and presumed loading environments. Importantly, these results only find differences due to rearing environment in some long bone articular surfaces. Thus, future work on skeletal morphology could cautiously incorporate data from captive individuals, but should first investigate potential intraspecific differences between captive and wild individuals.

Sex Differences in Object Manipulation in Wild Immature Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and Bonobos (Pan paniscus): Preparation for Tool Use?

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Koops, Kathelijne; Furuichi, Takeshi; Hashimoto, Chie; van Schaik, Carel P

2015-01-01

Sex differences in immatures predict behavioural differences in adulthood in many mammal species. Because most studies have focused on sex differences in social interactions, little is known about possible sex differences in 'preparation' for adult life with regards to tool use skills. We investigated sex and age differences in object manipulation in immature apes. Chimpanzees use a variety of tools across numerous contexts, whereas bonobos use few tools and none in foraging. In both species, a female bias in adult tool use has been reported. We studied object manipulation in immature chimpanzees at Kalinzu (Uganda) and bonobos at Wamba (Democratic Republic of Congo). We tested predictions of the 'preparation for tool use' hypothesis. We confirmed that chimpanzees showed higher rates and more diverse types of object manipulation than bonobos. Against expectation, male chimpanzees showed higher object manipulation rates than females, whereas in bonobos no sex difference was found. However, object manipulation by male chimpanzees was play-dominated, whereas manipulation types of female chimpanzees were more diverse (e.g., bite, break, carry). Manipulation by young immatures of both species was similarly dominated by play, but only in chimpanzees did it become more diverse with age. Moreover, in chimpanzees, object types became more tool-like (i.e., sticks) with age, further suggesting preparation for tool use in adulthood. The male bias in object manipulation in immature chimpanzees, along with the late onset of tool-like object manipulation, indicates that not all (early) object manipulation (i.e., object play) in immatures prepares for subsistence tool use. Instead, given the similarity with gender differences in human children, object play may also function in motor skill practice for male-specific behaviours (e.g., dominance displays). In conclusion, even though immature behaviours almost certainly reflect preparation for adult roles, more detailed future work is

Sex Differences in Object Manipulation in Wild Immature Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii and Bonobos (Pan paniscus: Preparation for Tool Use?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kathelijne Koops

Full Text Available Sex differences in immatures predict behavioural differences in adulthood in many mammal species. Because most studies have focused on sex differences in social interactions, little is known about possible sex differences in 'preparation' for adult life with regards to tool use skills. We investigated sex and age differences in object manipulation in immature apes. Chimpanzees use a variety of tools across numerous contexts, whereas bonobos use few tools and none in foraging. In both species, a female bias in adult tool use has been reported. We studied object manipulation in immature chimpanzees at Kalinzu (Uganda and bonobos at Wamba (Democratic Republic of Congo. We tested predictions of the 'preparation for tool use' hypothesis. We confirmed that chimpanzees showed higher rates and more diverse types of object manipulation than bonobos. Against expectation, male chimpanzees showed higher object manipulation rates than females, whereas in bonobos no sex difference was found. However, object manipulation by male chimpanzees was play-dominated, whereas manipulation types of female chimpanzees were more diverse (e.g., bite, break, carry. Manipulation by young immatures of both species was similarly dominated by play, but only in chimpanzees did it become more diverse with age. Moreover, in chimpanzees, object types became more tool-like (i.e., sticks with age, further suggesting preparation for tool use in adulthood. The male bias in object manipulation in immature chimpanzees, along with the late onset of tool-like object manipulation, indicates that not all (early object manipulation (i.e., object play in immatures prepares for subsistence tool use. Instead, given the similarity with gender differences in human children, object play may also function in motor skill practice for male-specific behaviours (e.g., dominance displays. In conclusion, even though immature behaviours almost certainly reflect preparation for adult roles, more detailed

Maternal Behavior and Physiological Stress Levels in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

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Stanton, Margaret A; Heintz, Matthew R; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V; Santymire, Rachel M; Lipende, Iddi; Murray, Carson M

2015-06-01

Individual differences in maternal behavior toward, and investment in, offspring can have lasting consequences, particularly among primate taxa characterized by prolonged periods of development over which mothers can exert substantial influence. Given the role of the neuroendocrine system in the expression of behavior, researchers are increasingly interested in understanding the hormonal correlates of maternal behavior. Here, we examined the relationship between maternal behavior and physiological stress levels, as quantified by fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentrations, in lactating chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii , at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. After accounting for temporal variation in FGM concentrations, we found that mothers interacted socially (groomed and played) with and nursed their infants more on days when FGM concentrations were elevated compared to days when FGM concentrations were within the range expected given the time of year. However, the proportion of time mothers and infants spent in contact did not differ based on FGM concentrations. These results generally agree with the suggestion that elevated GC concentrations are related to maternal motivation and responsivity to infant cues and are the first evidence of a hormonal correlate of maternal behavior in a wild great ape.

The higher the farther: distance-specific referential gestures in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Gonseth, Chloe; Kawakami, Fumito; Ichino, Etsuko; Tomonaga, Masaki

2017-11-01

Referential signals, such as manual pointing or deictic words, allow individuals to efficiently locate a specific entity in the environment, using distance-specific linguistic and/or gestural units. To explore the evolutionary prerequisites of such deictic ability, the present study investigates the ability of chimpanzees to adjust their communicative signals to the distance of a referent. A food-request paradigm in which the chimpanzees had to request a close or distant piece of food on a table in the presence/absence of an experimenter was employed. Our main finding concerns the chimpanzees adjusting their requesting behaviours to the distance of the food such that higher manual gestures and larger mouth openings were used to request the distant piece of food. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that chimpanzees are able to use distance-specific gestures. © 2017 The Authors.

Historical satellite data used to map Pan-Amazon forest cover

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Kalluri, Satya; Desch, Arthur; Curry, Troy; Altstatt, Alice; Devers, Didier; Townshend, John; Tucker, Compton

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is well documented and the contributions of Brazilian deforestation to global change have been extensively discussed in both scientific and popular literature [e.g., Skole and Tucker, 1993]. However, deforestation within the non-Brazilian tropics of South America has received much less attention. The Pan-Amazon region covering Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia comprises ˜2 million km2 of tropical forest that is under increasing pressure from logging and development. Wall-to-wall high-resolution forest cover maps are needed to properly document the complex distribution patterns of deforestation in the Pan-Amazon [Tucker and Townshend, 2000]. The Deforestation Mapping Group at the University of Marylands Global Land Cover Facility is using Landsat data to generate tropical forest cover maps in this region (Figure l). The study shows that while rates of forest loss are generally lower than those in Brazil, there are hot spots where deforestation rates run as high as 2,200 km2 yr1.

Acupuncture as an Adjunct Therapy for Osteoarthritis in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Science.gov (United States)

Magden, Elizabeth R; Haller, Rachel L; Thiele, Erica J; Buchl, Stephanie J; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J

2013-01-01

Acupuncture is an ancient practice that is currently used to treat disorders ranging from osteoarthritis to cardiomyopathy. Acupuncture involves the insertion of thin, sterile needles into defined acupuncture points that stimulate physiologic processes through neural signaling. Numerous scientific studies have proven the benefits of acupuncture, and given this scientific support, we hypothesized that acupuncture could benefit the nonhuman primates at our facility. As our chimpanzee colony ages, we are observing an increase in osteoarthritis and have focused our initial acupuncture treatments on this condition. We successfully trained 3 chimpanzees, by using positive-reinforcement training techniques, to voluntarily participate in acupuncture treatments for stifle osteoarthritis. We used 3 acupuncture points that correlate with alleviation of stifle pain and inflammation in humans. A mobility scoring system was used to assess improvements in mobility as a function of the acupuncture treatments. The 2 chimpanzees with the most severe osteoarthritis showed significant improvement in mobility after acupuncture treatments. Acupuncture therapy not only resulted in improved mobility, but the training sessions also served as enrichment for the animals, as demonstrated by their voluntary participation in the training and treatment sessions. Acupuncture is an innovative treatment technique that our data show to be safe, inexpensive, and, most importantly, effective for chimpanzees. PMID:23849446

Acupuncture as an adjunct therapy for osteoarthritis in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

Science.gov (United States)

Magden, Elizabeth R; Haller, Rachel L; Thiele, Erica J; Buchl, Stephanie J; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J

2013-07-01

Acupuncture is an ancient practice that is currently used to treat disorders ranging from osteoarthritis to cardiomyopathy. Acupuncture involves the insertion of thin, sterile needles into defined acupuncture points that stimulate physiologic processes through neural signaling. Numerous scientific studies have proven the benefits of acupuncture, and given this scientific support, we hypothesized that acupuncture could benefit the nonhuman primates at our facility. As our chimpanzee colony ages, we are observing an increase in osteoarthritis and have focused our initial acupuncture treatments on this condition. We successfully trained 3 chimpanzees, by using positive-reinforcement training techniques, to voluntarily participate in acupuncture treatments for stifle osteoarthritis. We used 3 acupuncture points that correlate with alleviation of stifle pain and inflammation in humans. A mobility scoring system was used to assess improvements in mobility as a function of the acupuncture treatments. The 2 chimpanzees with the most severe osteoarthritis showed significant improvement in mobility after acupuncture treatments. Acupuncture therapy not only resulted in improved mobility, but the training sessions also served as enrichment for the animals, as demonstrated by their voluntary participation in the training and treatment sessions. Acupuncture is an innovative treatment technique that our data show to be safe, inexpensive, and, most importantly, effective for chimpanzees.

What meaning means for same and different: Analogical reasoning in humans (Homo sapiens), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

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Flemming, Timothy M; Beran, Michael J; Thompson, Roger K R; Kleider, Heather M; Washburn, David A

2008-05-01

Thus far, language- and token-trained apes (e.g., D. Premack, 1976; R. K. R. Thompson, D. L. Oden, & S. T. Boysen, 1997) have provided the best evidence that nonhuman animals can solve, complete, and construct analogies, thus implicating symbolic representation as the mechanism enabling the phenomenon. In this study, the authors examined the role of stimulus meaning in the analogical reasoning abilities of three different primate species. Humans (Homo sapiens), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) completed the same relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) tasks with both meaningful and nonmeaningful stimuli. This discrimination of relations-between-relations serves as the basis for analogical reasoning. Meaningfulness facilitated the acquisition of analogical matching for human participants, whereas individual differences among the chimpanzees suggest that meaning can either enable or hinder their ability to complete analogies. Rhesus monkeys did not succeed in the RMTS task regardless of stimulus meaning, suggesting that their ability to reason analogically, if present at all, may be dependent on a dimension other than the representational value of stimuli. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

Visual search by chimpanzees (Pan): assessment of controlling relations.

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Tomonaga, M

1995-03-01

Three experimentally sophisticated chimpanzees (Pan), Akira, Chloe, and Ai, were trained on visual search performance using a modified multiple-alternative matching-to-sample task in which a sample stimulus was followed by the search display containing one target identical to the sample and several uniform distractors (i.e., negative comparison stimuli were identical to each other). After they acquired this task, they were tested for transfer of visual search performance to trials in which the sample was not followed by the uniform search display (odd-item search). Akira showed positive transfer of visual search performance to odd-item search even when the display size (the number of stimulus items in the search display) was small, whereas Chloe and Ai showed a transfer only when the display size was large. Chloe and Ai used some nonrelational cues such as perceptual isolation of the target among uniform distractors (so-called pop-out). In addition to the odd-item search test, various types of probe trials were presented to clarify the controlling relations in multiple-alternative matching to sample. Akira showed a decrement of accuracy as a function of the display size when the search display was nonuniform (i.e., each "distractor" stimulus was not the same), whereas Chloe and Ai showed perfect performance. Furthermore, when the sample was identical to the uniform distractors in the search display, Chloe and Ai never selected an odd-item target, but Akira selected it when the display size was large. These results indicated that Akira's behavior was controlled mainly by relational cues of target-distractor oddity, whereas an identity relation between the sample and the target strongly controlled the performance of Chloe and Ai.

Personality in the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park

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Weiss, Alexander; Wilson, Michael L.; Collins, D. Anthony; Mjungu, Deus; Kamenya, Shadrack; Foerster, Steffen; Pusey, Anne E.

2017-01-01

Researchers increasingly view animal personality traits as products of natural selection. We present data that describe the personalities of 128 eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) currently living in or who lived their lives in the Kasekela and Mitumba communities of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We obtained ratings on 24 items from an established, reliable, well-validated questionnaire used to study personality in captive chimpanzee populations. Ratings were made by former and present Tanzanian field assistants who followed individual chimpanzees for years and collected detailed behavioral observations. Interrater reliabilities across items ranged from acceptable to good, but the personality dimensions they formed were not as interpretable as those from captive samples. However, the personality dimensions corresponded to ratings of 24 Kasekela chimpanzees on a different questionnaire in 1973 that assessed some similar traits. These correlations established the repeatability and construct validity of the present ratings, indicating that the present data can facilitate historical and prospective studies that will lead to better understanding of the evolution of personality in chimpanzees and other primates. PMID:29064463

Genetic and phylogenetic characterization of novel bocaparvovirus infecting chimpanzee

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Brožová, K.; Hrazdilová, K.; Slaninková, E.; Modrý, David; Černý, Jiří; Celer, V.

2016-01-01

Roč. 37, JAN (2016), s. 231-236 ISSN 1567-1348 Institutional support: RVO:60077344 Keywords : Bocavirus * phylogeny * primate * recombination * Bocaparvovirus * chimpanzee * Pan troglodytes Subject RIV: FN - Epidemiology, Contagious Diseases ; Clinical Immunology Impact factor: 2.885, year: 2016

Neocortical synaptophysin asymmetry and behavioral lateralization in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sherwood, Chet C; Duka, Tetyana; Stimpson, Cheryl D

2010-01-01

Although behavioral lateralization is known to correlate with certain aspects of brain asymmetry in primates, there are limited data concerning hemispheric biases in the microstructure of the neocortex. In the present study, we investigated whether there is asymmetry in synaptophysin-immunoreacti......Although behavioral lateralization is known to correlate with certain aspects of brain asymmetry in primates, there are limited data concerning hemispheric biases in the microstructure of the neocortex. In the present study, we investigated whether there is asymmetry in synaptophysin...... density. In contrast, puncta densities were symmetrical in right-handed chimpanzees. These findings support the conclusion that synapse asymmetry is modulated by lateralization of skilled motor behavior in chimpanzees....

Dogs (Canis familiaris, but not chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, understand imperative pointing.

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Katharina C Kirchhofer

Full Text Available Chimpanzees routinely follow the gaze of humans to outside targets. However, in most studies using object choice they fail to use communicative gestures (e.g. pointing to find hidden food. Chimpanzees' failure to do this may be due to several difficulties with this paradigm. They may, for example, misinterpret the gesture as referring to the opaque cup instead of the hidden food. Or perhaps they do not understand informative communicative intentions. In contrast, dogs seem to be skilful in using human communicative cues in the context of finding food, but as of yet there is not much data showing whether they also use pointing in the context of finding non-food objects. Here we directly compare chimpanzees' (N = 20 and dogs' (N = 32 skills in using a communicative gesture directed at a visible object out of reach of the human but within reach of the subject. Pairs of objects were placed in view of and behind the subjects. The task was to retrieve the object the experimenter wanted. To indicate which one she desired, the experimenter pointed imperatively to it and directly rewarded the subject for handing over the correct one. While dogs performed well on this task, chimpanzees failed to identify the referent. Implications for great apes' and dogs' understanding of human communicative intentions are discussed.

Taï chimpanzees anticipate revisiting high-valued fruit trees from further distances.

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Ban, Simone D; Boesch, Christophe; Janmaat, Karline R L

2014-11-01

The use of spatio-temporal memory has been argued to increase food-finding efficiency in rainforest primates. However, the exact content of this memory is poorly known to date. This study investigated what specific information from previous feeding visits chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, take into account when they revisit the same feeding trees. By following five adult females for many consecutive days, we tested from what distance the females directed their travels towards previously visited feeding trees and how previous feeding experiences and fruit tree properties influenced this distance. To exclude the influence of sensory cues, the females' approach distance was measured from their last significant change in travel direction until the moment they entered the tree's maximum detection field. We found that chimpanzees travelled longer distances to trees at which they had previously made food grunts and had rejected fewer fruits compared to other trees. In addition, the results suggest that the chimpanzees were able to anticipate the amount of fruit that they would find in the trees. Overall, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that chimpanzees act upon a retrieved memory of their last feeding experiences long before they revisit feeding trees, which would indicate a daily use of long-term prospective memory. Further, the results are consistent with the possibility that positive emotional experiences help to trigger prospective memory retrieval in forest areas that are further away and have fewer cues associated with revisited feeding trees.

Captive chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) behavior as a function of space per animal and enclosure type.

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Neal Webb, Sarah J; Hau, Jann; Schapiro, Steven J

2018-03-01

Space per animal, or animal density, and enclosure type are important elements of functionally appropriate captive environments (FACEs) for chimpanzees. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommends that captive chimpanzees be maintained in areas of >250 ft 2 /animal. Several studies have investigated chimpanzee behavior in relation to space per animal, but only two studies have examined these variables while attempting to hold environmental complexity constant. Both have found few, if any, significant differences in behavior associated with increased space per animal. The NIH does not provide recommendations pertaining to enclosure type. Although Primadomes™ and corrals are considered acceptable FACE housing, no studies have investigated chimpanzee behavior in relation to these two common types of enclosures. We examined the NIH space per animal recommendation, and the effects of enclosure type, while maintaining similar levels of environmental complexity. We used focal animal observations to record the behavior of 22 chimpanzees in three social groups following within-facility housing transfers. Chimpanzees that were moved from an area with space below the NIH recommendation to the same type of enclosure with space above the recommendation (dome to double dome) exhibited significantly more locomotion and behavioral diversity post-transfer. Chimpanzees that were moved from an area with space below the recommendation to a different type of enclosure with space above the recommendation (dome to corral) exhibited significant increases in foraging and behavioral diversity, and a decrease in rough scratching. Lastly, chimpanzees that were moved from an area above the recommendation to a different enclosure type with space equal to the recommendation (corral to double dome) exhibited an increase in behavioral diversity. These results add to the body of literature that addresses the concept of specific minimum space requirements per chimpanzee, and highlight the

Social Attention in the Two Species of Pan: Bonobos Make More Eye Contact than Chimpanzees.

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Fumihiro Kano

Full Text Available Humans' two closest primate living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, differ behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally in several ways despite their general similarities. While bonobos show more affiliative behaviors towards conspecifics, chimpanzees display more overt and severe aggression against conspecifics. From a cognitive standpoint, bonobos perform better in social coordination, gaze-following and food-related cooperation, while chimpanzees excel in tasks requiring extractive foraging skills. We hypothesized that attention and motivation play an important role in shaping the species differences in behavior, cognition, and emotion. Thus, we predicted that bonobos would pay more attention to the other individuals' face and eyes, as those are related to social affiliation and social coordination, while chimpanzees would pay more attention to the action target objects, as they are related to foraging. Using eye-tracking we examined the bonobos' and chimpanzees' spontaneous scanning of pictures that included eyes, mouth, face, genitals, and action target objects of conspecifics. Although bonobos and chimpanzees viewed those elements overall similarly, bonobos viewed the face and eyes longer than chimpanzees, whereas chimpanzees viewed the other elements, the mouth, action target objects and genitals, longer than bonobos. In a discriminant analysis, the individual variation in viewing patterns robustly predicted the species of individuals, thus clearly demonstrating species-specific viewing patterns. We suggest that such attentional and motivational differences between bonobos and chimpanzees could have partly contributed to shaping the species-specific behaviors, cognition, and emotion of these species, even in a relatively short period of evolutionary time.

Chimpanzee subspecies and ‘robust’ australopithecine holotypes, in the context of comments by Darwin

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S. Prat

2010-02-01

Full Text Available On the basis of comparative anatomy (including chimpanzees, gorillas and other primates, Darwin1 suggested that Africa was the continent from which ‘progenitors’ of humankind evolved. Hominin fossils from this continent proved him correct. We present the results of morphometric analyses based on cranial data obtained from chimpanzee taxa currently recognised as distinct subspecies, namely Pan troglodytes troglodytes and Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, as well as Pan paniscus (bonobo. Our objective was to use a morphometric technique2 to quantify the degree of similarity between pairs of specimens, in the context of a statistical (probabilistic definition of a species.3–5 Results obtained from great apes, including two subspecies of chimpanzee, were assessed in relation to same-scale comparisons between the holotypes of ‘robust’ australopithecine (Plio-Pleistocene hominin taxa which have traditionally been distinguished at a species level, notably Paranthropus robustus from South Africa, and Paranthropus (Australopithecus/ Zinjanthropus boisei from East Africa. The question arises as to whether the holotypes of these two taxa, TM 1517 from Kromdraai6 and OH 5 from Olduvai,7 respectively, are different at the subspecies rather than at the species level.

The Human Semicircular Canals Orientation Is More Similar to the Bonobos than to the Chimpanzees

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El Khoury, Marwan; Braga, José; Dumoncel, Jean; Nancy, Javotte; Esclassan, Remi; Vaysse, Frederic

2014-01-01

For some traits, the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee genome than they are to each other. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand whether and how morphostructural differences between humans, chimpanzees and bonobos reflect the well known phylogeny. Here we comparatively investigated intra and extra labyrinthine semicircular canals orientation using 260 computed tomography scans of extant humans (Homo sapiens), bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Humans and bonobos proved more similarities between themselves than with chimpanzees. This finding did not fit with the well established chimpanzee – bonobo monophyly. One hypothesis was convergent evolution in which bonobos and humans produce independently similar phenotypes possibly in response to similar selective pressures that may be associated with postural adaptations. Another possibility was convergence following a “random walk” (Brownian motion) evolutionary model. A more parsimonious explanation was that the bonobo-human labyrinthine shared morphology more closely retained the ancestral condition with chimpanzees being subsequently derived. Finally, these results might be a consequence of genetic diversity and incomplete lineage sorting. The remarkable symmetry of the Semicircular Canals was the second major finding of this article with possible applications in taphonomy. It has the potential to investigate altered fossils, inferring the probability of post-mortem deformation which can lead to difficulties in understanding taxonomic variation, phylogenetic relationships, and functional morphology. PMID:24710502

The human semicircular canals orientation is more similar to the bonobos than to the chimpanzees.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marwan El Khoury

Full Text Available For some traits, the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee genome than they are to each other. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand whether and how morphostructural differences between humans, chimpanzees and bonobos reflect the well known phylogeny. Here we comparatively investigated intra and extra labyrinthine semicircular canals orientation using 260 computed tomography scans of extant humans (Homo sapiens, bonobos (Pan paniscus and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes. Humans and bonobos proved more similarities between themselves than with chimpanzees. This finding did not fit with the well established chimpanzee - bonobo monophyly. One hypothesis was convergent evolution in which bonobos and humans produce independently similar phenotypes possibly in response to similar selective pressures that may be associated with postural adaptations. Another possibility was convergence following a "random walk" (Brownian motion evolutionary model. A more parsimonious explanation was that the bonobo-human labyrinthine shared morphology more closely retained the ancestral condition with chimpanzees being subsequently derived. Finally, these results might be a consequence of genetic diversity and incomplete lineage sorting. The remarkable symmetry of the Semicircular Canals was the second major finding of this article with possible applications in taphonomy. It has the potential to investigate altered fossils, inferring the probability of post-mortem deformation which can lead to difficulties in understanding taxonomic variation, phylogenetic relationships, and functional morphology.

Stable isotope evidence of meat eating and hunting specialization in adult male chimpanzees

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Fahy, Geraldine E.; Richards, Michael; Riedel, Julia; Hublin, Jean-Jacques; Boesch, Christophe

2013-01-01

Observations of hunting and meat eating in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), suggest that among primates, regular inclusion of meat in the diet is not a characteristic unique to Homo. Wild chimpanzees are known to consume vertebrate meat, but its actual dietary contribution is, depending on the study population, often either unknown or minimal. Constraints on continual direct observation throughout the entire hunting season mean that behavioral observations are limited in their ability to accurately quantify meat consumption. Here we present direct stable isotope evidence supporting behavioral observations of frequent meat eating among wild adult male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. Meat eating among some of the male chimpanzees is significant enough to result in a marked isotope signal detectable on a short-term basis in their hair keratin and long-term in their bone collagen. Although both adult males and females and juveniles derive their dietary protein largely from daily fruit and seasonal nut consumption, our data indicate that some adult males also derive a large amount of dietary protein from hunted meat. Our results reinforce behavioral observations of male-dominated hunting and meat eating in adult Taï chimpanzees, suggesting that sex differences in food acquisition and consumption may have persisted throughout hominin evolution, rather than being a recent development in the human lineage. PMID:23530185

Causal knowledge and imitation/emulation switching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and children (Homo sapiens).

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Horner, Victoria; Whiten, Andrew

2005-07-01

This study explored whether the tendency of chimpanzees and children to use emulation or imitation to solve a tool-using task was a response to the availability of causal information. Young wild-born chimpanzees from an African sanctuary and 3- to 4-year-old children observed a human demonstrator use a tool to retrieve a reward from a puzzle-box. The demonstration involved both causally relevant and irrelevant actions, and the box was presented in each of two conditions: opaque and clear. In the opaque condition, causal information about the effect of the tool inside the box was not available, and hence it was impossible to differentiate between the relevant and irrelevant parts of the demonstration. However, in the clear condition causal information was available, and subjects could potentially determine which actions were necessary. When chimpanzees were presented with the opaque box, they reproduced both the relevant and irrelevant actions, thus imitating the overall structure of the task. When the box was presented in the clear condition they instead ignored the irrelevant actions in favour of a more efficient, emulative technique. These results suggest that emulation is the favoured strategy of chimpanzees when sufficient causal information is available. However, if such information is not available, chimpanzees are prone to employ a more comprehensive copy of an observed action. In contrast to the chimpanzees, children employed imitation to solve the task in both conditions, at the expense of efficiency. We suggest that the difference in performance of chimpanzees and children may be due to a greater susceptibility of children to cultural conventions, perhaps combined with a differential focus on the results, actions and goals of the demonstrator.

From forest to farm: systematic review of cultivar feeding by chimpanzees--management implications for wildlife in anthropogenic landscapes.

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Hockings, Kimberley J; McLennan, Matthew R

2012-01-01

Crop-raiding is a major source of conflict between people and wildlife globally, impacting local livelihoods and impeding conservation. Conflict mitigation strategies that target problematic wildlife behaviours such as crop-raiding are notoriously difficult to develop for large-bodied, cognitively complex species. Many crop-raiders are generalist feeders. In more ecologically specialised species crop-type selection is not random and evidence-based management requires a good understanding of species' ecology and crop feeding habits. Comprehensive species-wide studies of crop consumption by endangered wildlife are lacking but are important for managing human-wildlife conflict. We conducted a comprehensive literature search of crop feeding records by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), a ripe-fruit specialist. We assessed quantitatively patterns of crop selection in relation to species-specific feeding behaviour, agricultural exposure, and crop availability. Crop consumption by chimpanzees is widespread in tropical Africa. Chimpanzees were recorded to eat a considerable range of cultivars (51 plant parts from 36 species). Crop part selection reflected a species-typical preference for fruit. Crops widely distributed in chimpanzee range countries were eaten at more sites than sparsely distributed crops. We identified 'high' and 'low' conflict crops according to their attractiveness to chimpanzees, taking account of their importance as cash crops and/or staple foods to people. Most (86%) high conflict crops were fruits, compared to 13% of low conflict crops. Some widely farmed cash or staple crops were seldom or never eaten by chimpanzees. Information about which crops are most frequently consumed and which are ignored has enormous potential for aiding on-the-ground stakeholders (i.e. farmers, wildlife managers, and conservation and agricultural extension practitioners) develop sustainable wildlife management schemes for ecologically specialised and protected species in

Complexity in behavioural organization and strongylid infection among wild chimpanzees

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Burgunder, J.; Pafčo, B.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Modrý, David; Hashimoto, C.; MacIntosh, A. J. J.

2017-01-01

Roč. 129, July (2017), s. 257-268 ISSN 0003-3472 Institutional support: RVO:60077344 Keywords : behavioural complexity * chimpanzees * fractal analysis * health monitoring * Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii * strongylid infection Subject RIV: EG - Zoology OBOR OECD: Zoology Impact factor: 2.869, year: 2016

Complexity in behavioural organization and strongylid infection among wild chimpanzees

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Burgunder, J.; Pafčo, B.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Modrý, D.; Hashimoto, C.; MacIntosh, A. J. J.

2017-01-01

Roč. 129, July (2017), s. 257-268 ISSN 0003-3472 Institutional support: RVO:68081766 Keywords : behavioural complexity * chimpanzees * fractal analysis * health monitoring * Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii * strongylid infection Subject RIV: EG - Zoology OBOR OECD: Zoology Impact factor: 2.869, year: 2016

From colour photographs to black-and-white line drawings: an assessment of chimpanzees' (Pan troglodytes') transfer behaviour.

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Close, James; Call, Josep

2015-03-01

Over two experiments, we investigated the ability of two adolescent and two adult chimpanzees to generalise a learnt, pictorial categorisation to increasingly degraded and abstract stimuli. In Experiment 2, we further assessed the ability of the adolescent chimpanzees to engage in open-ended categorisation of black-and-white line drawings. The current results confirmed and extended previous findings, showing that sub-adult chimpanzees outperform adult chimpanzees in the categorisation of pictorial stimuli, particularly when the stimuli are more degraded and abstract in nature. However, none of the four chimpanzees showed positive transfer of their category learning to a set of black-and-white line drawings, and neither of the adolescent chimpanzees evidenced reliable open-ended categorisation of the black-and-white line drawings. The latter findings suggest that both sub-adult and adult chimpanzees find it difficult to recognise black-and-white line drawings, and that open-ended categorisation of black-and-white line drawings is challenging for chimpanzees.

Prospective Memory in a Language-Trained Chimpanzee ("Pan Troglodytes")

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Beran, Michael J.; Perdue, Bonnie M.; Bramlett, Jessica L.; Menzel, Charles R.; Evans, Theodore A.

2012-01-01

Prospective memory involves the encoding, retention, and implementation of an intended future action. Although humans show many forms of prospective memory, less is known about the future oriented processes of nonhuman animals, or their ability to use prospective memory. In this experiment, a chimpanzee named Panzee, who had learned to associate…

Molecular evidence for sustained transmission of zoonotic Ascaris suum among zoo chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nejsum, Peter; Bertelsen, Mads Frost; Betson, Martha

Chimpanzees in the Copenhagen Zoo frequently excrete ascarid worms onto the cage floor inspite of a regular anthelmintic treatment program. Previously it had been shown that the source of the infections was of pig origin. However, it was unknown whether the recurrence of the infection was due...... analysis of the cox1 gene (‘barcoding') on expelled worms followed by cluster analysis revealed that the chimpanzees are infected with pig A. suum which now, in spite of control efforts, has stabilized into a permanent transmission cycle in the Zoo's chimpanzee troop...

The extent of cultural variation between adjacent chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) communities; a microecological approach.

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Luncz, Lydia V; Boesch, Christophe

2015-01-01

Chimpanzees show cultural differences among populations across Africa but also between neighboring communities. The extent of these differences among neighbors, however, remains largely unknown. Comparing three neighboring chimpanzee community in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, we found 27 putative cultural traits, including tool use, foraging, social interaction, communication and hunting behavior, exceeding by far previously known diversity. As foraging behavior is predominantly influenced by the environment, we further compared in detail ecological circumstances underlying insectivore feeding behavior to analyze whether foraging differences on Dorylus ants and Thoracotermes termites seen between neighboring chimpanzee communities were caused by environmental factors. Differences in the prey characteristics of Dorylus ants (aggression level, running speed, and nest structure) that could influence the behavior of chimpanzees were excluded, suggesting that the observed group-specific variation is not ecologically driven. Only one community preyed on Thoracotermes termites despite a similar abundance of termite mounds in all three territories, supporting the idea that this difference is also not shaped by the environment. Therefore, our study suggests that transmission of cultural knowledge plays a role in determining insectivory prey behavior. This behavioral plasticity, independent of ecological conditions, can lead to large numbers of cultural diversification between neighboring chimpanzee communities. These findings not only deepen our understanding of the cultural abilities of chimpanzees in the wild but also open up possible future comparisons of the origin of cultural diversification among humans and chimpanzees. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Relation between the level of self-mutilation and theconcentration of fecal metabolites of glucocorticoids incaptive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes

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Cristiane S. Pizzutto

2015-01-01

Full Text Available The influence of stress in an environment, according with the behavioral and endocrine variables of primates, are increasingly being studied by a diversity of authors, and have shown that abnormal behaviors associated with increased glucocorticoids may be directly related with the impairment of their well-being. In this work were used 22 adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, 11 males and 11 females, kept in captivity in three different institutions. All animals had their behavior registered by focal session using a 30 seconds sample interval, during six months, totaling 4,800 registries per each animal. During this period, fecal samples were collected 3 times a week for the extraction and measurement of the concentration of fecal metabolites of glucocorticoid by radioimmunoassay. Of the total observed, stereotypical behaviors represented 13,45±2.76%, and among them, self-mutilation represented 38.28±3.98 %. The animals were classified into three different scores, according with the percentage of body surface with alopecia due to self-mutilation. It was found a positive correlation of high intensity between the scores of alopecia due to the observed mutilation and the average concentrations of fecal metabolites of glucocorticoids. This result strongly suggests that this measurement of self-mutilation in a chimpanzee can be used as an important auxiliary tool to evaluate de conditions of adaptation of an animal in captivity, functioning as a direct indicator of the presence of chronic stress.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the question of cumulative culture: an experimental approach.

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Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Whiten, Andrew

2008-07-01

There is increasing evidence for cultural variations in behaviour among non-human species, but human societies additionally display elaborate cumulative cultural evolution, with successive generations building on earlier achievements. Evidence for cumulative culture in non-human species remains minimal and controversial. Relevant experiments are also lacking. Here we present a first experiment designed to examine chimpanzees' capacity for cumulative social learning. Eleven young chimpanzees were presented with a foraging device, which afforded both a relatively simple and a more complex tool-use technique for extracting honey. The more complex 'probing' technique incorporated the core actions of the simpler 'dipping' one and was also much more productive. In a baseline, exploration condition only two subjects discovered the dipping technique and a solitary instance of probing occurred. Demonstrations of dipping by a familiar human were followed by acquisition of this technique by the five subjects aged three years or above, whilst younger subjects showed a significant increase only in the elements of the dipping technique. By contrast, subsequent demonstrations of the probing task were not followed by acquisition of this more productive technique. Subjects stuck to their habitual dipping method despite an escalating series of demonstrations eventually exceeding 200. Supplementary tests showed this technique is within the capability of chimpanzees of this age. We therefore tentatively conclude that young chimpanzees exhibit a tendency to become 'stuck' on a technique they initially learn, inhibiting cumulative social learning and possibly constraining the species' capacity for cumulative cultural evolution.

Inference of purifying and positive selection in three subspecies of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) from exome sequencing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bataillon, Thomas; Duan, Jinjie; Hvilsom, Christina

2015-01-01

of recent gene flow from Western into Eastern chimpanzees. The striking contrast in X-linked vs. autosomal polymorphism and divergence previously reported in Central chimpanzees is also found in Eastern and Western chimpanzees. We show that the direction of selection (DoS) statistic exhibits a strong non......-monotonic relationship with the strength of purifying selection S, making it inappropriate for estimating S. We instead use counts in synonymous vs. non-synonymous frequency classes to infer the distribution of S coefficients acting on non-synonymous mutations in each subspecies. The strength of purifying selection we...... infer is congruent with the differences in effective sizes of each subspecies: Central chimpanzees are undergoing the strongest purifying selection followed by Eastern and Western chimpanzees. Coding indels show stronger selection against indels changing the reading frame than observed in human...

Lethal aggression in Pan is better explained by adaptive strategies than human impacts.

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Wilson, Michael L; Boesch, Christophe; Fruth, Barbara; Furuichi, Takeshi; Gilby, Ian C; Hashimoto, Chie; Hobaiter, Catherine L; Hohmann, Gottfried; Itoh, Noriko; Koops, Kathelijne; Lloyd, Julia N; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Mitani, John C; Mjungu, Deus C; Morgan, David; Muller, Martin N; Mundry, Roger; Nakamura, Michio; Pruetz, Jill; Pusey, Anne E; Riedel, Julia; Sanz, Crickette; Schel, Anne M; Simmons, Nicole; Waller, Michel; Watts, David P; White, Frances; Wittig, Roman M; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Wrangham, Richard W

2014-09-18

Observations of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) provide valuable comparative data for understanding the significance of conspecific killing. Two kinds of hypothesis have been proposed. Lethal violence is sometimes concluded to be the result of adaptive strategies, such that killers ultimately gain fitness benefits by increasing their access to resources such as food or mates. Alternatively, it could be a non-adaptive result of human impacts, such as habitat change or food provisioning. To discriminate between these hypotheses we compiled information from 18 chimpanzee communities and 4 bonobo communities studied over five decades. Our data include 152 killings (n = 58 observed, 41 inferred, and 53 suspected killings) by chimpanzees in 15 communities and one suspected killing by bonobos. We found that males were the most frequent attackers (92% of participants) and victims (73%); most killings (66%) involved intercommunity attacks; and attackers greatly outnumbered their victims (median 8:1 ratio). Variation in killing rates was unrelated to measures of human impacts. Our results are compatible with previously proposed adaptive explanations for killing by chimpanzees, whereas the human impact hypothesis is not supported.

Auditory ERPs to stimulus deviance in an awake chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes: towards hominid cognitive neurosciences.

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Ari Ueno

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: For decades, the chimpanzee, phylogenetically closest to humans, has been analyzed intensively in comparative cognitive studies. Other than the accumulation of behavioral data, the neural basis for cognitive processing in the chimpanzee remains to be clarified. To increase our knowledge on the evolutionary and neural basis of human cognition, comparative neurophysiological studies exploring endogenous neural activities in the awake state are needed. However, to date, such studies have rarely been reported in non-human hominid species, due to the practical difficulties in conducting non-invasive measurements on awake individuals. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs of a fully awake chimpanzee, with reference to a well-documented component of human studies, namely mismatch negativity (MMN. In response to infrequent, deviant tones that were delivered in a uniform sound stream, a comparable ERP component could be detected as negative deflections in early latencies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The present study reports the MMN-like component in a chimpanzee for the first time. In human studies, various ERP components, including MMN, are well-documented indicators of cognitive and neural processing. The results of the present study validate the use of non-invasive ERP measurements for studies on cognitive and neural processing in chimpanzees, and open the way for future studies comparing endogenous neural activities between humans and chimpanzees. This signifies an essential step in hominid cognitive neurosciences.

Leaf swallowing behavior in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): biased learning and the emergence of group level cultural differences.

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Huffman, Michael A; Spiezio, Caterina; Sgaravatti, Andrea; Leca, Jean-Baptiste

2010-11-01

Demonstrating the ability to 'copy' the behavior of others is an important aspect in determining whether social learning occurs and whether group level differences in a given behavior represent cultural differences or not. Understanding the occurrence of this process in its natural context is essential, but can be a daunting task in the wild. In order to test the social learning hypothesis for the acquisition of leaf swallowing (LS), a self-medicative behavior associated with the expulsion of parasites, we conducted semi-naturalistic experiments on two captive groups of parasite-free, naïve chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Individuals in the group were systematically provided appropriate stimuli (rough hispid leaves) identical to those used by chimpanzees in the wild. Individuals initially responded in a variety of ways, ranging from total aversion to normal chewing and swallowing. Over time, however, the two groups adopted different variants for inserting and folding the leaves in the mouth prior to swallowing them (complete and partial LS), following the specific method spontaneously displayed by the first and primary LS models in their respective groups. These variants were similar to LS displayed by chimpanzees in the wild. Using the option-bias method, we found evidence for social learning leading to group-level biased transmission and group-level stabilization of these two variants. This is the first report on two distinct cultural variants innovated in response to the introduction of natural stimuli that emerged and spread spontaneously and concurrently within two adjacent groups of socially housed primates. These observations support the assertion that LS may reflect a generalized propensity for ingesting rough hispid leaves, which can be socially induced and transmitted within a group. Ingesting an adequate number of these leaves induces increased gut motility, which is responsible for the subsequent expulsion of particular parasite species in the wild

Egalitarian despots: hierarchy steepness, reciprocity and the grooming-trade model in wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes.

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Kaburu, Stefano S K; Newton-Fisher, Nicholas E

2015-01-01

Biological market theory models the action of natural selection as a marketplace in which animals are viewed as traders with commodities to offer and exchange. Studies of female Old World monkeys have suggested that grooming might be employed as a commodity to be reciprocated or traded for alternative services, yet previous tests of this grooming-trade model in wild adult male chimpanzees have yielded mixed results. Here we provide the strongest test of the model to date for male chimpanzees: we use data drawn from two social groups (communities) of chimpanzees from different populations and give explicit consideration to variation in dominance hierarchy steepness, as such variation results in differing conditions for biological markets. First, analysis of data from published accounts of other chimpanzee communities, together with our own data, showed that hierarchy steepness varied considerably within and across communities and that the number of adult males in a community aged 20-30 years predicted hierarchy steepness. The two communities in which we tested predictions of the grooming-trade model lay at opposite extremes of this distribution. Second, in accord with the grooming-trade model, we found evidence that male chimpanzees trade grooming for agonistic support where hierarchies are steep (despotic) and consequent effective support is a rank-related commodity, but not where hierarchies are shallow (egalitarian). However, we also found that grooming was reciprocated regardless of hierarchy steepness. Our findings also hint at the possibility of agonistic competition, or at least exclusion, in relation to grooming opportunities compromising the free market envisioned by biological market theory. Our results build on previous findings across chimpanzee communities to emphasize the importance of reciprocal grooming exchanges among adult male chimpanzees, which can be understood in a biological markets framework if grooming by or with particular individuals is a

Egalitarian despots: hierarchy steepness, reciprocity and the grooming-trade model in wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes

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Kaburu, Stefano S. K.; Newton-Fisher, Nicholas E.

2014-01-01

Biological market theory models the action of natural selection as a marketplace in which animals are viewed as traders with commodities to offer and exchange. Studies of female Old World monkeys have suggested that grooming might be employed as a commodity to be reciprocated or traded for alternative services, yet previous tests of this grooming-trade model in wild adult male chimpanzees have yielded mixed results. Here we provide the strongest test of the model to date for male chimpanzees: we use data drawn from two social groups (communities) of chimpanzees from different populations and give explicit consideration to variation in dominance hierarchy steepness, as such variation results in differing conditions for biological markets. First, analysis of data from published accounts of other chimpanzee communities, together with our own data, showed that hierarchy steepness varied considerably within and across communities and that the number of adult males in a community aged 20–30 years predicted hierarchy steepness. The two communities in which we tested predictions of the grooming-trade model lay at opposite extremes of this distribution. Second, in accord with the grooming-trade model, we found evidence that male chimpanzees trade grooming for agonistic support where hierarchies are steep (despotic) and consequent effective support is a rank-related commodity, but not where hierarchies are shallow (egalitarian). However, we also found that grooming was reciprocated regardless of hierarchy steepness. Our findings also hint at the possibility of agonistic competition, or at least exclusion, in relation to grooming opportunities compromising the free market envisioned by biological market theory. Our results build on previous findings across chimpanzee communities to emphasize the importance of reciprocal grooming exchanges among adult male chimpanzees, which can be understood in a biological markets framework if grooming by or with particular individuals is

Seasonal effects on great ape health: a case study of wild chimpanzees and Western gorillas.

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Shelly Masi

Full Text Available Among factors affecting animal health, environmental influences may directly or indirectly impact host nutritional condition, fecundity, and their degree of parasitism. Our closest relatives, the great apes, are all endangered and particularly sensitive to infectious diseases. Both chimpanzees and western gorillas experience large seasonal variations in fruit availability but only western gorillas accordingly show large changes in their degree of frugivory. The aim of this study is to investigate and compare factors affecting health (through records of clinical signs, urine, and faecal samples of habituated wild ape populations: a community (N = 46 individuals of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes in Kanyawara, Kibale National Park (Uganda, and a western gorilla (G. gorilla group (N = 13 in Bai Hokou in the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park (Central African Republic. Ape health monitoring was carried out in the wet and dry seasons (chimpanzees: July-December 2006; gorillas: April-July 2008 and December 2008-February 2009. Compared to chimpanzees, western gorillas were shown to have marginally greater parasite diversity, higher prevalence and intensity of both parasite and urine infections, and lower occurrence of diarrhea and wounds. Parasite infections (prevalence and load, but not abnormal urine parameters, were significantly higher during the dry season of the study period for western gorillas, who thus appeared more affected by the large temporal changes in the environment in comparison to chimpanzees. Infant gorillas were the most susceptible among all the age/sex classes (of both apes having much more intense infections and urine blood concentrations, again during the dry season. Long term studies are needed to confirm the influence of seasonal factors on health and parasitism of these great apes. However, this study suggest climate change and forest fragmentation leading to potentially larger seasonal fluctuations of the environment may affect

Trading or coercion? Variation in male mating strategies between two communities of East African chimpanzees.

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Kaburu, Stefano S K; Newton-Fisher, Nicholas E

2015-06-01

Across taxa, males employ a variety of mating strategies, including sexual coercion and the provision, or trading, of resources. Biological market theory (BMT) predicts that trading of commodities for mating opportunities should exist only when males cannot monopolize access to females and/or obtain mating by force, in situations where power differentials between males are low; both coercion and trading have been reported for chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ). Here, we investigate whether the choice of strategy depends on the variation in male power differentials, using data from two wild communities of East African chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii ): the structurally despotic Sonso community (Budongo, Uganda) and the structurally egalitarian M-group (Mahale, Tanzania). We found evidence of sexual coercion by male Sonso chimpanzees, and of trading-of grooming for mating-by M-group males; females traded sex for neither meat nor protection from male aggression. Our results suggest that the despotism-egalitarian axis influences strategy choice: male chimpanzees appear to pursue sexual coercion when power differentials are large and trading when power differentials are small and coercion consequently ineffective. Our findings demonstrate that trading and coercive strategies are not restricted to particular chimpanzee subspecies; instead, their occurrence is consistent with BMT predictions. Our study raises interesting, and as yet unanswered, questions regarding female chimpanzees' willingness to trade sex for grooming, if doing so represents a compromise to their fundamentally promiscuous mating strategy. It highlights the importance of within-species cross-group comparisons and the need for further study of the relationship between mating strategy and dominance steepness.

Chemical immobilization of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using a combination of detomidine and ketamine.

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Melis, Sanne; Schauvliege, Stijn; van Bolhuis, Hester; Hoyer, Mark; Gasthuys, Frank

2012-09-01

To determine if a combination of detomidine and ketamine can be used for effective chemical immobilization of chimpanzees. Observational study. Twenty-one adult captive chimpanzees (12 males, nine females), age 8-46 years, weighing 40.4-68.4 kg. The chimpanzees were immobilized with intramuscular (IM) detomidine and ketamine by a darting system. Based on estimated weights, doses administered were 50 μg kg(-1) detomidine and 4 mg kg(-1) ketamine in groups 1 and 2, and 60 μg kg(-1) and 5 mg kg(-1) respectively in group 3. Eight minutes in group 1 and 15 minutes in groups 2 and 3 were allowed from the time of apparent immobilization before removing the animals from their enclosures. Body temperature, arterial haemoglobin saturation and pulse rate were measured. The time from injection to induction (recumbency and absence of voluntary movement), total anaesthetic and recovery times (with or without atipamezole) were recorded. Immobilization occurred within 5 minutes after darting in most animals. Early handling of the chimpanzees often resulted in arousal and required further doses of ketamine IM. Most animals were hypoxaemic and hypothermic. Occasionally, bradycardia was observed. Atipamezole resulted in an acceptable quality of recovery 10 minutes after IM injection. The duration of immobilization varied widely when no antagonist was administered. The combination detomidine (60 μg kg(-1) ) and ketamine (5-6 mg kg(-1) ) can be used for the immobilization of chimpanzees for non- to minimally invasive procedures. A period of 15 minutes should be allowed before handling to avoid unwanted arousal. Oxygen administration is recommended to reduce hypoxaemia. Administration of atipamezole is justified to hasten recovery. © 2012 The Authors. Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia. © 2012 Association of Veterinary Anaesthetists and the American College of Veterinary Anesthesiologists.

Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost.

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Schmelz, Martin; Grueneisen, Sebastian; Kabalak, Alihan; Jost, Jürgen; Tomasello, Michael

2017-07-11

Humans regularly provide others with resources at a personal cost to themselves. Chimpanzees engage in some cooperative behaviors in the wild as well, but their motivational underpinnings are unclear. In three experiments, chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) always chose between an option delivering food both to themselves and a partner and one delivering food only to themselves. In one condition, a conspecific partner had just previously taken a personal risk to make this choice available. In another condition, no assistance from the partner preceded the subject's decision. Chimpanzees made significantly more prosocial choices after receiving their partner's assistance than when no assistance was given (experiment 1) and, crucially, this was the case even when choosing the prosocial option was materially costly for the subject (experiment 2). Moreover, subjects appeared sensitive to the risk of their partner's assistance and chose prosocially more often when their partner risked losing food by helping (experiment 3). These findings demonstrate experimentally that chimpanzees are willing to incur a material cost to deliver rewards to a conspecific, but only if that conspecific previously assisted them, and particularly when this assistance was risky. Some key motivations involved in human cooperation thus may have deeper phylogenetic roots than previously suspected.

The effect of canopy closure on chimpanzee nest abundance in Lagoas de Cufada National Park, Guinea-Bissau.

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Sousa, Joana; Casanova, Catarina; Barata, André V; Sousa, Cláudia

2014-04-01

The present study aimed to gather baseline information about chimpanzee nesting and density in Lagoas de Cufada Natural Park (LCNP), in Guinea-Bissau. Old and narrow trails were followed to estimate chimpanzee density through marked-nest counts and to test the effect of canopy closure (woodland savannah, forest with a sparse canopy, and forest with a dense canopy) on nest distribution. Chimpanzee abundance was estimated at 0.79 nest builders/km(2), the lowest among the areas of Guinea-Bissau with currently studied chimpanzee populations. Our data suggest that sub-humid forest with a dense canopy accounts for significantly higher chimpanzee nest abundance (1.50 nests/km of trail) than sub-humid forest with a sparse canopy (0.49 nests/km of trail) or woodland savannah (0.30 nests/km of trail). Dense-canopy forests play an important role in chimpanzee nesting in the patchy and highly humanized landscape of LCNP. The tree species most frequently used for nesting are Dialium guineense (46%) and Elaeis guineensis (28%). E. guineensis contain nests built higher in the canopy, while D. guineense contain nests built at lower heights. Nests observed during baseline sampling and replications suggest seasonal variations in the tree species used for nest building.

Hyperprogesteronemia in response to Vitex fischeri consumption in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

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Emery Thompson, Melissa; Wilson, Michael L; Gobbo, Grace; Muller, Martin N; Pusey, Anne E

2008-11-01

Chimpanzees in Gombe National Park consume fruits of Vitex fischeri during a short annual fruiting season. This fruit species is a member of a genus widely studied for phytoestrogen composition and varied physiological effects. One particularly well-studied species, V. agnus-castus, is noted for its documented effects on female reproductive function, evidenced in increased progesterone levels and consequent regulation of luteal function. We examined reproductive hormone levels in both male and female chimpanzees during a 6-week period of intense V. fischeri consumption. V. fischeri consumption was associated with an abrupt and dramatic increase in urinary progesterone levels of female chimpanzees to levels far exceeding the normal range of variation. Female estrogen levels were not significantly impacted, nor were male testosterone levels. These are some of the first data indicating that phytochemicals in the natural diet of a primate can have significant impacts on the endocrine system, though the fluctuating nature of chimpanzee diet and reproductive function does not allow us to determine whether the effects observed during this short period had a broader positive or negative impact on female fertility. Given the widespread use of various Vitex species by African primates and the as-yet-undescribed phytochemical properties of these species, we predict that our observations may be indicative of a broader phenomenon. Copyright 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The Number of Cultural Traits Is Correlated with Female Group Size but Not with Male Group Size in Chimpanzee Communities

OpenAIRE

Lind, Johan; Lindenfors, Patrik

2010-01-01

What determines the number of cultural traits present in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) communities is poorly understood. In humans, theoretical models suggest that the frequency of cultural traits can be predicted by population size. In chimpanzees, however, females seem to have a particularly important role as cultural carriers. Female chimpanzees use tools more frequently than males. They also spend more time with their young, skewing the infants’ potential for social learning towards their ...

Task Design Influences Prosociality in Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

House, Bailey R; Silk, Joan B; Lambeth, Susan P

2014-01-01

Chimpanzees confer benefits on group members, both in the wild and in captive populations. Experimental studies of how animals allocate resources can provide useful insights about the motivations underlying prosocial behavior, and understanding the relationship between task design and prosocial...... and the methods used, and in most cases employ procedures that reduce critical features of naturalistic social interactions, such as partner choice. The focus of the current study is on understanding the link between experimental methodology and prosocial behavior in captive chimpanzees, rather than on describing...... these animals' social motivations themselves. We introduce a task design that avoids isolating subjects and allows them to freely decide whether to participate in the experiment. We explore key elements of the methods utilized in previous experiments in an effort to evaluate two possibilities that have been...

Early social deprivation negatively affects social skill acquisition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Mulenga, Innocent Chitalu; Chidester, Diana Lisensky

2014-03-01

In a highly social species like chimpanzees, the process by which individuals become attuned to their social environment may be of vital importance to their chances of survival. Typically, this socialization process, defined by all acquisition experiences and fine-tuning efforts of social interaction patterns during ontogeny, occurs in large part through parental investment. In this study, we investigated whether maternal presence enhances the socialization process in chimpanzees by comparing the social interactions of orphaned and mother-reared individuals at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia. As response variables, we selected social interactions during which an elaborate level of fine-tuning is assumed to be necessary for sustaining the interaction and preventing escalation: social play. Comparing orphaned (n = 8) to sex- and age-matched mother-reared juvenile chimpanzees (n = 9), we hypothesized that the orphaned juveniles would play less frequently than the mother-reared and would be less equipped for fine-tuning social play (which we assayed by rates of aggression) because of the lack of a safe and facilitating social environment provided by the mother. First, contrary to our hypothesis, results showed that the orphaned juveniles engaged in social play more frequently than the mother-reared juveniles, although for significantly shorter amounts of time. Second, in support of our hypothesis, results showed that social play of the orphaned juveniles more often resulted in aggression than social play of the mother-reared juveniles. In conjunction, these results may indicate that, just like in humans, chimpanzee mothers provide their offspring with adequate social skills that might be of pivotal importance for future challenges like successful group-living and securing competitive fitness advantages.

Use of "entertainment" chimpanzees in commercials distorts public perception regarding their conservation status.

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Kara K Schroepfer

Full Text Available Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes are often used in movies, commercials and print advertisements with the intention of eliciting a humorous response from audiences. The portrayal of chimpanzees in unnatural, human-like situations may have a negative effect on the public's understanding of their endangered status in the wild while making them appear as suitable pets. Alternatively, media content that elicits a positive emotional response toward chimpanzees may increase the public's commitment to chimpanzee conservation. To test these competing hypotheses, participants (n = 165 watched a series of commercials in an experiment framed as a marketing study. Imbedded within the same series of commercials was one of three chimpanzee videos. Participants either watched 1 a chimpanzee conservation commercial, 2 commercials containing "entertainment" chimpanzees or 3 control footage of the natural behavior of wild chimpanzees. Results from a post-viewing questionnaire reveal that participants who watched the conservation message understood that chimpanzees were endangered and unsuitable as pets at higher levels than those viewing the control footage. Meanwhile participants watching commercials with entertainment chimpanzees showed a decrease in understanding relative to those watching the control footage. In addition, when participants were given the opportunity to donate part of their earnings from the experiment to a conservation charity, donations were least frequent in the group watching commercials with entertainment chimpanzees. Control questions show that participants did not detect the purpose of the study. These results firmly support the hypothesis that use of entertainment chimpanzees in the popular media negatively distorts the public's perception and hinders chimpanzee conservation efforts.

Surgical technique for ambulatory management of airsacculitis in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).

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Hill, L R; Lee, D R; Keeling, M E

2001-02-01

Bacterial infections of the air sac have been reported in many nonhuman primates. Approaches to the management of airsacculitis have included combinations of medical and surgical therapies. These strategies have often required repeated attempts to drain exudate from the affected air sac, as well as necessitating that the animal endure isolation or undergo intensive postoperative care before returning to its social group. A stoma was created via deliberate apposition of the air sac lining and skin to allow continuous drainage. Antibiotic therapy based on culture and antimicrobial susceptibility of the air sac contents was administered while the chimpanzee remained in its social group. We were able to attain complete resolution of the infection after a course of oral antibiotic therapy. The stoma closed gradually over a three-week period, and the chimpanzee has remained free of infection since that time. Despite the severity of the air sac infection in this chimpanzee, we were able to resolve the infection easily, using a simple surgical technique. This method allowed treatment without interfering with social standing or subjection to repeated anesthetic and treatment episodes. This method could be a simple, useful alternative for managing airsacculitis in nonhuman primates.

Flexibility and persistence of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) foraging behavior in a captive environment.

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Bonnie, Kristin E; Milstein, Marissa S; Calcutt, Sarah E; Ross, Stephen R; Wagner, Kathy E; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V

2012-07-01

As a result of environmental variability, animals may be confronted with uncertainty surrounding the presence of, or accessibility to, food resources at a given location or time. While individuals can rely on personal experience to manage this variability, the behavior of members of an individual's social group can also provide information regarding the availability or location of a food resource. The purpose of the present study was to measure how captive chimpanzees individually and collectively adjust their foraging strategies at an artificial termite mound, as the availability of resources provided by the mound varied over a number of weeks. As predicted, fishing activity at the mound was related to resource availability. However, chimpanzees continued to fish at unbaited locations on the days and weeks after a location had last contained food. Consistent with previous studies, our findings show that chimpanzees do not completely abandon previously learned habits despite learning individually and/or socially that the habit is no longer effective. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Efficient search for a face by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

OpenAIRE

Tomonaga, Masaki; Imura, Tomoko

2015-01-01

The face is quite an important stimulus category for human and nonhuman primates in their social lives. Recent advances in comparative-cognitive research clearly indicate that chimpanzees and humans process faces in a special manner; that is, using holistic or configural processing. Both species exhibit the face-inversion effect in which the inverted presentation of a face deteriorates their perception and recognition. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that humans detect human faces amon...

Patterns of gastro-intestinal parasites and commensals as an index of population and ecosystem health: the case of sympatric western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and guinea baboons (Papio hamadryas papio) at Fongoli, Senegal.

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Howells, Michaela E; Pruetz, Jill; Gillespie, Thomas R

2011-02-01

The exponential decline of great apes over the past 50 years has resulted in an urgent need for data to inform population viability assessment and conservation strategies. Health monitoring of remaining ape populations is an important component of this process. In support of this effort, we examined endoparasitic and commensal prevalence and richness as proxies of population health for western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and sympatric guinea baboons (Papio hamadryas papio) at Fongoli, Senegal, a site dominated by woodland-savanna at the northwestern extent of chimpanzees' geographic range. The small population size and extreme environmental pressures experienced by Fongoli chimpanzees make them particularly sensitive to the potential impact of pathogens. One hundred thirty-two chimpanzee and seventeen baboon fecal samples were processed using sodium nitrate floatation and fecal sedimentation to isolate helminth eggs, larvae, and protozoal cysts. Six nematodes (Physaloptera sp., Ascaris sp., Stronglyloides fuelleborni, Trichuris sp., an unidentified hookworm, and an unidentified larvated nematode), one cestode (Bertiella sp.), and five protozoans (Iodamoeba buetschlii, Entamoeba coli, Troglodytella abrassarti, Troglocorys cava, and an unidentified ciliate) were detected in chimpanzee fecal samples. Four nematodes (Necator sp., S. fuelleborni, Trichuris sp., and an unidentified hookworm sp.), two trematodes (Shistosoma mansoni and an unidentified fluke), and six protozoans (Entamoeba histolytica/dispar, E. coli, Chilomastix mesnili, Balantidium coli, T. abrassarti, and T. cava) were detected in baboon fecal samples. The low prevalence of pathogenic parasite species and high prevalence of symbiotic protozoa in Fongoli chimpanzees are indicative of good overall population health. However, the high prevalence of pathogenic parasites in baboons, who may serve as transport hosts, highlight the need for ongoing pathogen surveillance of the Fongoli chimpanzee

DNA recovery from wild chimpanzee tools.

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Fiona A Stewart

Full Text Available Most of our knowledge of wild chimpanzee behaviour stems from fewer than 10 long-term field sites. This bias limits studies to a potentially unrepresentative set of communities known to show great behavioural diversity on small geographic scales. Here, we introduce a new genetic approach to bridge the gap between behavioural material evidence in unhabituated chimpanzees and genetic advances in the field of primatology. The use of DNA analyses has revolutionised archaeological and primatological fields, whereby extraction of DNA from non-invasively collected samples allows researchers to reconstruct behaviour without ever directly observing individuals. We used commercially available forensic DNA kits to show that termite-fishing by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii leaves behind detectable chimpanzee DNA evidence on tools. We then quantified the recovered DNA, compared the yield to that from faecal samples, and performed an initial assessment of mitochondrial and microsatellite markers to identify individuals. From 49 termite-fishing tools from the Issa Valley research site in western Tanzania, we recovered an average of 52 pg/μl chimpanzee DNA, compared to 376.2 pg/μl in faecal DNA extracts. Mitochondrial DNA haplotypes could be assigned to 41 of 49 tools (84%. Twenty-six tool DNA extracts yielded >25 pg/μl DNA and were selected for microsatellite analyses; genotypes were determined with confidence for 18 tools. These tools were used by a minimum of 11 individuals across the study period and termite mounds. These results demonstrate the utility of bio-molecular techniques and a primate archaeology approach in non-invasive monitoring and behavioural reconstruction of unhabituated primate populations.

Skill mastery inhibits adoption of observed alternative solutions among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Hrubesch, Christine; Preuschoft, Signe; van Schaik, Carel

2009-03-01

Geographic variation in socially transmitted skills and signals, similar to human culture, has been well documented for great apes. The rules governing the adoption of novel behaviours, however, are still largely unknown. We conducted an innovation-and-transmission experiment with two groups of chimpanzees living at hopE Primate Sanctuary Gänserndorf, Austria, presenting a board on which food had to be manoeuvred around obstacles to be acquired. Most chimpanzees used sticks to acquire the food, but five adults independently invented a novel technique, rattling, which was subsequently tested by almost all group members. However, individuals who had become proficient with sticks were reluctant to switch to rattling, despite it being more efficient. Similarly, after rattling was prevented, rattle specialists kept trying to rattle and made no attempt to use the stick technique, despite their knowledge about its existence. We conclude that innovators stimulate others to experiment with the solutions they display, but that chimpanzees are nevertheless conservative; mastery of a skill inhibits further exploration, and hence adoption of alternative techniques even if these are more efficient. Consequently, conformity among group members should not be expected in great apes when individuals develop proficiency at different techniques. Conservatism thus joins conformity as a mechanism to bring about cultural uniformity and stability.

Ontogenetic trajectories of chimpanzee social play: similarities with humans.

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Giada Cordoni

Full Text Available Social play, a widespread phenomenon in mammals, is a multifunctional behavior, which can have many different roles according to species, sex, age, relationship quality between playmates, group membership, context, and habitat. Play joins and cuts across a variety of disciplines leading directly to inquiries relating to individual developmental changes and species adaptation, thus the importance of comparative studies appears evident. Here, we aim at proposing a possible ontogenetic pathway of chimpanzee play (Pan troglodytes and contrast our data with those of human play. Chimpanzee play shows a number of changes from infancy to juvenility. Particularly, solitary and social play follows different developmental trajectories. While solitary play peaks in infancy, social play does not show any quantitative variation between infancy and juvenility but shows a strong qualitative variation in complexity, asymmetry, and playmate choice. Like laughter in humans, the playful expressions in chimpanzees (at the different age phases seem to have a role in advertising cooperative dispositions and intentions thus increasing the likelihood of engaging in solid social relationships. In conclusion, in chimpanzees, as in humans, both play behavior and the signals that accompany play serve multiple functions according to the different age phases.

Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: applying rational analysis beyond humans.

Science.gov (United States)

Stevens, Jeffrey R; Marewski, Julian N; Schooler, Lael J; Gilby, Ian C

2016-08-01

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition.

Cognitive and physiological markers of emotional awareness in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Parr, L A

2001-11-01

The ability to understand emotion in others is one of the most important factors involved in regulating social interactions in primates. Such emotional awareness functions to coordinate activity among group members, enable the formation of long-lasting individual relationships, and facilitate the pursuit of shared interests. Despite these important evolutionary implications, comparative studies of emotional processing in humans and great apes are practically nonexistent, constituting a major gap in our understanding of the extent to which emotional awareness has played an important role in shaping human behavior and societies. This paper presents the results of two experiments that examine chimpanzees' responses to emotional stimuli. First, changes in peripheral skin temperature were measured while subjects viewed three categories of emotionally negative video scenes; conspecifics being injected with needles (INJ), darts and needles alone (DART), and conspecific directing agonism towards the veterinarians (CHASE). Second, chimpanzees were required to use facial expressions to categorize emotional video scenes, i.e., favorite food and objects and veterinarian procedures, according to their positive and negative valence. With no prior training, subjects spontaneously matched the emotional videos to conspecific facial expressions according to their shared emotional meaning, indicating that chimpanzee facial expressions are processed emotionally, as are human expressions. Decreases in peripheral skin temperature, indicative of negative sympathetic arousal, were significantly lower when subjects viewed the INJ and DART videos, compared to the CHASE videos, indicating greater negative arousal when viewing conspecifics being injected with needles, and needles themselves, than when viewing conspecifics engaged in general agonism.

Spontaneous innovation for future deception in a male chimpanzee.

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Osvath, Mathias; Karvonen, Elin

2012-01-01

The ability to invent means to deceive others, where the deception lies in the perceptually or contextually detached future, appears to require the coordination of sophisticated cognitive skills toward a single goal. Meanwhile innovation for a current situation has been observed in a wide range of species. Planning, on the one hand, and the social cognition required for deception on the other, have been linked to one another, both from a co-evolutionary and a neuroanatomical perspective. Innovation and deception have also been suggested to be connected in their nature of relying on novelty. We report on systematic observations suggesting innovation for future deception by a captive male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). As an extension of previously described behaviour--caching projectiles for later throwing at zoo visitors--the chimpanzee, again in advance, manufactured concealments from hay, as well as used naturally occurring concealments. All were placed near the visitors' observation area, allowing the chimpanzee to make throws before the crowd could back off. We observed what was likely the first instance of this innovation. Further observations showed that the creation of future-oriented concealments became the significantly preferred strategy. What is more, the chimpanzee appeared consistently to combine two deceptive strategies: hiding projectiles and inhibiting dominance display behaviour. The findings suggest that chimpanzees can represent the future behaviours of others while those others are not present, as well as take actions in the current situation towards such potential future behaviours. Importantly, the behaviour of the chimpanzee produced a future event, rather than merely prepared for an event that had been reliably re-occurring in the past. These findings might indicate that the chimpanzee recombined episodic memories in perceptual simulations.

Psychological health of orphan bonobos and chimpanzees in African sanctuaries.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Victoria Wobber

Full Text Available Facilities across Africa care for apes orphaned by the trade for "bushmeat." These facilities, called sanctuaries, provide housing for apes such as bonobos (Pan paniscus and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes who have been illegally taken from the wild and sold as pets. Although these circumstances are undoubtedly stressful for the apes, most individuals arrive at the sanctuaries as infants and are subsequently provided with rich physical and social environments that can facilitate the expression of species-typical behaviors.We tested whether bonobo and chimpanzee orphans living in sanctuaries show any behavioral, physiological, or cognitive abnormalities relative to other individuals in captivity as a result of the early-life stress they experience. Orphans showed lower levels of aberrant behaviors, similar levels of average cortisol, and highly similar performances on a broad battery of cognitive tests in comparisons with individuals of the same species who were either living at a zoo or were reared by their mothers at the sanctuaries.Taken together, these results support the rehabilitation strategy used by sanctuaries in the Pan-African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA and suggest that the orphans we examined did not show long-term signs of stress as a result of their capture. Our findings also show that sanctuary apes are as psychologically healthy as apes in other captive settings and thus represent a valuable resource for non-invasive research.

Chimpanzees and bonobos exhibit emotional responses to decision outcomes.

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Alexandra G Rosati

Full Text Available The interface between cognition, emotion, and motivation is thought to be of central importance in understanding complex cognitive functions such as decision-making and executive control in humans. Although nonhuman apes have complex repertoires of emotional expression, little is known about the role of affective processes in ape decision-making. To illuminate the evolutionary origins of human-like patterns of choice, we investigated decision-making in humans' closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and bonobos (Pan paniscus. In two studies, we examined these species' temporal and risk preferences, and assessed whether apes show emotional and motivational responses in decision-making contexts. We find that (1 chimpanzees are more patient and more risk-prone than are bonobos, (2 both species exhibit affective and motivational responses following the outcomes of their decisions, and (3 some emotional and motivational responses map onto species-level and individual-differences in decision-making. These results indicate that apes do exhibit emotional responses to decision-making, like humans. We explore the hypothesis that affective and motivational biases may underlie the psychological mechanisms supporting value-based preferences in these species.

Eddy covariance fluxes of acyl peroxy nitrates (PAN, PPN and MPAN above a Ponderosa pine forest

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. M. Wolfe

2009-01-01

Full Text Available During the Biosphere Effects on AeRosols and Photochemistry EXperiment 2007 (BEARPEX-2007, we observed eddy covariance (EC fluxes of speciated acyl peroxy nitrates (APNs, including peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN, peroxypropionyl nitrate (PPN and peroxymethacryloyl nitrate (MPAN, above a Ponderosa pine forest in the western Sierra Nevada. All APN fluxes are net downward during the day, with a median midday PAN exchange velocity of −0.3 cm s⁻¹; nighttime storage-corrected APN EC fluxes are smaller than daytime fluxes but still downward. Analysis with a standard resistance model shows that loss of PAN to the canopy is not controlled by turbulent or molecular diffusion. Stomatal uptake can account for 25 to 50% of the observed downward PAN flux. Vertical gradients in the PAN thermal decomposition (TD rate explain a similar fraction of the flux, suggesting that a significant portion of the PAN flux into the forest results from chemical processes in the canopy. The remaining "unidentified" portion of the net PAN flux (~15% is ascribed to deposition or reactive uptake on non-stomatal surfaces (e.g. leaf cuticles or soil. Shifts in temperature, moisture and ecosystem activity during the summer – fall transition alter the relative contribution of stomatal uptake, non-stomatal uptake and thermochemical gradients to the net PAN flux. Daytime PAN and MPAN exchange velocities are a factor of 3 smaller than those of PPN during the first two weeks of the measurement period, consistent with strong intra-canopy chemical production of PAN and MPAN during this period. Depositional loss of APNs can be 3–21% of the gross gas-phase TD loss depending on temperature. As a source of nitrogen to the biosphere, PAN deposition represents approximately 4–19% of that due to dry deposition of nitric acid at this site.

Socially transmitted diffusion of a novel behavior from subordinate chimpanzees.

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Watson, Stuart K; Reamer, Lisa A; Mareno, Mary Catherine; Vale, Gillian; Harrison, Rachel A; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; Whiten, Andrew

2017-06-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) demonstrate much cultural diversity in the wild, yet a majority of novel behaviors do not become group-wide traditions. Since many such novel behaviors are introduced by low-ranking individuals, a bias toward copying dominant individuals ("rank-bias") has been proposed as an explanation for their limited diffusion. Previous experimental work showed that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) preferentially copy dominant over low-rank models. We investigated whether low ranking individuals may nevertheless successfully seed a beneficial behavior as a tradition if there are no "competing" models. In each of four captive groups, either a single high-rank (HR, n = 2) or a low-rank (LR, n = 2) chimpanzee model was trained on one method of opening a two-action puzzle-box, before demonstrating the trained method in a group context. This was followed by 8 hr of group-wide, open-access to the puzzle-box. Successful manipulations and observers of each manipulation were recorded. Barnard's exact tests showed that individuals in the LR groups used the seeded method as their first-choice option at significantly above chance levels, whereas those in the HR groups did not. Furthermore, individuals in the LR condition used the seeded method on their first attempt significantly more often than those in the HR condition. A network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) revealed that the best supported statistical models were those in which social transmission occurred only in groups with subordinate models. Finally, we report an innovation by a subordinate individual that built cumulatively on existing methods of opening the puzzle-box and was subsequently copied by a dominant observer. These findings illustrate that chimpanzees are motivated to copy rewarding novel behaviors that are demonstrated by subordinate individuals and that, in some cases, social transmission may be constrained by high-rank demonstrators. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Fallback foods and dietary partitioning among Pan and Gorilla.

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Yamagiwa, Juichi; Basabose, Augustin Kanyunyi

2009-12-01

Recent findings on the strong preference of gorillas for fruits and the large dietary overlap between sympatric gorillas and chimpanzees has led to a debate over the folivorous/frugivorous dichotomy and resource partitioning. To add insight to these arguments, we analyze the diets of sympatric gorillas and chimpanzees inhabiting the montane forest of Kahuzi-Biega National Park (DRC) using a new definition of fallback foods (Marshall and Wrangham: Int J Primatol 28 [2007] 1219-1235). We determined the preferred fruits of Kahuzi chimpanzees and gorillas from direct feeding observations and fecal analyses conducted over an 8-year period. Although there was extensive overlap in the preferred fruits of these two species, gorillas tended to consume fewer fruits with prolonged availability while chimpanzees consumed fruits with large seasonal fluctuations. Fig fruit was defined as a preferred food of chimpanzees, although it may also play a role as the staple fallback food. Animal foods, such as honey bees and ants, appear to constitute filler fallback foods of chimpanzees. Tool use allows chimpanzees to obtain such high-quality fallback foods during periods of fruit scarcity. Among filler fallback foods, terrestrial herbs may enable chimpanzees to live in small home ranges in the montane forest, whereas the availability of animal foods may permit them to expand their home range in arid areas. Staple fallback foods including barks enable gorillas to form cohesive groups with similar home range across habitats irrespective of fruit abundance. These differences in fallback strategies seem to have shaped different social features between sympatric gorillas and chimpanzees.

An 8-year longitudinal study of mirror self-recognition in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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de Veer, Monique W; Gallup, Gordon G; Theall, Laura A; van den Bos, Ruud; Povinelli, Daniel J

2003-01-01

In a previous cross-sectional study of mirror self-recognition involving 92 chimpanzees, Povinelli et al. [Journal of Comparative Psychology 107 (1993) 347] reported a peak in the proportion of animals exhibiting self-recognition in the adolescent/young adult sample (8-15 years), with 75% being classified as positive. In contrast, only 26% of the older animals (16-39 years) were classified as positive, suggesting a marked decline in self-recognition in middle to late adulthood. In the present study, all of the chimpanzees from the 8-15-year-old group in the Povinelli et al. study (n=12) were again tested for self-recognition, 8 years later. Using the same criteria, 67% of the animals were classified the same. Although a higher proportion of the adult animals in this study (50%) exhibited self-recognition than would be inferred on the basis of the previous study (25%), all changes in self-recognition status were in the negative direction. These results show that mirror self-recognition is a highly stable trait in many chimpanzees, but may be subject to decline with age. Connections with human research are briefly discussed.

Chimpanzees copy dominant and knowledgeable individuals: implications for cultural diversity.

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Kendal, Rachel; Hopper, Lydia M; Whiten, Andrew; Brosnan, Sarah F; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; Hoppitt, Will

2015-01-01

Evolutionary theory predicts that natural selection will fashion cognitive biases to guide when, and from whom, individuals acquire social information, but the precise nature of these biases, especially in ecologically valid group contexts, remains unknown. We exposed four captive groups of chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) to a novel extractive foraging device and, by fitting statistical models, isolated four simultaneously operating transmission biases. These include biases to copy (i) higher-ranking and (ii) expert individuals, and to copy others when (iii) uncertain or (iv) of low rank. High-ranking individuals were relatively un-strategic in their use of acquired knowledge, which, combined with the bias for others to observe them, may explain reports that high innovation rates (in juveniles and subordinates) do not generate a correspondingly high frequency of traditions in chimpanzees. Given the typically low rank of immigrants in chimpanzees, a 'copying dominants' bias may contribute to the observed maintenance of distinct cultural repertoires in neighboring communities despite sharing similar ecology and knowledgeable migrants. Thus, a copying dominants strategy may, as often proposed for conformist transmission, and perhaps in concert with it, restrict the accumulation of traditions within chimpanzee communities whilst maintaining cultural diversity.

Functional Analysis and Treatment of Human-Directed Undesirable Behavior Exhibited by a Captive Chimpanzee

Science.gov (United States)

Martin, Allison L.; Bloomsmith, Mollie A.; Kelley, Michael E.; Marr, M. Jackson; Maple, Terry L.

2011-01-01

A functional analysis identified the reinforcer maintaining feces throwing and spitting exhibited by a captive adult chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes"). The implementation of a function-based treatment combining extinction with differential reinforcement of an alternate behavior decreased levels of inappropriate behavior. These findings further…

Spontaneous innovation for future deception in a male chimpanzee.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mathias Osvath

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The ability to invent means to deceive others, where the deception lies in the perceptually or contextually detached future, appears to require the coordination of sophisticated cognitive skills toward a single goal. Meanwhile innovation for a current situation has been observed in a wide range of species. Planning, on the one hand, and the social cognition required for deception on the other, have been linked to one another, both from a co-evolutionary and a neuroanatomical perspective. Innovation and deception have also been suggested to be connected in their nature of relying on novelty. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We report on systematic observations suggesting innovation for future deception by a captive male chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes. As an extension of previously described behaviour--caching projectiles for later throwing at zoo visitors--the chimpanzee, again in advance, manufactured concealments from hay, as well as used naturally occurring concealments. All were placed near the visitors' observation area, allowing the chimpanzee to make throws before the crowd could back off. We observed what was likely the first instance of this innovation. Further observations showed that the creation of future-oriented concealments became the significantly preferred strategy. What is more, the chimpanzee appeared consistently to combine two deceptive strategies: hiding projectiles and inhibiting dominance display behaviour. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The findings suggest that chimpanzees can represent the future behaviours of others while those others are not present, as well as take actions in the current situation towards such potential future behaviours. Importantly, the behaviour of the chimpanzee produced a future event, rather than merely prepared for an event that had been reliably re-occurring in the past. These findings might indicate that the chimpanzee recombined episodic memories in perceptual simulations.

Hierarchy and social status in Budongo chimpanzees.

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Newton-Fisher, Nicholas E

2004-04-01

The status hierarchy is fundamental in the lives of male chimpanzees. This study describes the dominance interactions and social status among adult male chimpanzees of the Sonso community in the Budongo Forest Reserve, Uganda, during the period that they were first studied (1994 and 1995). Social dominance is typically measured using the behaviour of either the subordinate or the dominant individual, but a relationship is dependent on the behaviour of both parties and this study explicitly used both subordinate and dominant behaviours to investigate the status hierarchy. Among adult males of the Sonso community, agonistic interactions occurred at a low rate and pant-grunts were rare, but males could be ranked into separate hierarchies of agonistic dominance and pant-grunting (labelled 'respect') using ratios of behaviour performed/behaviour received. These hierarchies were combined to form a single hierarchy of social status that divided the males among five distinct status levels. The highest status level was held by an alliance between two males who replaced the previous alpha male during the first part of the study. Neither male in this alliance partnership pant-grunted to the other, although the reason for cooperative behaviour was unclear. Although the nominally beta male was treated as such by other adult males, he achieved surprisingly little mating success. Budongo Forest chimpanzees do not warrant the sometimes-expressed view that they are non-aggressive and peaceable and the broad pattern of their status interactions matches with that seen in other chimpanzee populations.

Robust retention and transfer of tool construction techniques in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Vale, Gill L.; Flynn, Emma G.; Pender, Lydia

2016-01-01

months since initial experiences with a tool use task, were retained and subsequently executed more quickly by experienced than by naïve chimpanzees. Ten of the 11 retested chimpanzees displayed impressive long-term procedural memory, creating elongated tools using the same methods employed years...... previously, either combining 2 tools or extending a single tool. The complex tool behaviors were also transferred to a different task context, showing behavioral flexibility. This represents some of the first evidence for appreciable long-term procedural memory, and improvements in the utility of complex...

Chimpanzees and bonobos exhibit divergent spatial memory development.

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Rosati, Alexandra G; Hare, Brian

2012-11-01

Spatial cognition and memory are critical cognitive skills underlying foraging behaviors for all primates. While the emergence of these skills has been the focus of much research on human children, little is known about ontogenetic patterns shaping spatial cognition in other species. Comparative developmental studies of nonhuman apes can illuminate which aspects of human spatial development are shared with other primates, versus which aspects are unique to our lineage. Here we present three studies examining spatial memory development in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (P. paniscus). We first compared memory in a naturalistic foraging task where apes had to recall the location of resources hidden in a large outdoor enclosure with a variety of landmarks (Studies 1 and 2). We then compared older apes using a matched memory choice paradigm (Study 3). We found that chimpanzees exhibited more accurate spatial memory than bonobos across contexts, supporting predictions from these species' different feeding ecologies. Furthermore, chimpanzees - but not bonobos - showed developmental improvements in spatial memory, indicating that bonobos exhibit cognitive paedomorphism (delays in developmental timing) in their spatial abilities relative to chimpanzees. Together, these results indicate that the development of spatial memory may differ even between closely related species. Moreover, changes in the spatial domain can emerge during nonhuman ape ontogeny, much like some changes seen in human children. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Reflections of the social environment in chimpanzee memory: applying rational analysis beyond humans

Science.gov (United States)

Marewski, Julian N.; Schooler, Lael J.; Gilby, Ian C.

2016-01-01

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much like humans, the frequency of past encounters in chimpanzees linearly predicted future encounters, and the recency of past encounters predicted future encounters with a power function. Consistent with the rational analyses carried out for human memory, these findings suggest that chimpanzee memory performance should reflect those environmental regularities. In re-analysing existing chimpanzee memory data, we found that chimpanzee memory patterns mirrored their social contact patterns. Our findings hint that human and chimpanzee memory systems may have evolved to solve similar information-processing problems. Overall, rational analysis offers novel theoretical and methodological avenues for the comparative study of cognition. PMID:27853606

The number of cultural traits is correlated with female group size but not with male group size in chimpanzee communities.

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Lind, Johan; Lindenfors, Patrik

2010-03-24

What determines the number of cultural traits present in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) communities is poorly understood. In humans, theoretical models suggest that the frequency of cultural traits can be predicted by population size. In chimpanzees, however, females seem to have a particularly important role as cultural carriers. Female chimpanzees use tools more frequently than males. They also spend more time with their young, skewing the infants' potential for social learning towards their mothers. In Gombe, termite fishing has been shown to be transmitted from mother to offspring. Lastly, it is female chimpanzees that transfer between communities and thus have the possibility of bringing in novel cultural traits from other communities. From these observations we predicted that females are more important cultural carriers than males. Here we show that the reported number of cultural traits in chimpanzee communities correlates with the number of females in chimpanzee communities, but not with the number of males. Hence, our results suggest that females are the carriers of chimpanzee culture.

Brief Communication: Quantitative- and molecular-genetic differentiation in humans and chimpanzees: implications for the evolutionary processes underlying cranial diversification.

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Weaver, Timothy D

2014-08-01

Estimates of the amount of genetic differentiation in humans among major geographic regions (e.g., Eastern Asia vs. Europe) from quantitative-genetic analyses of cranial measurements closely match those from classical- and molecular-genetic markers. Typically, among-region differences account for ∼10% of the total variation. This correspondence is generally interpreted as evidence for the importance of neutral evolutionary processes (e.g., genetic drift) in generating among-region differences in human cranial form, but it was initially surprising because human cranial diversity was frequently assumed to show a strong signature of natural selection. Is the human degree of similarity of cranial and DNA-sequence estimates of among-region genetic differentiation unusual? How do comparisons with other taxa illuminate the evolutionary processes underlying cranial diversification? Chimpanzees provide a useful starting point for placing the human results in a broader comparative context, because common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) are the extant species most closely related to humans. To address these questions, I used 27 cranial measurements collected on a sample of 861 humans and 263 chimpanzees to estimate the amount of genetic differentiation between pairs of groups (between regions for humans and between species or subspecies for chimpanzees). Consistent with previous results, the human cranial estimates are quite similar to published DNA-sequence estimates. In contrast, the chimpanzee cranial estimates are much smaller than published DNA-sequence estimates. It appears that cranial differentiation has been limited in chimpanzees relative to humans. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Social influences on ant-dipping acquisition in the wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of Bossou, Guinea, West Africa.

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Humle, Tatyana; Snowdon, Charles T; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2009-10-01

We currently have little understanding of the influence of learning opportunity, whether social or environmental, and maternal role on tool-use acquisition in young wild chimpanzees. This study aims to fill this gap by focusing on the acquisition of ant-dipping among chimpanzees of Bossou, Guinea. Ant-dipping is a hazardous tool-use behaviour aimed at army ants (Dorylus spp.). Bossou chimpanzees target these ants both at nests (high risk) and trails (low risk) and employ two techniques to consume them: direct mouthing and pull-through. We present data for 13 mother-offspring pairs (1-10 years old). Mothers with young chimpanzee material culture is a product of a complex interaction between social processes and ecological factors.

Molecular identification of Entamoeba species in savanna woodland chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Jirků-Pomajbíková, K.; Čepička, I.; Kalousová, B.; Jirků, M.; Stewart, F.; Levecke, B.; Modrý, D.; Piel, A. K.; Petrželková, Klára Judita

2016-01-01

Roč. 143, č. 6 (2016), s. 741-748 ISSN 0031-1820 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA206/09/0927 Institutional support: RVO:68081766 Keywords : Entamoeba * molecular diversity * great apes * chimpanzee * savannah Subject RIV: EG - Zoology Impact factor: 2.713, year: 2016

Parasitological analyses of the male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Science.gov (United States)

Muehlenbein, Michael P

2005-02-01

Numerous intestinal parasites identified in populations of wild nonhuman primates can be pathogenic to humans. Furthermore, nonhuman primates are susceptible to a variety of human pathogens. Because of increasing human encroachment into previously nonimpacted forests, and the potential for disease transmission between human and nonhuman primate populations, further detailed investigations of primate ecological parasitology are warranted. For meaningful comparisons to be made, it is important for methods to be standardized across study sites. One aspect of methodological standardization is providing reliable estimates of parasite prevalence and knowing how many samples are needed to adequately estimate an individual's parasite prevalence. In this study the parasitic fauna of 37 adult, adolescent, and juvenile male chimpanzees from the Ngogo group, Kibale National Park, Uganda, were assessed from 121 fecal samples collected over a 3-month period. Twelve taxa of intestinal species (five helminth and seven protozoan) were recovered from the samples. The four most prevalent species were Troglodytella abrassarti (97.3%), Oesophagostomum sp. (81.1%), Strongyloides sp. (83.8%), and Entamoeba chattoni (70.3%). No one species was found in all samples from any one animal, and Troglodytella abrassarti, the most common intestinal organism, was found in all of the serial samples of only 69.4% of the chimpanzees. The cumulative species richness for individuals significantly increased for every sequential sample (up to three to four samples) taken per animal during this study. The results indicate that to accurately diagnose total intestinal infection and evaluate group prevalence, three to four sequential samples from each individual must be collected on nonconsecutive days. This conclusion applies only to short study periods in which possible seasonal effects are not taken into consideration. Validation of these results at different study sites in different regions with

Molecular identification of Entamoeba species in savanna woodland chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Jirků-Pomajbíková, Kateřina; Čepička, I.; Kalousová, B.; Jirků, Milan; Stewart, F.; Levecke, B.; Modrý, David; Piel, A. K.; Petrželková, Klára Judita

2016-01-01

Roč. 143, č. 6 (2016), s. 741-748 ISSN 0031-1820 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA206/09/0927 Institutional support: RVO:60077344 Keywords : Entamoeba * molecular diversity * great apes * chimpanzee * savannah Subject RIV: EB - Genetics ; Molecular Biology Impact factor: 2.713, year: 2016

Gimme Gimme Gimme. The recent signing behaviour of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in interactions with longterm human companions

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Rivas, E.C.M.

2003-01-01

This dissertation starts with a critical analysis of the scientific projects with signing chimpanzees, which were set up to see if chimpanzees could learn a human language. These projects consist of the research by the Gardners, the Fouts and the Terrace group. After the results of these projects

Primate archaeology reveals cultural transmission in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus)

Science.gov (United States)

Luncz, Lydia V.; Wittig, Roman M.; Boesch, Christophe

2015-01-01

Recovering evidence of past human activities enables us to recreate behaviour where direct observations are missing. Here, we apply archaeological methods to further investigate cultural transmission processes in percussive tool use among neighbouring chimpanzee communities in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. Differences in the selection of nut-cracking tools between neighbouring groups are maintained over time, despite frequent female transfer, which leads to persistent cultural diversity between chimpanzee groups. Through the recovery of used tools in the suggested natal territory of immigrants, we have been able to reconstruct the tool material selection of females prior to migration. In combination with direct observations of tool selection of local residents and immigrants after migration, we uncovered temporal changes in tool selection for immigrating females. After controlling for ecological differences between territories of immigrants and residents our data suggest that immigrants abandoned their previous tool preference and adopted the pattern of their new community, despite previous personal proficiency of the same foraging task. Our study adds to the growing body of knowledge on the importance of conformist tendencies in animals. PMID:26483527

Primate archaeology reveals cultural transmission in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus).

Science.gov (United States)

Luncz, Lydia V; Wittig, Roman M; Boesch, Christophe

2015-11-19

Recovering evidence of past human activities enables us to recreate behaviour where direct observations are missing. Here, we apply archaeological methods to further investigate cultural transmission processes in percussive tool use among neighbouring chimpanzee communities in the Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. Differences in the selection of nut-cracking tools between neighbouring groups are maintained over time, despite frequent female transfer, which leads to persistent cultural diversity between chimpanzee groups. Through the recovery of used tools in the suggested natal territory of immigrants, we have been able to reconstruct the tool material selection of females prior to migration. In combination with direct observations of tool selection of local residents and immigrants after migration, we uncovered temporal changes in tool selection for immigrating females. After controlling for ecological differences between territories of immigrants and residents our data suggest that immigrants abandoned their previous tool preference and adopted the pattern of their new community, despite previous personal proficiency of the same foraging task. Our study adds to the growing body of knowledge on the importance of conformist tendencies in animals. © 2015 The Author(s).

Semi-wild chimpanzees open hard-shelled fruits differently across communities.

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Rawlings, Bruce; Davila-Ross, Marina; Boysen, Sarah T

2014-07-01

Researchers investigating the evolutionary roots of human culture have turned to comparing behaviours across nonhuman primate communities, with tool-based foraging in particular receiving much attention. This study examined whether natural extractive foraging behaviours other than tool selection differed across nonhuman primate colonies that had the same foods available. Specifically, the behaviours applied to open the hard-shelled fruits of Strychnos spp. were examined in three socially separate, semi-wild colonies of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) that lived under shared ecological conditions at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, and were comparable in their genetic makeup. The chimpanzees (N=56) consistently applied six techniques to open these fruits. GLMM results revealed differences in the number of combined technique types to open fruits across the colonies. They also showed colony differences in the application of three specific techniques. Two techniques (full biting and fruit cracking) were entirely absent in some colonies. This study provides empirical evidence that natural hard-shelled fruit-opening behaviours are distinct across chimpanzee colonies, differences that most likely have not resulted from ecological and genetic reasons.

The number of cultural traits is correlated with female group size but not with male group size in chimpanzee communities.

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Johan Lind

Full Text Available What determines the number of cultural traits present in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes communities is poorly understood. In humans, theoretical models suggest that the frequency of cultural traits can be predicted by population size. In chimpanzees, however, females seem to have a particularly important role as cultural carriers. Female chimpanzees use tools more frequently than males. They also spend more time with their young, skewing the infants' potential for social learning towards their mothers. In Gombe, termite fishing has been shown to be transmitted from mother to offspring. Lastly, it is female chimpanzees that transfer between communities and thus have the possibility of bringing in novel cultural traits from other communities. From these observations we predicted that females are more important cultural carriers than males. Here we show that the reported number of cultural traits in chimpanzee communities correlates with the number of females in chimpanzee communities, but not with the number of males. Hence, our results suggest that females are the carriers of chimpanzee culture.

Characterization of a chromosome-specific chimpanzee alpha satellite subset: Evolutionary relationship to subsets on human chromosomes

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Warburton, P.E.; Gosden, J.; Lawson, D. [Western General Hospital, Edinburgh (United Kingdom)] [and others

1996-04-15

Alpha satellite DNA is a tandemly repeated DNA family found at the centromeres of all primate chromosomes examined. The fundamental repeat units of alpha satellite DNA are diverged 169- to 172-bp monomers, often found to be organized in chromosome-specific higher-order repeat units. The chromosomes of human (Homo sapiens (HSA)), chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes (PTR) and Pan paniscus), and gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) share a remarkable similarity and synteny. It is of interest to ask if alpha satellite arrays at centromeres of homologous chromosomes between these species are closely related (evolving in an orthologous manner) or if the evolutionary processes that homogenize and spread these arrays within and between chromosomes result in nonorthologous evolution of arrays. By using PCR primers specific for human chromosome 17-specific alpha satellite DNA, we have amplified, cloned, and characterized a chromosome-specific subset from the PTR chimpanzee genome. Hybridization both on Southern blots and in situ as well as sequence analysis show that this subset is most closely related, as expected, to sequences on HSA 17. However, in situ hybridization reveals that this subset is not found on the homologous chromosome in chimpanzee (PTR 19), but instead on PTR 12, which is homologous to HSA 2p. 40 refs., 3 figs.

Locating chimpanzee nests and identifying fruiting trees with an unmanned aerial vehicle.

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van Andel, Alexander C; Wich, Serge A; Boesch, Christophe; Koh, Lian Pin; Robbins, Martha M; Kelly, Joseph; Kuehl, Hjalmar S

2015-10-01

Monitoring of animal populations is essential for conservation management. Various techniques are available to assess spatiotemporal patterns of species distribution and abundance. Nest surveys are often used for monitoring great apes. Quickly developing technologies, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to complement these ground-based surveys, especially for covering large areas rapidly. Aerial surveys have been used successfully to detect the nests of orang-utans. It is unknown if such an approach is practical for African apes, which usually build their nests at lower heights, where they might be obscured by forest canopy. In this 2-month study, UAV-derived aerial imagery was used for two distinct purposes: testing the detectability of chimpanzee nests and identifying fruiting trees used by chimpanzees in Loango National Park (Gabon). Chimpanzee nest data were collected through two approaches: we located nests on the ground and then tried to detect them in UAV photos and vice versa. Ground surveys were conducted using line transects, reconnaissance trails, and opportunistic sampling during which we detected 116 individual nests in 28 nest groups. In complementary UAV images we detected 48% of the individual nests (68% of nest groups) in open coastal forests and 8% of individual nests (33% of nest groups) in closed canopy inland forests. The key factor for nest detectability in UAV imagery was canopy openness. Data on fruiting trees were collected from five line transects. In 122 UAV images 14 species of trees (N = 433) were identified, alongside 37 tree species (N = 205) in complementary ground surveys. Relative abundance of common tree species correlated between ground and UAV surveys. We conclude that UAVs have great potential as a rapid assessment tool for detecting chimpanzee presence in forest with open canopy and assessing fruit tree availability. UAVs may have limited applicability for nest detection in closed canopy forest. �

First GIS analysis of modern stone tools used by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa.

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Benito-Calvo, Alfonso; Carvalho, Susana; Arroyo, Adrian; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; de la Torre, Ignacio

2015-01-01

Stone tool use by wild chimpanzees of West Africa offers a unique opportunity to explore the evolutionary roots of technology during human evolution. However, detailed analyses of chimpanzee stone artifacts are still lacking, thus precluding a comparison with the earliest archaeological record. This paper presents the first systematic study of stone tools used by wild chimpanzees to crack open nuts in Bossou (Guinea-Conakry), and applies pioneering analytical techniques to such artifacts. Automatic morphometric GIS classification enabled to create maps of use wear over the stone tools (anvils, hammers, and hammers/ anvils), which were blind tested with GIS spatial analysis of damage patterns identified visually. Our analysis shows that chimpanzee stone tool use wear can be systematized and specific damage patterns discerned, allowing to discriminate between active and passive pounders in lithic assemblages. In summary, our results demonstrate the heuristic potential of combined suites of GIS techniques for the analysis of battered artifacts, and have enabled creating a referential framework of analysis in which wild chimpanzee battered tools can for the first time be directly compared to the early archaeological record.

How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

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Suchak, Malini; Eppley, Timothy M.; Campbell, Matthew W.; Feldman, Rebecca A.; Quarles, Luke F.; de Waal, Frans B. M.

2016-01-01

Our species is routinely depicted as unique in its ability to achieve cooperation, whereas our closest relative, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), is often characterized as overly competitive. Human cooperation is assisted by the cost attached to competitive tendencies through enforcement mechanisms, such as punishment and partner choice. To examine if chimpanzees possess the same ability to mitigate competition, we set up a cooperative task in the presence of the entire group of 11 adults, which required two or three individuals to pull jointly to receive rewards. This open-group set-up provided ample opportunity for competition (e.g., freeloading, displacements) and aggression. Despite this unique set-up and initial competitiveness, cooperation prevailed in the end, being at least five times as common as competition. The chimpanzees performed 3,565 cooperative acts while using a variety of enforcement mechanisms to overcome competition and freeloading, as measured by (attempted) thefts of rewards. These mechanisms included direct protest by the target, third-party punishment in which dominant individuals intervened against freeloaders, and partner choice. There was a marked difference between freeloading and displacement; freeloading tended to elicit withdrawal and third-party interventions, whereas displacements were met with a higher rate of direct retaliation. Humans have shown similar responses in controlled experiments, suggesting shared mechanisms across the primates to mitigate competition for the sake of cooperation. PMID:27551075

Phylogenetic analyses of behavior support existence of culture among wild chimpanzees.

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Lycett, Stephen J; Collard, Mark; McGrew, William C

2007-11-06

Culture has long been considered to be not only unique to humans, but also responsible for making us qualitatively different from all other forms of life. In recent years, however, researchers studying chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have challenged this idea. Natural populations of chimpanzees have been found to vary greatly in their behavior. Because many of these interpopulation differences cannot be readily explained by ecological factors, it has been argued that they result from social learning and, therefore, can be regarded as cultural variations. Recent studies showing social transmission in captive chimpanzee populations suggest that this hypothesis is plausible. However, the culture hypothesis has been questioned on the grounds that the behavioral variation may be explained at a proximate level by genetic differences between subspecies. Here we use cladistic analyses of the major cross-site behavioral data set to test the hypothesis that the behavioral differences among the best-documented chimpanzee populations are genetically determined. If behavioral diversity is primarily the product of genetic differences between subspecies, then population data should show less phylogenetic structure when data from a single subspecies (P. t. schweinfurthii) are compared with data from two subspecies (P. t. verus and P. t. schweinfurthii) analyzed together. Our findings are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the observed behavioral patterns of wild chimpanzee populations can be explained primarily by genetic differences between subspecies. Instead, our results support the suggestion that the behavioral patterns are the product of social learning and, therefore, can be considered cultural.

Technical intelligence and culture: Nut cracking in humans and chimpanzees.

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Boesch, Christophe; Bombjaková, Daša; Boyette, Adam; Meier, Amelia

2017-06-01

According to the technical intelligence hypothesis, humans are superior to all other animal species in understanding and using tools. However, the vast majority of comparative studies between humans and chimpanzees, both proficient tool users, have not controlled for the effects of age, prior knowledge, past experience, rearing conditions, or differences in experimental procedures. We tested whether humans are superior to chimpanzees in selecting better tools, using them more dexteriously, achieving higher performance and gaining access to more resource as predicted under the technical intelligence hypothesis. Aka and Mbendjele hunter-gatherers in the rainforest of Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo, respectively, and Taï chimpanzees in the rainforest of Côte d'Ivoire were observed cracking hard Panda oleosa nuts with different tools, as well as the soft Coula edulis and Elaeis guinensis nuts. The nut-cracking techniques, hammer material selection and two efficiency measures were compared. As predicted, the Aka and the Mbendjele were able to exploit more species of hard nuts in the forest than chimpanzees. However, the chimpanzees were sometimes more efficient than the humans. Social roles differed between the two species, with the Aka and especially the Mbendjele exhibiting cooperation between nut-crackers whereas the chimpanzees were mainly individualistic. Observations of nut-cracking by humans and chimpanzees only partially supported the technical intelligence hypothesis as higher degrees of flexibility in tool selection seen in chimpanzees compensated for use of less efficient tool material than in humans. Nut cracking was a stronger social undertaking in humans than in chimpanzees. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How abnormal is the behaviour of captive, zoo-living chimpanzees?

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Lucy P Birkett

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Many captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes show a variety of serious behavioural abnormalities, some of which have been considered as possible signs of compromised mental health. The provision of environmental enrichments aimed at reducing the performance of abnormal behaviours is increasing the norm, with the housing of individuals in (semi-natural social groups thought to be the most successful of these. Only a few quantitative studies of abnormal behaviour have been conducted, however, particularly for the captive population held in zoological collections. Consequently, a clear picture of the level of abnormal behaviour in zoo-living chimpanzees is lacking. METHODS: We present preliminary findings from a detailed observational study of the behaviour of 40 socially-housed zoo-living chimpanzees from six collections in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. We determined the prevalence, diversity, frequency, and duration of abnormal behaviour from 1200 hours of continuous behavioural data collected by focal animal sampling. RESULTS, CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCE: Our overall finding was that abnormal behaviour was present in all sampled individuals across six independent groups of zoo-living chimpanzees, despite the differences between these groups in size, composition, housing, etc. We found substantial variation between individuals in the frequency and duration of abnormal behaviour, but all individuals engaged in at least some abnormal behaviour and variation across individuals could not be explained by sex, age, rearing history or background (defined as prior housing conditions. Our data support a conclusion that, while most behaviour of zoo-living chimpanzees is 'normal' in that it is typical of their wild counterparts, abnormal behaviour is endemic in this population despite enrichment efforts. We suggest there is an urgent need to understand how the chimpanzee mind copes with captivity, an issue with both

Frequency of removal movements during social versus self-grooming among wild chimpanzees.

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Zamma, Koichiro

2011-10-01

Grooming was observed in 11 wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Mahale, Tanzania, and the number of removal and stroke movements and grooming duration were recorded. Removal movements were more frequent during social grooming than during self-grooming. Chimpanzees used one or both hands for grooming, and grooming using both hands was more efficient for removing small objects. Due to physical constraints, self-grooming of the arms was almost always done using only one hand. The removal movement frequency during arm grooming was lower when self-grooming than when grooming another. They were more likely to use both hands during grooming another than during self-grooming, and fewer physical constraints during social grooming enabled a higher level of hygienic grooming.

Learning the rules of the rock-paper-scissors game: chimpanzees versus children.

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Gao, Jie; Su, Yanjie; Tomonaga, Masaki; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2018-01-01

The present study aimed to investigate whether chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) could learn a transverse pattern by being trained in the rules of the rock-paper-scissors game in which "paper" beats "rock," "rock" beats "scissors," and "scissors" beats "paper." Additionally, this study compared the learning processes between chimpanzees and children. Seven chimpanzees were tested using a computer-controlled task. They were trained to choose the stronger of two options according to the game rules. The chimpanzees first engaged in the paper-rock sessions until they reached the learning criterion. Subsequently, they engaged in the rock-scissors and scissors-paper sessions, before progressing to sessions with all three pairs mixed. Five of the seven chimpanzees completed training after a mean of 307 sessions, which indicates that they learned the circular pattern. The chimpanzees required more scissors-paper sessions (14.29 ± 6.89), the third learnt pair, than paper-rock (1.71 ± 0.18) and rock-scissors (3.14 ± 0.70) sessions, suggesting they had difficulty finalizing the circularity. The chimpanzees then received generalization tests using new stimuli, which they learned quickly. A similar procedure was performed with children (35-71 months, n = 38) who needed the same number of trials for all three pairs during single-paired sessions. Their accuracy during the mixed-pair sessions improved with age and was better than chance from 50 months of age, which indicates that the ability to solve the transverse patterning problem might develop at around 4 years of age. The present findings show that chimpanzees were able to learn the task but had difficulties with circularity, whereas children learned the task more easily and developed the relevant ability at approximately 4 years of age. Furthermore, the chimpanzees' performance during the mixed-pair sessions was similar to that of 4-year-old children during the corresponding stage of training.

A legacy of low-impact logging does not elevate prevalence of potentially pathogenic protozoa in free-ranging gorillas and chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo: logging and parasitism in African apes.

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Gillespie, Thomas R; Morgan, David; Deutsch, J Charlie; Kuhlenschmidt, Mark S; Salzer, Johanna S; Cameron, Kenneth; Reed, Trish; Sanz, Crickette

2009-12-01

Many studies have examined the long-term effects of selective logging on the abundance and diversity of free-ranging primates. Logging is known to reduce the abundance of some primate species through associated hunting and the loss of food trees for frugivores; however, the potential role of pathogens in such primate population declines is largely unexplored. Selective logging results in a suite of alterations in host ecology and forest structure that may alter pathogen dynamics in resident wildlife populations. In addition, environmental pollution with human fecal material may present a risk for wildlife infections with zoonotic protozoa, such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia. To better understand this interplay, we compared patterns of infection with these potentially pathogenic protozoa in sympatric western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in the undisturbed Goualougo Triangle of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park and the adjacent previously logged Kabo Concession in northern Republic of Congo. No Cryptosporidium infections were detected in any of the apes examined and prevalence of infection with Giardia was low (3.73% overall) and did not differ between logged and undisturbed forest for chimpanzees or gorillas. These results provide a baseline for prevalence of these protozoa in forest-dwelling African apes and suggest that low-intensity logging may not result in long-term elevated prevalence of potentially pathogenic protozoa.

First GIS analysis of modern stone tools used by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alfonso Benito-Calvo

Full Text Available Stone tool use by wild chimpanzees of West Africa offers a unique opportunity to explore the evolutionary roots of technology during human evolution. However, detailed analyses of chimpanzee stone artifacts are still lacking, thus precluding a comparison with the earliest archaeological record. This paper presents the first systematic study of stone tools used by wild chimpanzees to crack open nuts in Bossou (Guinea-Conakry, and applies pioneering analytical techniques to such artifacts. Automatic morphometric GIS classification enabled to create maps of use wear over the stone tools (anvils, hammers, and hammers/ anvils, which were blind tested with GIS spatial analysis of damage patterns identified visually. Our analysis shows that chimpanzee stone tool use wear can be systematized and specific damage patterns discerned, allowing to discriminate between active and passive pounders in lithic assemblages. In summary, our results demonstrate the heuristic potential of combined suites of GIS techniques for the analysis of battered artifacts, and have enabled creating a referential framework of analysis in which wild chimpanzee battered tools can for the first time be directly compared to the early archaeological record.

Factors affecting initial training success of blood glucose testing in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Reamer, Lisa A; Haller, Rachel L; Thiele, Erica J

2014-01-01

Type 2 diabetes can be a problem for captive chimpanzees. Accurate blood glucose (BG) readings are necessary to monitor and treat this disease. Thus, obtaining voluntary samples from primates through positive reinforcement training (PRT) is critical. The current study assessed the voluntary...... participation of 123 chimpanzees in BG sampling and investigated factors that may contribute to individual success. All subjects participate in regular PRT sessions as part of a comprehensive behavioral management program. Basic steps involved in obtaining BG values include: voluntarily presenting a finger...

The association between imitation recognition and socio-communicative competencies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Pope, Sarah M; Russell, Jamie L; Hopkins, William D

2015-01-01

Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found that males were more responsive than females to being imitated and engaged in significantly greater behavior repetitions and testing sequences. We also found that subjects who consistently recognized being imitated performed better on social but not physical cognitive tasks, as measured by the Primate Cognitive Test Battery. These findings suggest that the neural constructs underlying imitation recognition are likely associated with or among those underlying more general socio-communicative abilities in chimpanzees. Implications regarding how imitation recognition may facilitate other social cognitive processes, such as mirror self-recognition, are discussed.

Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees.

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Warneken, Felix; Rosati, Alexandra G

2015-06-22

The transition to a cooked diet represents an important shift in human ecology and evolution. Cooking requires a set of sophisticated cognitive abilities, including causal reasoning, self-control and anticipatory planning. Do humans uniquely possess the cognitive capacities needed to cook food? We address whether one of humans' closest relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), possess the domain-general cognitive skills needed to cook. Across nine studies, we show that chimpanzees: (i) prefer cooked foods; (ii) comprehend the transformation of raw food that occurs when cooking, and generalize this causal understanding to new contexts; (iii) will pay temporal costs to acquire cooked foods; (iv) are willing to actively give up possession of raw foods in order to transform them; and (v) can transport raw food as well as save their raw food in anticipation of future opportunities to cook. Together, our results indicate that several of the fundamental psychological abilities necessary to engage in cooking may have been shared with the last common ancestor of apes and humans, predating the control of fire. © 2015 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

The importance of witnessed agency in chimpanzee social learning of tool use.

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Hopper, Lydia M; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; Whiten, Andrew

2015-03-01

Social learning refers to individuals learning from others, including information gained through indirect social influences, such as the results of others' actions and changes in the physical environment. One method to determine the relative influence of these varieties of information is the 'ghost display', in which no model is involved, but subjects can watch the results that a model would produce. Previous research has shown mixed success by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) learning from ghost displays, with some studies suggesting learning only in relatively simple tasks. To explore whether the failure of chimpanzees to learn from a ghost display may be due to neophobia when tested singly or a requirement for more detailed information for complex tasks, we presented ghost displays of a tool-use task to chimpanzees in their home social groups. Previous tests have revealed that chimpanzees are unable to easily solve this tool-use task asocially, or learn from ghost displays when tested singly, but can learn after observing conspecifics in a group setting. In the present study, despite being tested in a group situation, chimpanzees still showed no success in solving the task via trial-and-error learning, in a baseline condition, nor in learning the task from the ghost display. Simply being in the presence of their group mates and being shown the affordances of the task was not sufficient to encourage learning. Following this, in an escalating series of tests, we examined the chimpanzees' ability to learn from a demonstration by models with agency: (1) a human; (2) video footage of a chimpanzee; (3) a live chimpanzee model. In the first two of these 'social' conditions, subjects showed limited success. By the end of the final open diffusion phase, which was run to determine whether this new behavior would be transmitted among the group after seeing a successful chimpanzee use the task, 83% of chimpanzees were now successful. This confirmed a marked overall effect of

Sex differences in tool use acquisition in bonobos (Pan paniscus).

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Boose, Klaree J; White, Frances J; Meinelt, Audra

2013-09-01

All the great ape species are known tool users in both the wild and captivity, although there is great variation in ability and behavioral repertoire. Differences in tool use acquisition between chimpanzees and gorillas have been attributed to differing levels of social tolerance as a result of differences in social structure. Chimpanzees also show sex differences in acquisition and both chimpanzees and bonobos demonstrate a female bias in tool use behaviors. Studies of acquisition are limited in the wild and between species comparisons are complicated in captivity by contexts that often do not reflect natural conditions. Here we investigated tool use acquisition in a captive group of naïve bonobos by simulating naturalistic conditions. We constructed an artificial termite mound fashioned after those that occur in the wild and tested individuals within a social group context. We found sex differences in latencies to attempt and to succeed where females attempted to fish, were successful more quickly, and fished more frequently than males. We compared our results to those reported for chimpanzees and gorillas. Males across all three species did not differ in latency to attempt or to succeed. In contrast, bonobo and chimpanzee females succeeded more quickly than did female gorillas. Female bonobos and female chimpanzees did not differ in either latency to attempt or to succeed. We tested the social tolerance hypothesis by investigating the relationship between tool behaviors and number of neighbors present. We also compared these results to those reported for chimpanzees and gorillas and found that bonobos had the fewest numbers of neighbors present. The results of this study do not support the association between number of neighbors and tool behavior reported for chimpanzees. However, bonobos demonstrated a similar sex difference in tool use acquisition, supporting the hypothesis of a female bias in tool use in Pan. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Selective insectivory at Toro-Semliki, Uganda: comparative analyses suggest no 'savanna' chimpanzee pattern.

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Webster, Timothy H; McGrew, William C; Marchant, Linda F; Payne, Charlotte L R; Hunt, Kevin D

2014-06-01

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) insectivory across Africa is ubiquitous. Insects provide a significant nutritional payoff and may be important for chimpanzees in dry, open habitats with narrow diets. We tested this hypothesis at Semliki, Uganda, a long-term dry study site. We evaluated prospects for insectivory by measuring insect abundance along de novo transects and trails, monitoring social insect colonies, and surveying available raw materials for elementary technology. We determined the frequency and nature of insectivory through behavioral observation and fecal analysis. We then compared our results with those from 15 other long-term chimpanzee study sites using a cluster analysis. We found that Semliki chimpanzees are one of the most insectivorous populations studied to date in terms of frequency of consumption, but they are very selective in their insectivory, regularly consuming only weaver ants (Oecophylla longinoda) and honey and bees from hives of Apis mellifera. This selectivity obtains despite having a full range of typical prey species available in harvestable quantities. We suggest that Semliki chimpanzees may face ecological time constraints and therefore bias their predation toward prey taxa that can be quickly consumed. Geographical proximity correlated with the results of the cluster analysis, while rainfall, a relatively gross measure of environment, did not. Because broad taxonomic groups of insects were used in analyses, prey availability was unlikely to have a strong effect on this pattern. Instead, we suggest that transmission of cultural knowledge may play a role in determining chimpanzee prey selection across Africa. Further study is needed to test these hypotheses. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Poor receptive joint attention skills are associated with atypical gray matter asymmetry in the posterior superior temporal gyrus of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hopkins, William D; Misiura, Maria; Reamer, Lisa A

2014-01-01

and behavioral data on receptive joint attention (RJA) was obtained from a sample of 191 chimpanzees. We found that chimpanzees that performed poorly on the RJA task had less GM in the right compared to left hemisphere in the posterior but not anterior superior temporal gyrus. We further found that middle......-aged and elderly chimpanzee performed more poorly on the RJA task and had significantly less GM than young-adult and sub-adult chimpanzees. The results are consistent with previous studies implicating the posterior temporal gyrus in the processing of socially relevant information....

Can chimpanzee infants (Pan troglodytes) form categorical representations in the same manner as human infants (Homo sapiens)?

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Murai, Chizuko; Kosugi, Daisuke; Tomonaga, Masaki; Tanaka, Masayuki; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Itakura, Shoji

2005-05-01

We directly compared chimpanzee infants and human infants for categorical representations of three global-like categories (mammals, furniture and vehicles), using the familiarization-novelty preference technique. Neither species received any training during the experiments. We used the time that participants spent looking at the stimulus object while touching it as a measure. During the familiarization phase, participants were presented with four familiarization objects from one of three categories (e.g. mammals). Then, they were tested with a pair of novel objects, one was a familiar-category object and another was a novel-category object (e.g. vehicle) in the test phase. The chimpanzee infants did not show significant habituation, whereas human infants did. However, most important, both species showed significant novelty-preference in the test phase. This indicates that not only human infants, but also chimpanzee infants formed categorical representations of a global-like level. Implications for the shared origins and species-specificity of categorization abilities, and the cognitive operations underlying categorization, are discussed.

A chimpanzee recognizes synthetic speech with significantly reduced acoustic cues to phonetic content.

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Heimbauer, Lisa A; Beran, Michael J; Owren, Michael J

2011-07-26

A long-standing debate concerns whether humans are specialized for speech perception, which some researchers argue is demonstrated by the ability to understand synthetic speech with significantly reduced acoustic cues to phonetic content. We tested a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) that recognizes 128 spoken words, asking whether she could understand such speech. Three experiments presented 48 individual words, with the animal selecting a corresponding visuographic symbol from among four alternatives. Experiment 1 tested spectrally reduced, noise-vocoded (NV) synthesis, originally developed to simulate input received by human cochlear-implant users. Experiment 2 tested "impossibly unspeechlike" sine-wave (SW) synthesis, which reduces speech to just three moving tones. Although receiving only intermittent and noncontingent reward, the chimpanzee performed well above chance level, including when hearing synthetic versions for the first time. Recognition of SW words was least accurate but improved in experiment 3 when natural words in the same session were rewarded. The chimpanzee was more accurate with NV than SW versions, as were 32 human participants hearing these items. The chimpanzee's ability to spontaneously recognize acoustically reduced synthetic words suggests that experience rather than specialization is critical for speech-perception capabilities that some have suggested are uniquely human. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dental calculus evidence of Taï Forest Chimpanzee plant consumption and life history transitions

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Power, Robert C.; Salazar-García, Domingo C.; Wittig, Roman M.; Freiberg, Martin; Henry, Amanda G.

2015-10-01

Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is a source of multiple types of data on life history. Recent research has targeted the plant microremains preserved in this mineralised deposit as a source of dietary and health information for recent and past populations. However, it is unclear to what extent we can interpret behaviour from microremains. Few studies to date have directly compared the microremain record from dental calculus to dietary records, and none with long-term observation dietary records, thus limiting how we can interpret diet, food acquisition and behaviour. Here we present a high-resolution analysis of calculus microremains from wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire. We test microremain assemblages against more than two decades of field behavioural observations to establish the ability of calculus to capture the composition of diet. Our results show that some microremain classes accumulate as long-lived dietary markers. Phytolith abundance in calculus can reflect the proportions of plants in the diet, yet this pattern is not true for starches. We also report microremains can record information about other dietary behaviours, such as the age of weaning and learned food processing techniques like nut-cracking.

Comparing children's Homo sapiens and chimpanzees' Pan troglodytes quantity judgments of sequentially presented sets of items

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Michael J. BERAN, Julie S. JOHNSON-PYNN, Christopher READY

2011-08-01

Full Text Available We presented a quantity judgment task that involved comparing two sequentially presented sets of items to preschoolers and chimpanzees using nearly identical procedures that excluded verbal instructions to children. Trial difficulty in this task reflected the ratio difference between sets of discrete items where larger ratios (e.g., 0.80 as from comparing 4 to 5 were more difficult than smaller ones (e.g., 0.50 as from comparing 4 to 8. Children also completed verbal-based tasks probing the relationship between counting proficiency and performance on the quantity judgment task of sequentially presented identical sized items. Both species’ performance was best when ratios between comparison sets were small regardless of set size in all types of tasks. Generally, chimpanzees and older children performed better than younger children except at larger ratios. Children’s counting proficiency was not related to success in choosing the larger of two quantities of identical-sized items. These results indicate that chimpanzees and children share an approximate number sense that is reflected through analog magnitude estimation when comparing quantities [Current Zoology 57 (4: 419–428, 2011].

Y-Chromosome variation in hominids: intraspecific variation is limited to the polygamous chimpanzee.

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Gabriele Greve

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: We have previously demonstrated that the Y-specific ampliconic fertility genes DAZ (deleted in azoospermia and CDY (chromodomain protein Y varied with respect to copy number and position among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes. In comparison, seven Y-chromosomal lineages of the bonobo (Pan paniscus, the chimpanzee's closest living relative, showed no variation. We extend our earlier comparative investigation to include an analysis of the intraspecific variation of these genes in gorillas (Gorilla gorilla and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus, and examine the resulting patterns in the light of the species' markedly different social and mating behaviors. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis (FISH of DAZ and CDY in 12 Y-chromosomal lineages of western lowland gorilla (G. gorilla gorilla and a single lineage of the eastern lowland gorilla (G. beringei graueri showed no variation among lineages. Similar findings were noted for the 10 Y-chromosomal lineages examined in the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus, and 11 Y-chromosomal lineages of the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii. We validated the contrasting DAZ and CDY patterns using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR in chimpanzee and bonobo. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: High intraspecific variation in copy number and position of the DAZ and CDY genes is seen only in the chimpanzee. We hypothesize that this is best explained by sperm competition that results in the variant DAZ and CDY haplotypes detected in this species. In contrast, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans-species that are not subject to sperm competition-showed no intraspecific variation in DAZ and CDY suggesting that monoandry in gorillas, and preferential female mate choice in bonobos and orangutans, probably permitted the fixation of a single Y variant in each taxon. These data support the notion that the evolutionary history of a primate Y chromosome is not simply encrypted in its DNA

Distamycin A/DAPI bands and the effects of 5-azacytidine on the chromosomes of the chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes.

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Schmid, M; Haaf, T

1984-01-01

The chromosomes of the chimpanzee were stained with distamycin A/DAPI, which labels specific C-bands. Bright distamycin A/DAPI fluorescence was found in the heterochromatic regions of chromosomes 6, 11, 14 to 16, 18 to 20, and 23 and the Y. Lymphocyte cultures from chimpanzees were treated with low doses of 5-azacytidine during the last hours of culture. This cytosine analog induces highly distinct undercondensations in 28 heterochromatic regions of 19 chromosomes. These 5-azacytidine-sensitive regions are predominantly located in the terminal C-bands of the chromosomes. In vitro treatment with 5-azacytidine also preserves into the metaphase stage somatic pairings between the 5-azacytidine-sensitive heterochromatic regions in interphase nuclei. The homologies and differences regarding the chromosomal localization of distamycin A/DAPI-bright C-bands, 5-azacytidine-sensitive heterochromatin, 5-methylcytosine-rich DNA sequences, and satellite DNAs in the chimpanzee and man are discussed.

Social network and dominance hierarchy analyses at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

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Jake A Funkhouser

Full Text Available Different aspects of sociality bear considerable weight on the individual- and group-level welfare of captive nonhuman primates. Social Network Analysis (SNA is a useful tool for gaining a holistic understanding of the dynamic social relationships of captive primate groups. Gaining a greater understanding of captive chimpanzees through investigations of centrality, preferred and avoided relationships, dominance hierarchy, and social network diagrams can be useful in advising current management practices in sanctuaries and other captive settings. In this study, we investigated the dyadic social relationships, group-level social networks, and dominance hierarchy of seven chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. We used focal-animal and instantaneous scan sampling to collect 106.75 total hours of associative, affiliative, and agonistic data from June to September 2016. We analyzed our data using SOCPROG to derive dominance hierarchies and network statistics, and we diagrammed the group's social networks in NetDraw. Three individuals were most central in the grooming network, while two others had little connection. Through agonistic networks, we found that group members reciprocally exhibited agonism, and the group's dominance hierarchy was statistically non-linear. One chimpanzee emerged as the most dominant through agonism but was least connected to other group members across affiliative networks. Our results indicate that the conventional methods used to calculate individuals' dominance rank may be inadequate to wholly depict a group's social relationships in captive sanctuary populations. Our results have an applied component that can aid sanctuary staff in a variety of ways to best ensure the improvement of group welfare.

Social network and dominance hierarchy analyses at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

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Funkhouser, Jake A; Mayhew, Jessica A; Mulcahy, John B

2018-01-01

Different aspects of sociality bear considerable weight on the individual- and group-level welfare of captive nonhuman primates. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a useful tool for gaining a holistic understanding of the dynamic social relationships of captive primate groups. Gaining a greater understanding of captive chimpanzees through investigations of centrality, preferred and avoided relationships, dominance hierarchy, and social network diagrams can be useful in advising current management practices in sanctuaries and other captive settings. In this study, we investigated the dyadic social relationships, group-level social networks, and dominance hierarchy of seven chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. We used focal-animal and instantaneous scan sampling to collect 106.75 total hours of associative, affiliative, and agonistic data from June to September 2016. We analyzed our data using SOCPROG to derive dominance hierarchies and network statistics, and we diagrammed the group's social networks in NetDraw. Three individuals were most central in the grooming network, while two others had little connection. Through agonistic networks, we found that group members reciprocally exhibited agonism, and the group's dominance hierarchy was statistically non-linear. One chimpanzee emerged as the most dominant through agonism but was least connected to other group members across affiliative networks. Our results indicate that the conventional methods used to calculate individuals' dominance rank may be inadequate to wholly depict a group's social relationships in captive sanctuary populations. Our results have an applied component that can aid sanctuary staff in a variety of ways to best ensure the improvement of group welfare.

Foundations of cumulative culture in apes: improved foraging efficiency through relinquishing and combining witnessed behaviours in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Davis, Sarah J; Vale, Gillian L; Schapiro, Steven J; Lambeth, Susan P; Whiten, Andrew

2016-10-24

A vital prerequisite for cumulative culture, a phenomenon often asserted to be unique to humans, is the ability to modify behaviour and flexibly switch to more productive or efficient alternatives. Here, we first established an inefficient solution to a foraging task in five captive chimpanzee groups (N = 19). Three groups subsequently witnessed a conspecific using an alternative, more efficient, solution. When participants could successfully forage with their established behaviours, most individuals did not switch to this more efficient technique; however, when their foraging method became substantially less efficient, nine chimpanzees with socially-acquired information (four of whom witnessed additional human demonstrations) relinquished their old behaviour in favour of the more efficient one. Only a single chimpanzee in control groups, who had not witnessed a knowledgeable model, discovered this. Individuals who switched were later able to combine components of their two learned techniques to produce a more efficient solution than their extensively used, original foraging method. These results suggest that, although chimpanzees show a considerable degree of conservatism, they also have an ability to combine independent behaviours to produce efficient compound action sequences; one of the foundational abilities (or candidate mechanisms) for human cumulative culture.

Chimpanzees trust conspecifics to engage in low-cost reciprocity.

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Engelmann, Jan M; Herrmann, Esther; Tomasello, Michael

2015-02-22

Many of humans' most important social interactions rely on trust, including most notably among strangers. But little is known about the evolutionary roots of human trust. We presented chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with a modified version of the human trust game--trust in reciprocity--in which subjects could opt either to obtain a small but safe reward on their own or else to send a larger reward to a partner and trust her to reciprocate a part of the reward that she could not access herself. In a series of three studies, we found strong evidence that in interacting with a conspecific, chimpanzees show spontaneous trust in a novel context; flexibly adjust their level of trust to the trustworthiness of their partner and develop patterns of trusting reciprocity over time. At least in some contexts then, trust in reciprocity is not unique to humans, but rather has its evolutionary roots in the social interactions of humans' closest primate relatives. © 2015 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

The nature of culture: technological variation in chimpanzee predation on army ants revisited.

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Schöning, Caspar; Humle, Tatyana; Möbius, Yasmin; McGrew, W C

2008-07-01

Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) predation on army ants (Dorylus, subgenus Anomma) is an impressive example of skillful use of elementary technology, and it has been suggested to reflect cultural differences among chimpanzee communities. Alternatively, the observed geographic diversity in army-ant-eating may represent local behavioral responses of the chimpanzees to the anti-predator traits of the army ant species present at the different sites. We examined assemblages of available prey species, their behavior and morphology, consumption by chimpanzees, techniques employed, and tool lengths at 14 sites in eastern, central, and western Africa. Where army ants are eaten, tool length and concomitant technique are a function of prey type. Epigaeically foraging species with aggressive workers that inflict painful bites are harvested with longer tools and usually by the "pull-through" technique; species foraging in leaf-litter with less aggressive workers that inflict less painful bites are harvested with short tools and by the "direct-mouthing" technique. However, prey species characteristics do not explain several differences in army-ant-eating between Bossou (Guinea) and Taï (Ivory Coast), where the same suite of prey species is available and is consumed. Moreover, the absence of army-ant-eating at five sites cannot be explained by the identity of available prey species, as all the species found at these sites are eaten elsewhere. We conclude that some of the observed variation in the predator-prey relationship of chimpanzees and army ants reflects environmental influences driven by the prey, while other variation is not linked to prey characteristics and may be solely sociocultural.

Poor Receptive Joint Attention Skills Are Associated with Atypical Grey Matter Asymmetry in the Posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus of Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes

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William eHopkins

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Clinical and experimental data have implicated the posterior superior temporal gyrus as an important cortical region in the processing of socially relevant stimuli such as gaze following, eye direction, and head orientation. Gaze following and responding to different socio-communicative signals is an important and highly adaptive skill in primates, including humans. Here, we examined whether individual differences in responding to socio-communicative cues was associated with variation in either grey matter volume and asymmetry in a sample of chimpanzees. MRI scans and behavioral data on receptive joint attention (RJA was obtained from a sample of 191 chimpanzees. We found that chimpanzees that performed poorly on the RJA task had more rightward asymmetries in the posterior but not anterior superior temporal gyrus. We further found that middle-aged and elderly chimpanzee performed more poorly on the RJA task and had significantly less grey matter than young-adult and sub-adult chimpanzees. The results are consistent with previous studies implicating the posterior temporal gyrus in the processing of socially relevant information.

Poor receptive joint attention skills are associated with atypical gray matter asymmetry in the posterior superior temporal gyrus of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Hopkins, William D; Misiura, Maria; Reamer, Lisa A; Schaeffer, Jennifer A; Mareno, Mary C; Schapiro, Steven J

2014-01-01

Clinical and experimental data have implicated the posterior superior temporal gyrus as an important cortical region in the processing of socially relevant stimuli such as gaze following, eye direction, and head orientation. Gaze following and responding to different socio-communicative signals is an important and highly adaptive skill in primates, including humans. Here, we examined whether individual differences in responding to socio-communicative cues was associated with variation in either gray matter (GM) volume and asymmetry in a sample of chimpanzees. Magnetic resonance image scans and behavioral data on receptive joint attention (RJA) was obtained from a sample of 191 chimpanzees. We found that chimpanzees that performed poorly on the RJA task had less GM in the right compared to left hemisphere in the posterior but not anterior superior temporal gyrus. We further found that middle-aged and elderly chimpanzee performed more poorly on the RJA task and had significantly less GM than young-adult and sub-adult chimpanzees. The results are consistent with previous studies implicating the posterior temporal gyrus in the processing of socially relevant information.

Neural correlates of face and object perception in an awake chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes examined by scalp-surface event-related potentials.

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Hirokata Fukushima

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: The neural system of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, is a topic of increasing research interest. However, electrophysiological examinations of neural activity during visual processing in awake chimpanzees are currently lacking. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In the present report, skin-surface event-related brain potentials (ERPs were measured while a fully awake chimpanzee observed photographs of faces and objects in two experiments. In Experiment 1, human faces and stimuli composed of scrambled face images were displayed. In Experiment 2, three types of pictures (faces, flowers, and cars were presented. The waveforms evoked by face stimuli were distinguished from other stimulus types, as reflected by an enhanced early positivity appearing before 200 ms post stimulus, and an enhanced late negativity after 200 ms, around posterior and occipito-temporal sites. Face-sensitive activity was clearly observed in both experiments. However, in contrast to the robustly observed face-evoked N170 component in humans, we found that faces did not elicit a peak in the latency range of 150-200 ms in either experiment. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Although this pilot study examined a single subject and requires further examination, the observed scalp voltage patterns suggest that selective processing of faces in the chimpanzee brain can be detected by recording surface ERPs. In addition, this non-invasive method for examining an awake chimpanzee can be used to extend our knowledge of the characteristics of visual cognition in other primate species.

Comparative social grooming networks in captive chimpanzees and bonobos.

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Rodrigues, Michelle A; Boeving, Emily R

2018-06-21

Despite similar dispersal patterns, models of Pan sociality emphasize sex differences in social bonding between the two species. Such disparities are attributed to hypothesized differences in environmental selective pressures that structure association patterns. However, recent research documents greater within-species variation in social bonds in both species. Here, we examine grooming networks in captive chimpanzees at the North Carolina Zoo, and captive bonobos at the Columbus Zoo. We hypothesized that male-female grooming relationships would be the strongest in both species, but that males and females of both species would not significantly differ between centrality, strength, or clustering. Via Mantel tests, we found that neither bonobos (t = - 0.070, r = - 0.009, two-tailed p = 0.942) nor chimpanzees (t = - 0.495, r = - 0.0939, two-tailed p = 0.6205) had significant differences in grooming between or within sexes. Neither species had significant sex differences in centrality, strength, or clustering. To account for idiosyncratic factors affecting grooming distribution, we examined the effect of origin, kinship, and group tenure on social network position. We found that wild-born bonobos exhibited greater eigenvector centrality (t = - 2.592, df = 9, p = 0.29) and strength (t = - 2.401; df = 9, p = 0.040), and group tenure was significantly correlated with strength (r = 0.608; N = 11, p - 0 = 0.47). None of these factors varied with social network position in chimpanzees. Our findings suggest that in captive settings, idiosyncratic factors related to individual history play a greater role in structuring social networks. Such variation may point to the behavioral flexibility inherent in fission-fusion networks, and mirror between-site variation found in wild chimpanzees. However, some idiosyncratic factors shaping captive networks may be an artifact of captivity.

Pan-tropical monitoring of deforestation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Achard, F; DeFries, R; Eva, H; Hansen, M; Mayaux, P; Stibig, H-J

2007-01-01

This paper reviews the technical capabilities for monitoring deforestation from a pan-tropical perspective in response to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, which is studying the technical issues surrounding the ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries. The successful implementation of such policies requires effective forest monitoring systems that are reproducible, provide consistent results, meet standards for mapping accuracy, and can be implemented from national to pan-tropical levels. Remotely sensed data, supported by ground observations, are crucial to such efforts. Recent developments in global to regional monitoring of forests can contribute to reducing the uncertainties in estimates of emissions from deforestation. Monitoring systems at national levels in developing countries can also benefit from pan-tropical and regional observations, mainly by identifying hot spots of change and prioritizing areas for monitoring at finer spatial scales. A pan-tropical perspective is also required to ensure consistency between different national monitoring systems. Data sources already exist to determine baseline periods in the 1990s as historical reference points. Key requirements for implementing such monitoring programs, both at pan-tropical and at national scales, are international commitment of resources to increase capacity, coordination of observations to ensure pan-tropical coverage, access to free or low-cost data, and standardized, consensus protocols for data interpretation and analysis

The relationship between event-based prospective memory and ongoing task performance in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes.

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Theodore A Evans

Full Text Available Prospective memory is remembering to do something at a future time. A growing body of research supports that prospective memory may exist in nonhuman animals, but the methods used to test nonhuman prospective memory differ from those used with humans. The current work tests prospective memory in chimpanzees using a method that closely approximates a typical human paradigm. In these experiments, the prospective memory cue was embedded within an ongoing task. Tokens representing food items could be used in one of two ways: in a matching task with pictures of items (the ongoing task or to request a food item hidden in a different location at the beginning of the trial. Chimpanzees had to disengage from the ongoing task in order to use the appropriate token to obtain a higher preference food item. In Experiment 1, chimpanzees effectively matched tokens to pictures, when appropriate, and disengaged from the ongoing task when the token matched the hidden item. In Experiment 2, performance did not differ when the target item was either hidden or visible. This suggested no effect of cognitive load on either the prospective memory task or the ongoing task, but performance was near ceiling, which may have contributed to this outcome. In Experiment 3, we created a more challenging version of the task. More errors on the matching task occurred before the prospective memory had been carried out, and this difference seemed to be limited to the hidden condition. This finding parallels results from human studies and suggests that working memory load and prospective memory may have a similar relationship in nonhuman primates.

Ingroup-outgroup bias in contagious yawning by chimpanzees supports link to empathy.

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Matthew W Campbell

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Humans favor others seen as similar to themselves (ingroup over people seen as different (outgroup, even without explicitly stated bias. Ingroup-outgroup bias extends to involuntary responses, such as empathy for pain. However, empathy biases have not been tested in our close primate relatives. Contagious yawning has been theoretically and empirically linked to empathy. If empathy underlies contagious yawning, we predict that subjects should show an ingroup-outgroup bias by yawning more in response to watching ingroup members yawn than outgroup. Twenty-three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes from two separate groups watched videos of familiar and unfamiliar individuals yawning or at rest (control. The chimpanzees yawned more when watching the familiar yawns than the familiar control or the unfamiliar yawns, demonstrating an ingroup-outgroup bias in contagious yawning. These results provide further empirical support that contagious yawning is a measure of empathy, which may be useful for evolutionary biology and mental health.

Captive chimpanzee foraging in a social setting: a test of problem solving, flexibility, and spatial discounting

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Kurtycz, Laura M.; Ross, Stephen R.; Bonnie, Kristin E.

2015-01-01

In the wild, primates are selective over the routes that they take when foraging and seek out preferred or ephemeral food. Given this, we tested how a group of captive chimpanzees weighed the relative benefits and costs of foraging for food in their environment when a less-preferred food could be obtained with less effort than a more-preferred food. In this study, a social group of six zoo-housed chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) could collect PVC tokens and exchange them with researchers for food rewards at one of two locations. Food preference tests had revealed that, for these chimpanzees, grapes were a highly-preferred food while carrot pieces were a less-preferred food. The chimpanzees were tested in three phases, each comprised of 30 thirty-minute sessions. In phases 1 and 3, if the chimpanzees exchanged a token at the location they collected them they received a carrot piece (no travel) or they could travel ≥10 m to exchange tokens for grapes at a second location. In phase 2, the chimpanzees had to travel for both rewards (≥10 m for carrot pieces, ≥15 m for grapes). The chimpanzees learned how to exchange tokens for food rewards, but there was individual variation in the time it took for them to make their first exchange and to discover the different exchange locations. Once all the chimpanzees were proficient at exchanging tokens, they exchanged more tokens for grapes (phase 3). However, when travel was required for both rewards (phase 2), the chimpanzees were less likely to work for either reward. Aside from the alpha male, all chimpanzees exchanged tokens for both reward types, demonstrating their ability to explore the available options. Contrary to our predictions, low-ranked individuals made more exchanges than high-ranked individuals, most likely because, in this protocol, chimpanzees could not monopolize the tokens or access to exchange locations. Although the chimpanzees showed a preference for exchanging tokens for their more-preferred food, they

Gastrointestinal Parasites of Savanna Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Ugalla, Tanzania

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Kalousová, B.; Piel, A. K.; Pomajbíková, Kateřina; Modrý, David; Stewart, F.A.; Petrželková, Klára Judita

2014-01-01

Roč. 35, č. 2 (2014), s. 463-475 ISSN 0164-0291 Institutional support: RVO:60077344 Keywords : hominoid * Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii * gastrointestinal parasites * savanna * Spirurids * transmission * Ugalla * Tanzania Subject RIV: GJ - Animal Vermins ; Diseases, Veterinary Medicine Impact factor: 1.993, year: 2014

Molecular ecology and natural history of simian foamy virus infection in wild-living chimpanzees.

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Weimin Liu

2008-07-01

Full Text Available Identifying microbial pathogens with zoonotic potential in wild-living primates can be important to human health, as evidenced by human immunodeficiency viruses types 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2 and Ebola virus. Simian foamy viruses (SFVs are ancient retroviruses that infect Old and New World monkeys and apes. Although not known to cause disease, these viruses are of public health interest because they have the potential to infect humans and thus provide a more general indication of zoonotic exposure risks. Surprisingly, no information exists concerning the prevalence, geographic distribution, and genetic diversity of SFVs in wild-living monkeys and apes. Here, we report the first comprehensive survey of SFVcpz infection in free-ranging chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes using newly developed, fecal-based assays. Chimpanzee fecal samples (n = 724 were collected at 25 field sites throughout equatorial Africa and tested for SFVcpz-specific antibodies (n = 706 or viral nucleic acids (n = 392. SFVcpz infection was documented at all field sites, with prevalence rates ranging from 44% to 100%. In two habituated communities, adult chimpanzees had significantly higher SFVcpz infection rates than infants and juveniles, indicating predominantly horizontal rather than vertical transmission routes. Some chimpanzees were co-infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVcpz; however, there was no evidence that SFVcpz and SIVcpz were epidemiologically linked. SFVcpz nucleic acids were recovered from 177 fecal samples, all of which contained SFVcpz RNA and not DNA. Phylogenetic analysis of partial gag (616 bp, pol-RT (717 bp, and pol-IN (425 bp sequences identified a diverse group of viruses, which could be subdivided into four distinct SFVcpz lineages according to their chimpanzee subspecies of origin. Within these lineages, there was evidence of frequent superinfection and viral recombination. One chimpanzee was infected by a foamy virus from a Cercopithecus monkey

Androgen and androgen metabolite levels in serum and urine of East African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii): comparison of EIA and LC-MS analyses.

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Preis, Anna; Mugisha, Lawrence; Hauser, Barbara; Weltring, Anja; Deschner, Tobias

2011-12-01

The primary male androgen testosterone (T) is often used as an endocrinological marker to investigate androgen-behaviour interactions in males. In chimpanzees and bonobos, studies investigating the relationship between T levels and dominance rank or aggressive behaviour have revealed contradictory results. The immunoassays used in these studies were originally developed for the measurement of steroids in serum. Their application to non-invasively collected samples, however, can lead to methodological problems due to cross-reacting metabolites, which might occur in urine or faeces but not in blood. The overall aim of this study, therefore, is to clarify whether a T enzyme immunoassay (EIA) is an applicable method to monitor testicular function in adult male chimpanzees. To estimate the impact of cross-reacting androgens on the used T EIA, we compared the results of an EIA measurement with a set of androgen metabolite levels measured by LC-MS. In urine from male chimpanzees, cross-reactivities appear to exist mainly with T and its exclusive metabolites, 5α-dihydrotestosterone (5α-DHT) and 5α-androstanediol (androstanediol). Both urinary and serum T levels of male chimpanzees were significantly higher than female T levels when measured with the T EIA, indicating a reliable measurement of testicular androgens and their exclusive metabolites with the used EIA. In urine from female chimpanzees, the comparison between LC-MS and T EIA results indicated a higher impact of cross-reactions with adrenal androgen metabolites. Therefore, the investigation of urinary T levels in female chimpanzees with a T EIA seems to be problematic. Overall our results show that a T EIA can be a reliable method to monitor testicular function in male chimpanzee urine and that LC-MS is a valuable tool for the validation of immunoassays. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Human faces are slower than chimpanzee faces.

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Anne M Burrows

Full Text Available While humans (like other primates communicate with facial expressions, the evolution of speech added a new function to the facial muscles (facial expression muscles. The evolution of speech required the development of a coordinated action between visual (movement of the lips and auditory signals in a rhythmic fashion to produce "visemes" (visual movements of the lips that correspond to specific sounds. Visemes depend upon facial muscles to regulate shape of the lips, which themselves act as speech articulators. This movement necessitates a more controlled, sustained muscle contraction than that produced during spontaneous facial expressions which occur rapidly and last only a short period of time. Recently, it was found that human tongue musculature contains a higher proportion of slow-twitch myosin fibers than in rhesus macaques, which is related to the slower, more controlled movements of the human tongue in the production of speech. Are there similar unique, evolutionary physiologic biases found in human facial musculature related to the evolution of speech?Using myosin immunohistochemistry, we tested the hypothesis that human facial musculature has a higher percentage of slow-twitch myosin fibers relative to chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes and rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta. We sampled the orbicularis oris and zygomaticus major muscles from three cadavers of each species and compared proportions of fiber-types. Results confirmed our hypothesis: humans had the highest proportion of slow-twitch myosin fibers while chimpanzees had the highest proportion of fast-twitch fibers.These findings demonstrate that the human face is slower than that of rhesus macaques and our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. They also support the assertion that human facial musculature and speech co-evolved. Further, these results suggest a unique set of evolutionary selective pressures on human facial musculature to slow down while the function of this muscle

A review of studies of the activation of the blood coagulation mechanism in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

ten Cate, H.; Schenk, B. E.; Biemond, B. J.; Levi, M. [=Marcel M.; van der Poll, T.; Buller, H. R.; ten Cate, J. W.

1994-01-01

This paper reviews our recent studies of blood coagulation activation in the chimpanzee which were carried out employing sensitive immunoassays that measure activation markers of blood coagulation in plasma. Infused factor VIIa activated both factors IX and X in vivo; this reaction depended on the

Gastrointestinal parasites of savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in Ugalla, Tanzania

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Kalousová, B.; Piel, A. K.; Pomajbíková, K.; Modrý, D.; Stewart, F. A.; Petrželková, Klára Judita

2014-01-01

Roč. 35, č. 2 (2014), s. 436-475 ISSN 0164-0291 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA206/09/0927 Institutional support: RVO:68081766 Keywords : Hominoid * Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii * Gastrointestinal parasites * Savanna * Spirurids * Transmission * Ugalla * Tanzania Subject RIV: EG - Zoology Impact factor: 1.993, year: 2014

Triarchic Psychopathy Dimensions in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes: Investigating Associations with Genetic Variation in the Vasopressin Receptor 1A Gene

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Robert D. Latzman

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Vasopressin is a neuropeptide known to be associated with the development and evolution of complex socio-emotional behaviors including those relevant to psychopathic personality. In both humans and chimpanzees, recent research suggests a strong genetic contribution to individual variation in psychopathic traits. To date, however, little is known concerning specific genes that might explain the observed heritability of psychopathy. In a relatively large sample of captive chimpanzees (N = 164, the current study thus sought to investigate gene-environment associations between triarchic psychopathy dimensions (i.e., disinhibition, meanness, and boldness and (1 early social rearing experiences and (2 polymorphisms in the promoter region of the V1A receptor gene (AVPR1A. Among chimpanzees raised by their biological conspecific mothers, AVPR1A was found to uniquely explain variability in disinhibition and in sex-specific ways for boldness and a total psychopathy score; however, in contrast, no significant associations were found between AVPR1A and any of the triarchic psychopathy dimensions in chimpanzees raised the first 3 years of life in a human nursery. Thus, when considered in its entirety, results suggest an important contributory influence of V1A receptor genotype variation in the explanation of the development of psychopathy under some but not all early rearing conditions. Results of the current study provide additional support for the assertion that psychopathic tendencies are rooted in basic, evolutionarily-meaningful dispositions, and provide support for a primate-translational operationalization of key neurobehavioral constructs relevant both to psychopathy and to broader forms of psychopathology.

Applying wet sieving fecal particle size measurement to frugivores: A case study of the eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

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Weary, Taylor E; Wrangham, Richard W; Clauss, Marcus

2017-07-01

Fecal particle size (FPS) as quantified by wet sieving analysis is a measure of chewing efficiency relevant for the understanding of physiological adaptations and constraints in herbivores. FPS has not been investigated systematically in frugivores, and important methodological problems remain. In particular, food items that are not chewed may skew estimates of FPS. We address such methodological issues and also assess the influence of diet type and age on FPS in wild chimpanzees. About 130 fecal samples of 38 individual chimpanzees (aged from 1.3 to ∼55 years) from the Kanyawara community of Kibale National Park (Uganda) were collected during three fruit seasons and analyzed using standardized wet sieves (pores from 16 to 0.025 mm). The effects of using different sieve series and excluding large seeds were investigated. We also assessed the relationship between FPS and sex, age, and fruit season. The treatment of seeds during the sieving process had a large influence on the results. FPS was not influenced by chimpanzee sex or age, but was smaller during a fig season (0.88 ± 0.31 mm) than during two drupe-fruit seasons (1.68 ± 0.37 mm) (0.025-4 mm sieves, excluding seeds). The absence of an age effect on FPS suggests that dental senescence might be less critical in chimpanzees, or in frugivores in general, than in folivorous herbivores. To increase the value of FPS studies for understanding frugivore and hominoid dietary evolution we propose modifications to prior herbivore protocols. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Chimpanzee Social Responsiveness Scale (CSRS) Detects Individual Variation in Social Responsiveness for Captive Chimpanzees

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Faughn, Carley; Marrus, Natasha; Pruett, John R.; Shuman, Jeremy; Ross, Stephen R.; Constantino, John N.; Povinelli, Daniel J.

2017-01-01

Comparative studies of social responsiveness, a core impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), will enhance our understanding of typical and atypical social behavior. We previously reported a quantitative, cross-species (human–chimpanzee) social responsiveness measure, which included the development of the Chimpanzee Social Responsiveness Scale (CSRS). Here, we augment our prior CSRS sample with 25 zoo chimpanzees at three sites: combined N = 54. The CSRS demonstrated strong interrater reliability, and low-ranked chimpanzees, on average, displayed higher CSRS scores. The CSRS continues to discriminate variation in chimpanzee social responsiveness, and the association of higher scores with lower chimpanzee social standing has implications for the relationship between autistic traits and human social status. Continued comparative investigations of social responsiveness will enhance our understanding of underlying impairments in ASD, improve early diagnosis, and inform future therapies. PMID:25312279

Chimpanzees share forbidden fruit.

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Kimberley J Hockings

2007-09-01

Full Text Available The sharing of wild plant foods is infrequent in chimpanzees, but in chimpanzee communities that engage in hunting, meat is frequently used as a 'social tool' for nurturing alliances and social bonds. Here we report the only recorded example of regular sharing of plant foods by unrelated, non-provisioned wild chimpanzees, and the contexts in which these sharing behaviours occur. From direct observations, adult chimpanzees at Bossou (Republic of Guinea, West Africa very rarely transferred wild plant foods. In contrast, they shared cultivated plant foods much more frequently (58 out of 59 food sharing events. Sharing primarily consists of adult males allowing reproductively cycling females to take food that they possess. We propose that hypotheses focussing on 'food-for-sex and -grooming' and 'showing-off' strategies plausibly account for observed sharing behaviours. A changing human-dominated landscape presents chimpanzees with fresh challenges, and our observations suggest that crop-raiding provides adult male chimpanzees at Bossou with highly desirable food commodities that may be traded for other currencies.

Social grooming among wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) at Wamba in the Luo Scientific Reserve, DR Congo, with special reference to the formation of grooming gatherings.

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Sakamaki, Tetsuya

2013-10-01

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) groom in gatherings in which many individuals may be connected via multiple chains of grooming and they often exchange partners with each other. They sometimes groom another while receiving grooming; that is, one animal can play two roles (i.e., groomer and groomee) simultaneously. Although this feature of chimpanzees is notable from the viewpoint of the evolution of human sociality, information on our other closest living relative, the bonobo (Pan paniscus), is still lacking. In this study, I describe grooming interactions of bonobos at Wamba in the Luo Scientific Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), with a particular focus on the formation of grooming gatherings. Like chimpanzees, the bonobos also performed mutual grooming (two individuals grooming each other simultaneously) and polyadic grooming (three or more individuals). However, unlike chimpanzees, these sessions lasted for only a short time. Bonobos rarely groomed another while receiving grooming. Because social grooming occurred not only in trees but also in open spaces, including treefall gaps, the conditions did not necessarily limit the opportunity to make multiple chains of grooming. However, bonobos also engaged in social grooming in different ways from chimpanzees; That is, many individuals were involved simultaneously at a site, in which they separated for dyadic grooming. Some cases clearly showed that bonobos preferred a third party not to join while grooming in a dyad, suggesting that bonobos have a preference for grooming in dyads and that immature individuals formed the preference that was shared among adults while growing up. Most members of the study group ranged together during the majority of the study period. Although bonobos show a fission-fusion grouping pattern, when group members frequently encounter one another on a daily basis, they may not be motivated to form multiple grooming chains at this site, as do chimpanzees.

Species association of hepatitis B virus (HBV in non-human apes; evidence for recombination between gorilla and chimpanzee variants.

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Sinéad Lyons

Full Text Available Hepatitis B virus (HBV infections are widely distributed in humans, infecting approximately one third of the world's population. HBV variants have also been detected and genetically characterised from Old World apes; Gorilla gorilla (gorilla, Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee, Pongo pygmaeus (orang-utan, Nomascus nastusus and Hylobates pileatus (gibbons and from the New World monkey, Lagothrix lagotricha (woolly monkey. To investigate species-specificity and potential for cross species transmission of HBV between sympatric species of apes (such as gorillas and chimpanzees in Central Africa or between humans and chimpanzees or gorillas, variants of HBV infecting captive wild-born non-human primates were genetically characterised. 9 of 62 chimpanzees (11.3% and two from 11 gorillas (18% were HBV-infected (15% combined frequency, while other Old world monkey species were negative. Complete genome sequences were obtained from six of the infected chimpanzee and both gorillas; those from P. t .ellioti grouped with previously characterised variants from this subspecies. However, variants recovered from P. t. troglodytes HBV variants also grouped within this clade, indicative of transmission between sub-species, forming a paraphyletic clade. The two gorilla viruses were phylogenetically distinct from chimpanzee and human variants although one showed evidence for a recombination event with a P.t.e.-derived HBV variant in the partial X and core gene region. Both of these observations provide evidence for circulation of HBV between different species and sub-species of non-human primates, a conclusion that differs from the hypothesis if of strict host specificity of HBV genotypes.

Chimpanzees help each other upon request.

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Shinya Yamamoto

2009-10-01

Full Text Available The evolution of altruism has been explained mainly from ultimate perspectives. However, it remains to be investigated from a proximate point of view how and in which situations such social propensity is achieved. We investigated chimpanzees' targeted helping in a tool transfer paradigm, and discuss the similarities and differences in altruism between humans and chimpanzees. Previously it has been suggested that chimpanzees help human experimenters by retrieving an object which the experimenter is trying to reach. In the present study, we investigated the importance of communicative interactions between chimpanzees themselves and the influence of conspecific partner's request on chimpanzees' targeted helping.We presented two tool-use situations (a stick-use situation and a straw-use situation in two adjacent booths, and supplied non-corresponding tools to paired chimpanzees in the two booths. For example, a chimpanzee in the stick-use situation was supplied with a straw, and the partner in the straw-use situation possessed a stick. Spontaneous tool transfer was observed between paired chimpanzees. The tool transfer events occurred predominantly following recipients' request. Even without any hope of reciprocation from the partner, the chimpanzees continued to help the partner as long as the partner required help.These results provide further evidence for altruistic helping in chimpanzees in the absence of direct personal gain or even immediate reciprocation. Our findings additionally highlight the importance of request as a proximate mechanism motivating prosocial behavior in chimpanzees whether between kin or non-kin individuals and the possible confounding effect of dominance on the symmetry of such interactions. Finally, in contrast to humans, our study suggests that chimpanzees rarely perform acts of voluntary altruism. Voluntary altruism in chimpanzees is not necessarily prompted by simple observation of another's struggle to attain a goal

Analysis of prostate-specific antigen transcripts in chimpanzees, cynomolgus monkeys, baboons, and African green monkeys.

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James N Mubiru

Full Text Available The function of prostate-specific antigen (PSA is to liquefy the semen coagulum so that the released sperm can fuse with the ovum. Fifteen spliced variants of the PSA gene have been reported in humans, but little is known about alternative splicing in nonhuman primates. Positive selection has been reported in sex- and reproductive-related genes from sea urchins to Drosophila to humans; however, there are few studies of adaptive evolution of the PSA gene. Here, using polymerase chain reaction (PCR product cloning and sequencing, we study PSA transcript variant heterogeneity in the prostates of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis, baboons (Papio hamadryas anubis, and African green monkeys (Chlorocebus aethiops. Six PSA variants were identified in the chimpanzee prostate, but only two variants were found in cynomolgus monkeys, baboons, and African green monkeys. In the chimpanzee the full-length transcript is expressed at the same magnitude as the transcripts that retain intron 3. We have found previously unidentified splice variants of the PSA gene, some of which might be linked to disease conditions. Selection on the PSA gene was studied in 11 primate species by computational methods using the sequences reported here for African green monkey, cynomolgus monkey, baboon, and chimpanzee and other sequences available in public databases. A codon-based analysis (dN/dS of the PSA gene identified potential adaptive evolution at five residue sites (Arg45, Lys70, Gln144, Pro189, and Thr203.

Translating chimpanzee personality to humans: Investigating the transportability of chimpanzee-derived personality scales to humans.

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Latzman, Robert D; Sauvigné, Katheryn C; Hopkins, William D

2016-06-01

There is a growing interest in the study of personality in chimpanzees with repeated findings of a similar structure of personality in apes to that found in humans. To date, however, the direct translational value of instruments used to assess chimpanzee personality to humans has yet to be explicitly tested. As such, in the current study we sought to determine the transportability of factor analytically-derived chimpanzee personality scales to humans in a large human sample (N = 301). Human informants reporting on target individuals they knew well completed chimpanzee-derived and human-derived measures of personality from the two most widely studied models of human personality: Big Five and Big Three. The correspondence between informant-reported chimpanzee- and human-derived personality scales was then investigated. Results indicated high convergence for corresponding scales across most chimpanzee- and human-derived personality scales. Findings from the current study provide evidence that chimpanzee-derived scales translate well to humans and operate quite similarly to the established human-derived personality scales in a human sample. This evidence of transportability lends support to the translational nature of chimpanzee personality research suggesting clear relevance of this growing literature to humans. Am. J. Primatol. 78:601-609, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Autonomy in chimpanzees.

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Beauchamp, Tom L; Wobber, Victoria

2014-04-01

Literature on the mental capacities and cognitive mechanisms of the great apes has been silent about whether they can act autonomously. This paper provides a philosophical theory of autonomy supported by psychological studies of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie chimpanzee behavior to argue that chimpanzees can act autonomously even though their psychological mechanisms differ from those of humans. Chimpanzees satisfy the two basic conditions of autonomy: (1) liberty (the absence of controlling influences) and (2) agency (self-initiated intentional action), each of which is specified here in terms of conditions of understanding, intention, and self-control. In this account, chimpanzees make knowledge-based choices reflecting a richly information-based and socially sophisticated understanding of the world. Finally, two major theories of autonomy (Kantian theory and two-level theory) are rejected as too narrow to adequately address these issues, necessitating the modifications made in the present approach.

The influence of body mass index, age and sex on inflammatory disease risk in semi-captive Chimpanzees.

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Vincent Obanda

Full Text Available Obesity and ageing are emerging issues in the management of captive primates, including Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes. Studies on humans show that obesity and old age can independently increase the risk of inflammatory-associated diseases indicated by elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cells and proteins in the blood of older or obese compared to levels in younger or non-obese individuals. In humans, sex can influence the outcomes of these risks. Health management of these problems in chimpanzee populations requires an understanding of similarities and differences of factors influencing inflammatory disease risks in humans and in chimpanzees. We examined the relationship between age, sex and Body Mass Index (BMI with hematological biomarkers of inflammatory disease risk established for humans which include the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR, and neutrophil, white blood cell (WBC, platelet microparticle and platelet counts. We found that higher values of NLR, neutrophil count and platelet microparticle count were associated with higher BMI values and older age indicating increased inflammation risk in these groups; a similar pattern to humans. There was a strong sex by age interaction on inflammation risk, with older males more at risk than older females. In contrast to human studies, total WBC count was not influenced by BMI, but like humans, WBC and platelet counts were lower in older individuals compared to younger individuals. Our findings are similar to those of humans and suggest that further insight on managing chimpanzees can be gained from extensive studies of ageing and obesity in humans. We suggest that managing BMI should be an integral part of health management in captive chimpanzee populations in order to partially reduce the risk of diseases associated with inflammation. These results also highlight parallels in inflammation risk between humans and chimpanzees and have implications for understanding the evolution of

Occurrence of Giardia and Cryptosporidium in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) and wild Zanzibar red colobus monkeys (Procolobus kirkii).

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Debenham, John J; Atencia, Rebeca; Midtgaard, Fred; Robertson, Lucy J

2015-04-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the occurrence of Giardia duodenalis and Cryptosporidium spp. in primates and determine their zoonotic or anthropozoonotic potential. Direct immunofluorescence was used to identify Giardia and Cryptosporidium from faecal samples. PCR and DNA sequencing was performed on positive results. Giardia cysts were identified from 5.5% (5/90) of captive chimpanzees and 0% (0/11) of captive mandrills in the Republic of Congo; 0% (0/10) of captive chimpanzees in Norway; and 0% of faecal samples (n = 49) from wild Zanzibar red colobus monkeys. Two Giardia positive samples were also positive on PCR, and sequencing revealed identical isolates of Assemblage B. Cryptosporidium oocysts were not detected in any of the samples. In these primate groups, in which interactions with humans and human environments are quite substantial, Giardia and Cryptosporidium are rare pathogens. In chimpanzees, Giardia may have a zoonotic or anthropozoonotic potential. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Can Chimpanzee Infants ("Pan Troglodytes") Form Categorical Representations in the Same Manner as Human Infants ("Homo Sapiens")?

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Murai, Chizuko; Kosugi, Daisuke; Tomonaga, Masaki; Tanaka, Masayuki; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Itakura, Shoji

2005-01-01

We directly compared chimpanzee infants and human infants for categorical representations of three global-like categories (mammals, furniture and vehicles), using the familiarization-novelty preference technique. Neither species received any training during the experiments. We used the time that participants spent looking at the stimulus object…

Peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN and peroxyacetic acid (PAA measurements by iodide chemical ionisation mass spectrometry: first analysis of results in the boreal forest and implications for the measurement of PAN fluxes

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G. J. Phillips

2013-02-01

Full Text Available We describe measurements of peroxyacetyl nitrate (CH₃C(OO₂NO₂, PAN and peroxyacetic acid (CH₃C(OOOH, PAA in the Boreal forest using iodide chemical ionization mass spectrometry (ICIMS. The measurements were made during the Hyytiälä United Measurement of Photochemistry and Particles – Comprehensive Organic Particle and Environmental Chemistry (HUMPPA-COPEC-2010 measurement intensive. Mixing ratios of PAN and PAA were determined by measuring the acetate ion signal (CH₃C(OO⁻, m/z = 59 resulting from reaction of CH₃C(OO₂ (from the thermal dissociation of PAN or CH₃C(OOOH with iodide ions using alternatively heated and ambient temperature inlet lines. During some periods of high temperature (~ 30 °C and low NO_x (< 1 ppbv, PAA mixing ratios were similar to, or exceeded those of PAN and thus contributed a significant fraction of the total acetate signal. PAA is thus a potential interference for ICIMS measurements of PAN, and especially eddy covariance flux measurements in environments where the PAA flux is likely to be a significant proportion of the (short timescale acetate ion variability. Within the range of mixing ratios of NO_x measured during HUMPPA-COPEC, the modelled ratio of PAA-to-PAN was found to be sensitive to temperature (through the thermal decomposition rate of PAN and the HO₂ mixing ratio, thus providing some constraint to estimates of photochemical activity and oxidation rates in the Boreal environment.

The spread of a novel behavior in wild chimpanzees: New insights into the ape cultural mind.

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Gruber, Thibaud; Poisot, Timothée; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Hoppitt, William; Hobaiter, Catherine

2015-01-01

For years, the animal culture debate has been dominated by the puzzling absence of direct evidence for social transmission of behavioral innovations in the flagship species of animal culture, the common chimpanzee. Although social learning of novel behaviors has been documented in captivity, critics argue that these findings lack ecological validity and therefore may not be relevant for understanding the evolution of culture. For the wild, it is possible that group-specific behavioral differences emerge because group members respond individually to unspecified environmental differences, rather than learning from each other. In a recent paper, we used social network analyses in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) to provide direct evidence for social transmission of a behavioral innovation, moss-sponging, to extract water from a tree hole. Here, we discuss the implications of our findings and how our new methodological approach could help future studies of social learning and culture in wild apes.

The costs of living at the edge: Seasonal stress in wild savanna-dwelling chimpanzees.

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Wessling, Erin G; Kühl, Hjalmar S; Mundry, Roger; Deschner, Tobias; Pruetz, Jill D

2018-04-20

Adaptations associated with shifting from a predominately forested habitat to a more open environment are considered a crucial step in hominin evolution. Understanding how chimpanzees, one of our closest-living relatives, are exposed to the selection pressures associated with living in a relatively sparse, hot, and dry environment can inform us about the relative importance of potential environmental stressors involved in adaptations to drier environments. We investigated the extent to which chimpanzees living in an extreme savanna habitat experience seasonal variability in either energy balance or thermoregulation (dehydration and heat exposure), as well as whether these potential environmental constraints are taxing to chimpanzee individuals. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that savanna environments impose seasonally-relevant costs to chimpanzees. To this end, we collected 368 urine samples from one community of chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal, and measured c-peptide, creatinine, and cortisol as measures of physiological responses to environmental food, water, and heat constraints, respectively. We then evaluated the influence of climatic and phenological factors on these indicators. Results illustrated significant seasonal variation in all biomarkers, which corresponded to relevant ecological correlates. Furthermore, creatinine but not c-peptide correlated with cortisol levels, suggesting that chimpanzees in this environment endure periods of heat and dehydration stress, but are able to avoid stressful levels of negative energy balance. Using savanna chimpanzees as a referential model, our research lends support to the notion that thermoregulatory challenges were a significant factor in hominin evolution, and suggests these challenges may have overshadowed the challenges of maintaining adequate energetic balance during the expansion of the hominin range from wetter to drier environments. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evidence of leopard predation on bonobos (Pan paniscus).

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D'Amour, Danielle E; Hohmann, Gottfried; Fruth, Barbara

2006-01-01

Current models of social organization assume that predation is one of the major forces that promotes group living in diurnal primates. As large body size renders some protection against predators, gregariousness of great apes and other large primate species is usually related to other parameters. The low frequency of observed cases of nonhuman predation on great apes seems to support this assumption. However, recent efforts to study potential predator species have increasingly accumulated direct and indirect evidence of predation by leopards (Panthera pardus) on chimpanzees and gorillas. The following report provides the first evidence of predation by a leopard on bonobos (Pan paniscus). Copyright 2006 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Role of lianas for introduced chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) on Rubondo Island, Tanzania

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Moscovice, L. R.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Issa, M. H.; Huffman, M. A.; Snowdon, C. T.; Mbago, F.; Kaur, T.; Singh, J.; Graziani, G.

2004-01-01

Roč. 75, S1 (2004), s. 308 ISSN 0015-5713. [Congress of the International Primatological Society /20./. Torino, 22.08.2004-28.08.2004] Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z6093917 Keywords : Pan troglodytes * reintroduction * Rubondo Subject RIV: EH - Ecology, Behaviour Impact factor: 0.913, year: 2004

Nocturnal behavior by a diurnal ape, the West African chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus), in a savanna environment at Fongoli, Senegal.

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Pruetz, Jill D

2018-02-08

I report on the nocturnal behavior of Fongoli chimpanzees in a savanna mosaic during different seasons and lunar phases and test the hypothesis that hot daytime temperatures influence activity at night. I predicted that apes would be more active at night during periods of greater lunar illuminosity given diurnal primates' lack of visual specializations for low-light conditions and in dry season months when water scarcity exacerbated heat stress. I observed chimpanzees for 403 hrs on 40 nights between 2007 and 2013 and categorized their activity as social, movement, or vocalization. I scored their activity as occurring after moonrise or before moonset and considered the influence of moon phase (fuller versus darker phases) as well as season on chimpanzee nocturnal behavior in the analyses. Results indicate that apes were more active after moonrise or before moonset during fuller moon phases in the dry season but not the wet season. Most night-time activity involved movement (travel or forage), followed by social behavior, and long-distance vocal communication. Animals in highly seasonal habitats often exhibit thermoregulatory adaptations but, like other primates, chimpanzees lack physiological mechanisms to combat thermal stress. This study provides evidence that they may exhibit behaviors that allow them to avoid high temperatures in a savanna environment, such as feeding and socializing at night during the hottest time of year and in the brightest moon phases. The results support theories invoking thermal stress as a selective pressure for hominins in open environments where heat would constrain temporal foraging niches, and suggest an adaptability of sleeping patterns in response to external factors. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Bonobos and chimpanzees exhibit human-like framing effects

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Krupenye, Christopher; Rosati, Alexandra G.; Hare, Brian

2015-01-01

Humans exhibit framing effects when making choices, appraising decisions involving losses differently from those involving gains. To directly test for the evolutionary origin of this bias, we examined decision-making in humans' closest living relatives: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We presented the largest sample of non-humans to date (n = 40) with a simple task requiring minimal experience. Apes made choices between a ‘framed’ option that provided preferred food, and an alternative option that provided a constant amount of intermediately preferred food. In the gain condition, apes experienced a positive ‘gain’ event in which the framed option was initially presented as one piece of food but sometimes was augmented to two. In the loss condition, apes experienced a negative ‘loss' event in which they initially saw two pieces but sometimes received only one. Both conditions provided equal pay-offs, but apes chose the framed option more often in the positive ‘gain’ frame. Moreover, male apes were more susceptible to framing than were females. These results suggest that some human economic biases are shared through common descent with other apes and highlight the importance of comparative work in understanding the origins of individual differences in human choice. PMID:25672997

Bonobos and chimpanzees exhibit human-like framing effects.

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Krupenye, Christopher; Rosati, Alexandra G; Hare, Brian

2015-02-01

Humans exhibit framing effects when making choices, appraising decisions involving losses differently from those involving gains. To directly test for the evolutionary origin of this bias, we examined decision-making in humans' closest living relatives: bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We presented the largest sample of non-humans to date (n = 40) with a simple task requiring minimal experience. Apes made choices between a 'framed' option that provided preferred food, and an alternative option that provided a constant amount of intermediately preferred food. In the gain condition, apes experienced a positive 'gain' event in which the framed option was initially presented as one piece of food but sometimes was augmented to two. In the loss condition, apes experienced a negative 'loss' event in which they initially saw two pieces but sometimes received only one. Both conditions provided equal pay-offs, but apes chose the framed option more often in the positive 'gain' frame. Moreover, male apes were more susceptible to framing than were females. These results suggest that some human economic biases are shared through common descent with other apes and highlight the importance of comparative work in understanding the origins of individual differences in human choice. © 2015 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Ground-nesting by the chimpanzees of the Nimba Mountains, Guinea: environmentally or socially determined?

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Koops, Kathelijne; Humle, Tatyana; Sterck, Elisabeth H M; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2007-04-01

The chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of the Nimba Mountains, Guinea, West Africa, commonly make both elaborate ("night") and simple ("day") nests on the ground. In this study we investigated which factors might influence ground-nesting in this population, and tested two ecological hypotheses: 1) climatic conditions, such as high wind speeds at high altitudes, may deter chimpanzees from nesting in trees; and 2) a lack of appropriate arboreal nesting opportunities may drive the chimpanzees to nest on the ground. In addition to testing these two hypotheses, we explored whether ground-nesting is a sex-linked behavior. Data were collected monthly between August 2003 and May 2004 along transects and ad libitum. To identify the sex of ground-nesting individuals, we used DNA extracted from hair samples. The results showed that the occurrence and distribution of ground nests were not affected by climatic conditions or a lack of appropriate nest trees. Support was found for the notion that ground-nesting is a sex-linked behavior, as males were responsible for building all of the elaborate ground nests and most of the simple ground nests sampled. Elaborate ground nests occurred mostly in nest groups associated with tree nests, whereas simple ground nests usually occurred without tree nests in their vicinity. These results suggest that ground-nesting may be socially, rather than ecologically, determined.

The right time to happen: play developmental divergence in the two Pan species.

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Elisabetta Palagi

Full Text Available Bonobos, compared to chimpanzees, are highly motivated to play as adults. Therefore, it is interesting to compare the two species at earlier developmental stages to determine how and when these differences arise. We measured and compared some play parameters between the two species including frequency, number of partners (solitary, dyadic, and polyadic play, session length, and escalation into overt aggression. Since solitary play has a role in developing cognitive and physical skills, it is not surprising that chimpanzees and bonobos share similar developmental trajectories in the motivation to engage in this activity. The striking divergence in play developmental pathways emerged for social play. Infants of the two species showed comparable social play levels, which began to diverge during the juvenile period, a 'timing hotspot' for play development. Compared to chimpanzees, social play sessions in juvenile bonobos escalated less frequently into overt aggression, lasted longer, and frequently involved more than two partners concurrently (polyadic play. In this view, play fighting in juvenile bonobos seems to maintain a cooperative mood, whereas in juvenile chimpanzees it acquires more competitive elements. The retention of juvenile traits into adulthood typical of bonobos can be due to a developmental delay in social inhibition. Our findings show that the divergence of play ontogenetic pathways between the two Pan species and the relative emergence of play neotenic traits in bonobos can be detected before individuals reach sexual maturity. The high play motivation showed by adult bonobos compared to chimpanzees is probably the result of a long developmental process, rooted in the delicate transitional phase, which leads subjects from infancy to juvenility.

Intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and war in nomadic hunter-gatherers: evaluating the chimpanzee model.

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Wrangham, Richard W; Glowacki, Luke

2012-03-01

Chimpanzee and hunter-gatherer intergroup aggression differ in important ways, including humans having the ability to form peaceful relationships and alliances among groups. This paper nevertheless evaluates the hypothesis that intergroup aggression evolved according to the same functional principles in the two species-selection favoring a tendency to kill members of neighboring groups when killing could be carried out safely. According to this idea chimpanzees and humans are equally risk-averse when fighting. When self-sacrificial war practices are found in humans, therefore, they result from cultural systems of reward, punishment, and coercion rather than evolved adaptations to greater risk-taking. To test this "chimpanzee model," we review intergroup fighting in chimpanzees and nomadic hunter-gatherers living with other nomadic hunter-gatherers as neighbors. Whether humans have evolved specific psychological adaptations for war is unknown, but current evidence suggests that the chimpanzee model is an appropriate starting point for analyzing the biological and cultural evolution of warfare.

Tradition over trend: Neighboring chimpanzee communities maintain differences in cultural behavior despite frequent immigration of adult females.

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Luncz, Lydia V; Boesch, Christophe

2014-07-01

The notion of animal culture has been well established mainly through research aiming at uncovering differences between populations. In chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), cultural diversity has even been found in neighboring communities, where differences were observed despite frequent immigration of individuals. Female chimpanzees transfer at the onset of sexual maturity at an age, when the behavioral repertoire is fully formed. With immigrating females, behavioral variety enters the group. Little is known about the diversity and the longevity of cultural traits within a community. This study is building on previous findings of differences in hammer selection when nut cracking between neighboring communities despite similar ecological conditions. We now further investigated the diversity and maintenance of cultural traits within one chimpanzee community and were able to show high levels of uniformity in group-specific behavior. Fidelity to the behavior pattern did not vary between dispersing females and philopatric males. Furthermore, group-specific tool selection remained similar over a period of 25 years. Additionally, we present a study case on how one newly immigrant female progressively behaved more similar to her new group, suggesting that the high level of similarity in behavior is actively adopted by group members possibly even when originally expressing the behavior in another form. Taken together, our data support a cultural transmission process in adult chimpanzees, which leads to persisting cultural behavior of one community over time. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A newborn infant chimpanzee snatched and cannibalized immediately after birth: Implications for "maternity leave" in wild chimpanzee.

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Nishie, Hitonaru; Nakamura, Michio

2018-01-01

This study reports on the first observed case of a wild chimpanzee infant being snatched immediately after delivery and consequently cannibalized by an adult male in the Mahale Mountains, Tanzania. We demonstrate "maternity leave" from long-term data from the Mahale M group and suggest that it functions as a possible counterstrategy of mother chimpanzees against the risk of infanticide soon after delivery. The subjects of this study were the M group chimpanzees at Mahale Mountains, Tanzania. The case of cannibalism was observed on December 2, 2014. We used the long-term daily attendance record of the M group chimpanzees between 1990 and 2010 to calculate the lengths of "maternity leave," a perinatal period during which a mother chimpanzee tends to hide herself and gives birth alone. We observed a very rare case of delivery in a wild chimpanzee group. A female chimpanzee gave birth in front of other members, and an adult male snatched and cannibalized the newborn infant immediately after birth. Using the long-term data, we demonstrate that the length of "maternity leave" is longer than that of nonmaternity leave among adult and adolescent female chimpanzees. We argue that this cannibalism event immediately after birth occurred due to the complete lack of "maternity leave" of the mother chimpanzee of the victim, who might lack enough experience of delivery. We suggest that "maternity leave" taken by expecting mothers may function as a possible counterstrategy against infanticide soon after delivery. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Field studies of Pan troglodytes reviewed and comprehensively mapped, focussing on Japan's contribution to cultural primatology.

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McGrew, William C

2017-01-01

Field studies done over decades of wild chimpanzees in East, Central and West Africa have yielded impressive, cumulative findings in cultural primatology. Japanese primatologists have been involved in this advance from the outset, over a wide variety of topics. Here I review the origins and development of field studies of Pan troglodytes, then assess their progress based on analogy between cultural primatology and cultural anthropology, through four stages: natural history, ethnography, ethnology, and intuition. Then, I focus on six topics that continue to yield informative debate: technology, universals, nuanced variation, archaeology, applied primatology, and ecology. Finally, I offer a map of sites of field study of wild chimpanzees. It is clear that Japanese primatologists have made a significant contribution to East-West scientific exchange, especially at the field sites of Bossou and Mahale.

Bonobos fall within the genomic variation of chimpanzees.

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Anne Fischer

Full Text Available To gain insight into the patterns of genetic variation and evolutionary relationships within and between bonobos and chimpanzees, we sequenced 150,000 base pairs of nuclear DNA divided among 15 autosomal regions as well as the complete mitochondrial genomes from 20 bonobos and 58 chimpanzees. Except for western chimpanzees, we found poor genetic separation of chimpanzees based on sample locality. In contrast, bonobos consistently cluster together but fall as a group within the variation of chimpanzees for many of the regions. Thus, while chimpanzees retain genomic variation that predates bonobo-chimpanzee speciation, extensive lineage sorting has occurred within bonobos such that much of their genome traces its ancestry back to a single common ancestor that postdates their origin as a group separate from chimpanzees.

Morphological integration in the gorilla, chimpanzee, and human neck.

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Arlegi, Mikel; Gómez-Robles, Aida; Gómez-Olivencia, Asier

2018-06-01

Although integration studies are important to understand the evolution of organisms' traits across phylogenies, vertebral integration in primates is still largely unexplored. Here we describe and quantify patterns of morphological integration and modularity in the subaxial cervical vertebrae (C3-C7) in extant hominines incorporating the potential influence of size. Three-dimensional landmarks were digitized on 546 subaxial cervical vertebrae from 141 adult individuals of Gorilla gorilla, Pan troglodytes, and Homo sapiens. Integration and modularity, and the influence of size effects, were quantified using geometric morphometric approaches. All subaxial cervical vertebrae from the three species show a strong degree of integration. Gorillas show the highest degree of integration; conversely, humans have the lowest degree of integration. Analyses of allometric regression residuals show that size is an important factor promoting integration in gorillas, with lesser influence in chimpanzees and almost no effect in humans. Results point to a likely ancestral pattern of integration in non-human hominines, whereby the degree of integration decreases from cranial to caudal positions. Humans deviate from this pattern in the cranialmost (C3) and, to a lesser extent, in the caudalmost (C7) vertebrae, which are less integrated. These differences can be tentatively related to the emergence of bipedalism due to the presence of modern human-like C3 in australopiths, which still preserve a more chimpanzee-like C7. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Convergence and divergence of tumor-suppressor and proto-oncogenes in chimpanzee from human chromosome 17

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Verma, R.S.; Ramesh, K.H. [Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, NY (United States)

1994-09-01

Due to the emergence of molecular technology, the phylogenetic evolution of the human genome via apes has become a saltatory even. In the present investigation, cosmid probes for P53, Charcot-Marie-Tooth [CMTIA], HER-2/NEU and myeloperoxidase [MPO] were used. Probes mapping to these genetic loci are well-defined on human chromosome 17 [HSA 17]. We localized these genes on chimpanzee [Pan troglodyte] chromosomes by FISH technique employing two different cell lines. Our results indicate that chimpanzee chromosome 19 [PTR 19] differs from HSA 17 by a pericentric inversion. The P53 gene assigned to HSA 17p13.1 is localized on PTR 19p15 and the MPO sequence of HSA 17q21.3-23 hybridized to PTR 19q23. Perplexing enough, HER-2/NEU assigned to HSA 17q11.2 localized to PTR 19p12. Obviously, there is convergence of P53 and MPO regions and distinctive divergence of HER-2/NEU and CMT1A regions of human and chimpanzee. This investigation has demonstrated the pronounced genetic shuffling which occurred during the origin of HSA 17. Molecular markers should serve as evolutionary punctuations in defining the precise sequence of genetic events that led to the evolution of other chromosomes whose genomic synteny, although similar, have surprisingly evolved through different mechanisms.

Experimental studies illuminate the cultural transmission of percussive technologies in Homo and Pan.

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Whiten, Andrew

2015-11-19

The complexity of Stone Age tool-making is assumed to have relied upon cultural transmission, but direct evidence is lacking. This paper reviews evidence bearing on this question provided through five related empirical perspectives. Controlled experimental studies offer special power in identifying and dissecting social learning into its diverse component forms, such as imitation and emulation. The first approach focuses on experimental studies that have discriminated social learning processes in nut-cracking by chimpanzees. Second come experiments that have identified and dissected the processes of cultural transmission involved in a variety of other force-based forms of chimpanzee tool use. A third perspective is provided by field studies that have revealed a range of forms of forceful, targeted tool use by chimpanzees, that set percussion in its broader cognitive context. Fourth are experimental studies of the development of flint knapping to make functional sharp flakes by bonobos, implicating and defining the social learning and innovation involved. Finally, new and substantial experiments compare what different social learning processes, from observational learning to teaching, afford good quality human flake and biface manufacture. Together these complementary approaches begin to delineate the social learning processes necessary to percussive technologies within the Pan-Homo clade. © 2015 The Author(s).

Bystanders intervene to impede grooming in Western chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys

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Samuni, Liran; Preis, Anna; Wittig, Roman M.

2017-01-01

Grooming interactions benefit groomers, but may have negative consequences for bystanders. Grooming limits bystanders' grooming access and ensuing alliances could threaten the bystander's hierarchy rank or their previous investment in the groomers. To gain a competitive advantage, bystanders could intervene into a grooming bout to increase their own grooming access or to prevent the negative impact of others' grooming. We tested the impact of dominance rank and social relationships on grooming intervention likelihood and outcome in two sympatric primate species, Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys atys). In both species, rather than increasing their own access to preferred partners, bystanders intervened mainly when an alliance between groomers could have a negative impact on them: when the lower-ranking groomer was close to the bystander in rank, when either groomer was an affiliation partner whose services they could lose, or the groomers were not yet strongly affiliated with each other. Thus, bystanders in both species appear to monitor grooming interactions and intervene based on their own dominance rank and social relationships, as well as triadic awareness of the relationship between groomers. While the motivation to intervene did not differ between species, mangabeys appeared to be more constrained by dominance rank than chimpanzees. PMID:29291114

Morphology of chimpanzee pinworms, Enterobius (Enterobius) anthropopitheci (Gedoelst, 1916) (Nematoda: Oxyuridae), collected from chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, on Rubondo island, Tanzania

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hasegawa, H.; Ikeda, Y.; Fujisaki, A.; Moscovice, L. R.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Kaur, T.; Huffman, M. A.

2005-01-01

Roč. 91, č. 6 (2005), s. 1314-1317 ISSN 0022-3395 Grant - others:National Science Foundation(JP) 0238069; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(JP) 12640680; GA AV ČR(CZ) AV0Z6093917-I028 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z60930519 Keywords : Pan troglodytes * pinworm s Subject RIV: EG - Zoology Impact factor: 1.524, year: 2005

The Bonobo Pan paniscus (Mammalia: Primates: Hominidae nesting patterns and forest canopy layers in the Lake Tumba forests and Salonga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo

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Bila-Isia Inogwabini

2015-10-01

Full Text Available The description and differentiation of habitat types is a major concern in ecology.  This study examined relationships between Bonobo Pan paniscus nesting patterns and forest structure in the Lake Tumba Swampy Forests. Data on presence of fresh Bonobo nests, canopy cover, canopy structure, tree densities and tree basal areas were collected systematically along 134 transects at 400m and 800m intervals, and the leaf-covered area (LCA was calculated for each of seven forest types. I observed a significant correlation between bonobo nests and mixed mature forest/closed understory forest type (r=-0.730, df = 21, p <0.05, but not mixed mature forest/open understory, old secondary forest and young secondary forest.  Basal areas of non-nesting trees along transects did not differ significantly from those in sites where bonobos nested.  Higher LCA (55% and 55% occurred in nesting sites when compared with non-nesting sites (39% and 42% at elevations 4–8 m and 8–16 m above the soil.  There was greater leaf cover in the understorey at sites where bonobos did not nest, while there was greater leaf cover in the mid-storey at sites where bonobos did nest.  

Functional analysis of human and chimpanzee promoters.

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Heissig, Florian; Krause, Johannes; Bryk, Jaroslaw; Khaitovich, Philipp; Enard, Wolfgang; Pääbo, Svante

2005-01-01

It has long been argued that changes in gene expression may provide an additional and crucial perspective on the evolutionary differences between humans and chimpanzees. To investigate how often expression differences seen in tissues are caused by sequence differences in the proximal promoters, we tested the expression activity in cultured cells of human and chimpanzee promoters from genes that differ in mRNA expression between human and chimpanzee tissues. Twelve promoters for which the corresponding gene had been shown to be differentially expressed between humans and chimpanzees in liver or brain were tested. Seven showed a significant difference in activity between the human promoter and the orthologous chimpanzee promoter in at least one of the two cell lines used. However, only three of them showed a difference in the same direction as in the tissues. Differences in proximal promoter activity are likely to be common between humans and chimpanzees, but are not linked in a simple fashion to gene-expression levels in tissues. This suggests that several genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees might be responsible for a single expression difference and thus that relevant expression differences between humans and chimpanzees will be difficult to predict from cell culture experiments or DNA sequences.

Extensive X-linked adaptive evolution in central chimpanzees

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvilsom, Christina; Qian, Yu; Bataillon, Thomas

2012-01-01

on the dominance of beneficial (adaptive) and deleterious mutations. Here we capture and sequence the complete exomes of 12 chimpanzees and present the largest set of protein-coding polymorphism to date. We report extensive adaptive evolution specifically targeting the X chromosome of chimpanzees with as much...... to humans, we find that purifying selection is stronger on the X chromosome than on the autosomes in chimpanzees. We therefore conclude that most adaptive mutations are recessive. We also document dramatically reduced synonymous diversity in the chimpanzee X chromosome relative to autosomes and stronger...... purifying selection than for the human X chromosome. If similar processes were operating in the human-chimpanzee ancestor as in central chimpanzees today, our results therefore provide an explanation for the much-discussed reduction in the human-chimpanzee divergence at the X chromosome....

Social and nonsocial category discriminations in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and American black bears (Ursus americanus).

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Vonk, Jennifer; Johnson-Ulrich, Zoe

2014-09-01

One captive adult chimpanzee and 3 adult American black bears were presented with a series of natural category discrimination tasks on a touch-screen computer. This is the first explicit comparison of bear and primate abilities using identical tasks, and the first test of a social concept in a carnivore. The discriminations involved a social relationship category (mother/offspring) and a nonsocial category involving food items. The social category discrimination could be made using knowledge of the overarching mother/offspring concept, whereas the nonsocial category discriminations could be made only by using perceptual rules, such as "choose images that show larger and smaller items of the same type." The bears failed to show above-chance transfer on either the social or nonsocial discriminations, indicating that they did not use either the perceptual rule or knowledge of the overarching concept of mother/offspring to guide their choices in these tasks. However, at least 1 bear remembered previously reinforced stimuli when these stimuli were recombined, later. The chimpanzee showed transfer on a control task and did not consistently apply a perceptual rule to solve the nonsocial task, so it is possible that he eventually acquired the social concept. Further comparisons between species on identical tasks assessing social knowledge will help illuminate the selective pressures responsible for a range of social cognitive skills.

Development of a cognitive bias methodology for measuring low mood in chimpanzees

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Melissa Bateson

2015-06-01

Full Text Available There is an ethical and scientific need for objective, well-validated measures of low mood in captive chimpanzees. We describe the development of a novel cognitive task designed to measure ‘pessimistic’ bias in judgments of expectation of reward, a cognitive marker of low mood previously validated in a wide range of species, and report training and test data from three common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes. The chimpanzees were trained on an arbitrary visual discrimination in which lifting a pale grey paper cone was associated with reinforcement with a peanut, whereas lifting a dark grey cone was associated with no reward. The discrimination was trained by sequentially presenting the two cone types until significant differences in latency to touch the cone types emerged, and was confirmed by simultaneously presenting both cone types in choice trials. Subjects were subsequently tested on their latency to touch unrewarded cones of three intermediate shades of grey not previously seen. Pessimism was indicated by the similarity between the latency to touch intermediate cones and the latency to touch the trained, unreinforced, dark grey cones. Three subjects completed training and testing, two adult males and one adult female. All subjects learnt the discrimination (107–240 trials, and retained it during five sessions of testing. There was no evidence that latencies to lift intermediate cones increased over testing, as would have occurred if subjects learnt that these were never rewarded, suggesting that the task could be used for repeated testing of individual animals. There was a significant difference between subjects in their relative latencies to touch intermediate cones (pessimism index that emerged following the second test session, and was not changed by the addition of further data. The most dominant male subject was least pessimistic, and the female most pessimistic. We argue that the task has the potential to be used to assess

Personality in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes: exploring the hierarchical structure and associations with the vasopressin V1A receptor gene.

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Robert D Latzman

Full Text Available One of the major contributions of recent personality psychology is the finding that traits are related to each other in an organized hierarchy. To date, however, researchers have yet to investigate this hierarchy in nonhuman primates. Such investigations are critical in confirming the cross-species nature of trait personality helping to illuminate personality as neurobiologically-based and evolutionarily-derived dimensions of primate disposition. Investigations of potential genetic polymorphisms associated with hierarchical models of personality among nonhuman primates represent a critical first step. The current study examined the hierarchical structure of chimpanzee personality as well as sex-specific associations with a polymorphism in the promoter region of the vasopressin V1a receptor gene (AVPR1A, a gene associated with dispositional traits, among 174 chimpanzees. Results confirmed a hierarchical structure of personality across species and, despite differences in early rearing experiences, suggest a sexually dimorphic role of AVPR1A polymorphisms on hierarchical personality profiles at a higher-order level.

Personality in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Exploring the Hierarchical Structure and Associations with the Vasopressin V1A Receptor Gene

Science.gov (United States)

Latzman, Robert D.; Hopkins, William D.; Keebaugh, Alaine C.; Young, Larry J.

2014-01-01

One of the major contributions of recent personality psychology is the finding that traits are related to each other in an organized hierarchy. To date, however, researchers have yet to investigate this hierarchy in nonhuman primates. Such investigations are critical in confirming the cross-species nature of trait personality helping to illuminate personality as neurobiologically-based and evolutionarily-derived dimensions of primate disposition. Investigations of potential genetic polymorphisms associated with hierarchical models of personality among nonhuman primates represent a critical first step. The current study examined the hierarchical structure of chimpanzee personality as well as sex-specific associations with a polymorphism in the promoter region of the vasopressin V1a receptor gene (AVPR1A), a gene associated with dispositional traits, among 174 chimpanzees. Results confirmed a hierarchical structure of personality across species and, despite differences in early rearing experiences, suggest a sexually dimorphic role of AVPR1A polymorphisms on hierarchical personality profiles at a higher-order level. PMID:24752497

Signs of mood and anxiety disorders in chimpanzees.

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Hope R Ferdowsian

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: In humans, traumatic experiences are sometimes followed by psychiatric disorders. In chimpanzees, studies have demonstrated an association between traumatic events and the emergence of behavioral disturbances resembling posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD and depression. We addressed the following central question: Do chimpanzees develop posttraumatic symptoms, in the form of abnormal behaviors, which cluster into syndromes similar to those described in human mood and anxiety disorders? METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In phase 1 of this study, we accessed case reports of chimpanzees who had been reportedly subjected to traumatic events, such as maternal separation, social isolation, experimentation, or similar experiences. We applied and tested DSM-IV criteria for PTSD and major depression to published case reports of 20 chimpanzees identified through PrimateLit. Additionally, using the DSM-IV criteria and ethograms as guides, we developed behaviorally anchored alternative criteria that were applied to the case reports. A small number of chimpanzees in the case studies met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD and depression. Measures of inter-rater reliability, including Fleiss' kappa and percentage agreement, were higher with use of the alternative criteria for PTSD and depression. In phase 2, the alternative criteria were applied to chimpanzees living in wild sites in Africa (n = 196 and chimpanzees living in sanctuaries with prior histories of experimentation, orphanage, illegal seizure, or violent human conflict (n = 168. In phase 2, 58% of chimpanzees living in sanctuaries met the set of alternative criteria for depression, compared with 3% of chimpanzees in the wild (p = 0.04, and 44% of chimpanzees in sanctuaries met the set of alternative criteria for PTSD, compared with 0.5% of chimpanzees in the wild (p = 0.04. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Chimpanzees display behavioral clusters similar to PTSD and depression in their key

Effects of Relocation and Individual and Environmental Factors on the Long-Term Stress Levels in Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes: Monitoring Hair Cortisol and Behaviors.

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Yumi Yamanashi

Full Text Available Understanding the factors associated with the long-term stress levels of captive animals is important from the view of animal welfare. In this study, we investigated the effects of relocation in addition to individual and environmental factors related to social management on long-term stress level in group-living captive chimpanzees by examining behaviors and hair cortisol (HC. Specifically, we conducted two studies. The first compared changes in HC levels before and after the relocation of 8 chimpanzees (Study 1 and the second examined the relationship between individual and environmental factors and individual HC levels in 58 chimpanzees living in Kumamoto Sanctuary (KS, Kyoto University (Study 2. We hypothesized that relocation, social situation, sex, and early rearing conditions, would affect the HC levels of captive chimpanzees. We cut arm hair from chimpanzees and extracted and assayed cortisol with an enzyme immunoassay. Aggressive behaviors were recorded ad libitum by keepers using a daily behavior monitoring sheet developed for this study. The results of Study 1 indicate that HC levels increased during the first year after relocation to the new environment and then decreased during the second year. We observed individual differences in reactions to relocation and hypothesized that social factors may mediate these changes. In Study 2, we found that the standardized rate of receiving aggression, rearing history, sex, and group formation had a significant influence on mean HC levels. Relocation status was not a significant factor, but mean HC level was positively correlated with the rate of receiving aggression. Mean HC levels were higher in males than in females, and the association between aggressive interactions and HC levels differed by sex. These results suggest that, although relocation can affect long-term stress level, individuals' experiences of aggression and sex may be more important contributors to long-term stress than

Fecal microbial diversity and putative function in captive western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) and binturongs (Arctictis binturong).

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McKenney, Erin A; Ashwell, Melissa; Lambert, Joanna E; Fellner, Vivek

2014-11-01

Microbial populations in the gastrointestinal tract contribute to host health and nutrition. Although gut microbial ecology is well studied in livestock and domestic animals, little is known of the endogenous populations inhabiting primates or carnivora. We characterized microbial populations in fecal cultures from gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas) and binturongs (Arctictis binturong) to compare the microbiomes associated with different gastrointestinal morphologies and different omnivorous feeding strategies. Each species was fed a distinct standardized diet for 2 weeks prior to fecal collection. All diets were formulated to reflect the species' feeding strategies in situ. Fresh fecal samples were pooled within species and used to inoculate in vitro batch cultures. Acetate, propionate, butyrate and valerate were measured after 24 h of incubation. Eubacterial DNA was extracted from individual fecal samples, pooled, and the cpn60 gene region was amplified and then sequenced to identify the major eubacterial constituents associated with each host species. Short chain fatty acids (P < 0.001) and methane (P < 0.001) were significantly different across species. Eubacterial profiles were consistent with fermentation data and suggest an increase in diversity with dietary fiber. © 2014 International Society of Zoological Sciences, Institute of Zoology/Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Parasites of chimpanzees in Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda, with emphasis on comensal protozoans

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Petrášová, J.; Pomajbíková, K.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Jirků, M.; Profousová, Ilona; Modrý, David; Hashimoto, C.

2008-01-01

Roč. 79, č. 5 (2008), s. 370 ISSN 0015-5713. [Congress of the European Federation for Primatology /2./. 03.09.2007-07.09.2007, Prague] R&D Projects: GA ČR GA524/06/0264 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z60930519 Keywords : parasites * chimpanzee * Uganda Subject RIV: EG - Zoology

Assessing chimpanzee personality and subjective well-being in Japan.

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Weiss, Alexander; Inoue-Murayama, Miho; Hong, Kyung-Won; Inoue, Eiji; Udono, Toshifumi; Ochiai, Tomomi; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Hirata, Satoshi; King, James E

2009-04-01

We tested whether the cultural background of raters influenced ratings of chimpanzee personality. Our study involved comparing personality and subjective well-being ratings of 146 chimpanzees in Japan that were housed in zoos, research institutes, and a retirement sanctuary to ratings of chimpanzees in US and Australian zoos. Personality ratings were made on a translated and expanded version of a questionnaire used to rate chimpanzees in the US and Australia. Subjective well-being ratings were made on a translated version of a questionnaire used to rate chimpanzees in the US and Australia. The mean interrater reliabilities of the 43 original adjectives did not markedly differ between the present sample and the original sample of 100 zoo chimpanzees in the US. Interrater reliabilities of these samples were highly correlated, suggesting that their rank order was preserved. Comparison of the factor structures for the Japanese sample and for the original sample of chimpanzees in US zoos indicated that the overall structure was replicated and that the Dominance, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness domains clearly generalized. Consistent with earlier studies, older chimpanzees had higher Dominance and lower Extraversion and Openness scores. Correlations between the six domain scores and subjective well-being were comparable to those for chimpanzees housed in the US and Australia. These findings suggest that chimpanzee personality ratings are not affected by the culture of the raters.

Characterizing abnormal behavior in a large population of zoo-housed chimpanzees: prevalence and potential influencing factors

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Sarah L. Jacobson

2016-07-01

Full Text Available Abnormal behaviors in captive animals are generally defined as behaviors that are atypical for the species and are often considered to be indicators of poor welfare. Although some abnormal behaviors have been empirically linked to conditions related to elevated stress and compromised welfare in primates, others have little or no evidence on which to base such a relationship. The objective of this study was to investigate a recent claim that abnormal behavior is endemic in the captive population by surveying a broad sample of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, while also considering factors associated with the origins of these behaviors. We surveyed animal care staff from 26 accredited zoos to assess the prevalence of abnormal behavior in a large sample of chimpanzees in the United States for which we had information on origin and rearing history. Our results demonstrated that 64% of this sample was reported to engage in some form of abnormal behavior in the past two years and 48% of chimpanzees engaged in abnormal behavior other than coprophagy. Logistic regression models were used to analyze the historical variables that best predicted the occurrence of all abnormal behavior, any abnormal behavior that was not coprophagy, and coprophagy. Rearing had opposing effects on the occurrence of coprophagy and the other abnormal behaviors such that mother-reared individuals were more likely to perform coprophagy, whereas non-mother-reared individuals were more likely to perform other abnormal behaviors. These results support the assertion that coprophagy may be classified separately when assessing abnormal behavior and the welfare of captive chimpanzees. This robust evaluation of the prevalence of abnormal behavior in our sample from the U.S. zoo population also demonstrates the importance of considering the contribution of historical variables to present behavior, in order to better understand the causes of these behaviors and any potential relationship to

Intraspecific gestural laterality in chimpanzees and gorillas and the impact of social propensities.

Science.gov (United States)

Prieur, Jacques; Pika, Simone; Barbu, Stéphanie; Blois-Heulin, Catherine

2017-09-01

A relevant approach to address the mechanisms underlying the emergence of the right-handedness/left-hemisphere language specialization of humans is to investigate both proximal and distal causes of language lateralization through the study of non-human primates' gestural laterality. We carried out the first systematic, quantitative comparison of within-subjects' and between-species' laterality by focusing on the laterality of intraspecific gestures of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) living in six different captive groups. We addressed the following two questions: (1) Do chimpanzees and gorillas exhibit stable direction of laterality when producing different types of gestures at the individual level? If yes, is it related to the strength of laterality? (2) Is there a species difference in gestural laterality at the population level? If yes, which factors could explain this difference? During 1356 observation hours, we recorded 42335 cases of dyadic gesture use in the six groups totalling 39 chimpanzees and 35 gorillas. Results showed that both species could exhibit either stability or flexibility in their direction of gestural laterality. These results suggest that both stability and flexibility may have differently modulated the strength of laterality depending on the species social structure and dynamics. Furthermore, a multifactorial analysis indicates that these particular social components may have specifically impacted gestural laterality through the influence of gesture sensory modality and the position of the recipient in the signaller's visual field during interaction. Our findings provide further support to the social theory of laterality origins proposing that social pressures may have shaped laterality through natural selection. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Chimpanzee genomic diversity reveals ancient admixture with bonobos

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

de Manuel, Marc; Kuhlwilm, Martin; Frandsen, Peter

2016-01-01

Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have a complex demographic history. We analyzed the high-coverage whole genomes of 75 wild-born chimpanzees and bonobos from 10 countries in Africa. We found that chimpanzee population substructure makes genetic information a good predictor...

Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Felix Warneken

2007-07-01

Full Text Available People often act on behalf of others. They do so without immediate personal gain, at cost to themselves, and even toward unfamiliar individuals. Many researchers have claimed that such altruism emanates from a species-unique psychology not found in humans' closest living evolutionary relatives, such as the chimpanzee. In favor of this view, the few experimental studies on altruism in chimpanzees have produced mostly negative results. In contrast, we report experimental evidence that chimpanzees perform basic forms of helping in the absence of rewards spontaneously and repeatedly toward humans and conspecifics. In two comparative studies, semi-free ranging chimpanzees helped an unfamiliar human to the same degree as did human infants, irrespective of being rewarded (experiment 1 or whether the helping was costly (experiment 2. In a third study, chimpanzees helped an unrelated conspecific gain access to food in a novel situation that required subjects to use a newly acquired skill on behalf of another individual. These results indicate that chimpanzees share crucial aspects of altruism with humans, suggesting that the roots of human altruism may go deeper than previous experimental evidence suggested.

Social bonds in the dispersing sex: partner preferences among adult female chimpanzees.

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Foerster, Steffen; McLellan, Karen; Schroepfer-Walker, Kara; Murray, Carson M; Krupenye, Christopher; Gilby, Ian C; Pusey, Anne E

2015-07-01

In most primate societies, strong and enduring social bonds form preferentially among kin, who benefit from cooperation through direct and indirect fitness gains. Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes , differ from most species by showing consistent female-biased dispersal and strict male philopatry. In most East African populations, females tend to forage alone in small core areas and were long thought to have weak social bonds of little biological significance. Recent work in some populations is challenging this view. However, challenges remain in quantifying the influence of shared space use on association patterns, and in identifying the drivers of partner preferences and social bonds. Here, we use the largest data set on wild chimpanzee behaviour currently available to assess potential determinants of female association patterns. We quantify pairwise similarities in ranging, dyadic association and grooming for 624 unique dyads over 38 years, including 17 adult female kin dyads. To search for social preferences that could not be explained by spatial overlap alone, we controlled for expected association based on pairwise kernel volume intersections of core areas. We found that association frequencies among females with above-average overlap correlated positively with grooming rates, suggesting that associations reflected social preferences in these dyads. Furthermore, when available, females preferred kin over nonkin partners for association and grooming, and variability was high among nonkin dyads. While variability in association above and below expected values was high, on average, nonkin associated more frequently if they had immature male offspring, while having female offspring had the opposite effect. Dominance rank, an important determinant of reproductive success at Gombe, influenced associations primarily for low-ranking females, who associated preferentially with each other. Our findings support the hypothesis that female chimpanzees form well

Brief Report: Chimpanzee Social Responsiveness Scale (CSRS) Detects Individual Variation in Social Responsiveness for Captive Chimpanzees

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Faughn, Carley; Marrus, Natasha; Shuman, Jeremy; Ross, Stephen R.; Constantino, John N.; Pruett, John R., Jr.; Povinelli, Daniel J.

2015-01-01

Comparative studies of social responsiveness, a core impairment in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), will enhance our understanding of typical and atypical social behavior. We previously reported a quantitative, cross-species (human-chimpanzee) social responsiveness measure, which included the development of the Chimpanzee Social Responsiveness…

Structural and molecular study of the supraspinatus muscle of modern humans (Homo sapiens) and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Potau, J M; Casado, A; de Diego, M; Ciurana, N; Arias-Martorell, J; Bello-Hellegouarch, G; Barbosa, M; de Paz, F J; Pastor, J F; Pérez-Pérez, A

2018-04-21

To analyze the muscle architecture and the expression pattern of the myosin heavy chain (MyHC) isoforms in the supraspinatus of Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens in order to identify differences related to their different types of locomotion. We have analyzed nine supraspinatus muscles of Pan troglodytes and ten of Homo sapiens. For each sample, we have recorded the muscle fascicle length (MFL), the pennation angle, and the physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA). In the same samples, by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we have assessed the percentages of expression of the MyHC-I, MyHC-IIa, and MyHC-IIx isoforms. The mean MFL of the supraspinatus was longer (p = 0.001) and the PCSA was lower (p sapiens than in Pan troglodytes. Although the percentage of expression of MyHC-IIa was lower in Homo sapiens than in Pan troglodytes (p = 0.035), the combination of MyHC-IIa and MyHC-IIx was expressed at a similar percentage in the two species. The longer MFL in the human supraspinatus is associated with a faster contractile velocity, which reflects the primary function of the upper limbs in Homo sapiens-the precise manipulation of objects-an adaptation to bipedal locomotion. In contrast, the larger PCSA in Pan troglodytes is related to the important role of the supraspinatus in stabilizing the glenohumeral joint during the support phase of knuckle-walking. These functional differences of the supraspinatus in the two species are not reflected in differences in the expression of the MyHC isoforms. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Investigations on anopheline mosquitoes close to the nest sites of chimpanzees subject to malaria infection in Ugandan Highlands

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Krief Sabrina

2012-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Malaria parasites (Plasmodium sp., including new species, have recently been discovered as low grade mixed infections in three wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii sampled randomly in Kibale National Park, Uganda. This suggested a high prevalence of malaria infection in this community. The clinical course of malaria in chimpanzees and the species of the vectors that transmit their parasites are not known. The fact that these apes display a specific behaviour in which they consume plant parts of low nutritional value but that contain compounds with anti-malarial properties suggests that the apes health might be affected by the parasite. The avoidance of the night-biting anopheline mosquitoes is another potential behavioural adaptation that would lead to a decrease in the number of infectious bites and consequently malaria. Methods Mosquitoes were collected over two years using suction-light traps and yeast-generated CO2 traps at the nesting and the feeding sites of two chimpanzee communities in Kibale National Park. The species of the female Anopheles caught were then determined and the presence of Plasmodium was sought in these insects by PCR amplification. Results The mosquito catches yielded a total of 309 female Anopheles specimens, the only known vectors of malaria parasites of mammalians. These specimens belonged to 10 species, of which Anopheles implexus, Anopheles vinckei and Anopheles demeilloni dominated. Sensitive DNA amplification techniques failed to detect any Plasmodium-positive Anopheles specimens. Humidity and trap height influenced the Anopheles capture success, and there was a negative correlation between nest numbers and mosquito abundance. The anopheline mosquitoes were also less diverse and numerous in sites where chimpanzees were nesting as compared to those where they were feeding. Conclusions These observations suggest that the sites where chimpanzees build their nests every night might be

Nest grouping patterns of bonobos (Pan paniscus in relation to fruit availability in a forest-savannah mosaic.

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Adeline Serckx

Full Text Available A topic of major interest in socio-ecology is the comparison of chimpanzees and bonobos' grouping patterns. Numerous studies have highlighted the impact of social and environmental factors on the different evolution in group cohesion seen in these sister species. We are still lacking, however, key information about bonobo social traits across their habitat range, in order to make accurate inter-species comparisons. In this study we investigated bonobo social cohesiveness at nesting sites depending on fruit availability in the forest-savannah mosaic of western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, a bonobo habitat which has received little attention from researchers and is characterized by high food resource variation within years. We collected data on two bonobo communities. Nest counts at nesting sites were used as a proxy for night grouping patterns and were analysed with regard to fruit availability. We also modelled bonobo population density at the site in order to investigate yearly variation. We found that one community density varied across the three years of surveys, suggesting that this bonobo community has significant variability in use of its home range. This finding highlights the importance of forest connectivity, a likely prerequisite for the ability of bonobos to adapt their ranging patterns to fruit availability changes. We found no influence of overall fruit availability on bonobo cohesiveness. Only fruit availability at the nesting sites showed a positive influence, indicating that bonobos favour food 'hot spots' as sleeping sites. Our findings have confirmed the results obtained from previous studies carried out in the dense tropical forests of DRC. Nevertheless, in order to clarify the impact of environmental variability on bonobo social cohesiveness, we will need to make direct observations of the apes in the forest-savannah mosaic as well as make comparisons across the entirety of the bonobos' range using systematic

Head-mounted eye tracking of a chimpanzee under naturalistic conditions.

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Fumihiro Kano

Full Text Available This study offers a new method for examining the bodily, manual, and eye movements of a chimpanzee at the micro-level. A female chimpanzee wore a lightweight head-mounted eye tracker (60 Hz on her head while engaging in daily interactions with the human experimenter. The eye tracker recorded her eye movements accurately while the chimpanzee freely moved her head, hands, and body. Three video cameras recorded the bodily and manual movements of the chimpanzee from multiple angles. We examined how the chimpanzee viewed the experimenter in this interactive setting and how the eye movements were related to the ongoing interactive contexts and actions. We prepared two experimentally defined contexts in each session: a face-to-face greeting phase upon the appearance of the experimenter in the experimental room, and a subsequent face-to-face task phase that included manual gestures and fruit rewards. Overall, the general viewing pattern of the chimpanzee, measured in terms of duration of individual fixations, length of individual saccades, and total viewing duration of the experimenter's face/body, was very similar to that observed in previous eye-tracking studies that used non-interactive situations, despite the differences in the experimental settings. However, the chimpanzee viewed the experimenter and the scene objects differently depending on the ongoing context and actions. The chimpanzee viewed the experimenter's face and body during the greeting phase, but viewed the experimenter's face and hands as well as the fruit reward during the task phase. These differences can be explained by the differential bodily/manual actions produced by the chimpanzee and the experimenter during each experimental phase (i.e., greeting gestures, task cueing. Additionally, the chimpanzee's viewing pattern varied depending on the identity of the experimenter (i.e., the chimpanzee's prior experience with the experimenter. These methods and results offer new

The knowns and unknowns of chimpanzee culture

OpenAIRE

Gruber, Thibaud; Reynolds, Vernon; Zuberbühler, Klaus

2014-01-01

Claims of culture in chimpanzees appeared soon after the launch of the first field studies in africa.1 The notion of chimpanzee ‘material cultures’ was coined,2 and this was followed by a first formal comparison, which revealed an astonishing degree of behavioural diversity between the different study communities, mainly in terms of tool use.3 Although this behavioural diversity is still undisputed, the question of chimpanzee cultures has remained controversial.4–6 The debate has less to do w...

Chimpanzees prefer African and Indian music over silence.

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Mingle, Morgan E; Eppley, Timothy M; Campbell, Matthew W; Hall, Katie; Horner, Victoria; de Waal, Frans B M

2014-10-01

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 40(4) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition (see record 2014-35305-001). For the article, the below files were used to create the audio used in this study. The original West African akan and North Indian raga pieces were used in their entirety and the Japanese taiko piece was used from the 0:19 second mark through the end. The tempo of each piece was adjusted so that they maintained an identical base tempo of 90 beats per minute, then looped to create 40 minutes of continuous music. Additionally, the volume of the music was standardized at 50 dB so that the all music maintained the same average amplitude. All audio manipulations were completed using GarageBand © (Apple Inc.).] All primates have an ability to distinguish between temporal and melodic features of music, but unlike humans, in previous studies, nonhuman primates have not demonstrated a preference for music. However, previous research has not tested the wide range of acoustic parameters present in many different types of world music. The purpose of the present study is to determine the spontaneous preference of common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) for 3 acoustically contrasting types of world music: West African akan, North Indian raga, and Japanese taiko. Sixteen chimpanzees housed in 2 groups were exposed to 40 min of music from a speaker placed 1.5 m outside the fence of their outdoor enclosure; the proximity of each subject to the acoustic stimulus was recorded every 2 min. When compared with controls, subjects spent significantly more time in areas where the acoustic stimulus was loudest in African and Indian music conditions. This preference for African and Indian music could indicate homologies in acoustic preferences between nonhuman and human primates. .

The beginning of the end for chimpanzee experiments?

Science.gov (United States)

2008-01-01

The advanced sensory, psychological and social abilities of chimpanzees confer upon them a profound ability to suffer when born into unnatural captive environments, or captured from the wild – as many older research chimpanzees once were – and when subsequently subjected to confinement, social disruption, and involuntary participation in potentially harmful biomedical research. Justifications for such research depend primarily on the important contributions advocates claim it has made toward medical advancements. However, a recent large-scale systematic review indicates that invasive chimpanzee experiments rarely provide benefits in excess of their profound animal welfare, bioethical and financial costs. The approval of large numbers of these experiments – particularly within the US – therefore indicates a failure of the ethics committee system. By 2008, legislative or policy bans or restrictions on invasive great ape experimentation existed in seven European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In continuing to conduct such experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes, the US was almost completely isolated internationally. In 2007, however, the US National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources implemented a permanent funding moratorium on chimpanzee breeding, which is expected to result in a major decline in laboratory chimpanzee numbers over the next 30 years, as most are retired or die. Additionally, in 2008, The Great Ape Protection Act was introduced to Congress. The bill proposed to end invasive research and testing on an estimated 1,200 chimpanzees confined within US laboratories, and, for approximately 600 federally-owned, to ensure their permanent retirement to sanctuaries. These events have created an unprecedented opportunity for US legislators, researchers, and others, to consider a global ban on invasive chimpanzee research. Such a ban would not only uphold the best interests of chimpanzees, and other research

The effect of low- and high-fiber diets on the population of entodiniomorphid ciliates Troglodytella abrassarti in captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Petrželková, Klára Judita; Schovancová, Kateřina; Profousová, Ilona; Kišidayová, S.; Váradyová, Z.; Pekár, S.; Kamler, Jiří; Modrý, David

2012-01-01

Roč. 74, č. 7 (2012), s. 669-675 ISSN 0275-2565 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA524/06/0264; GA ČR GA206/09/0927 Institutional support: RVO:68081766 ; RVO:60077344 Keywords : entodiniomorphid ciliate * chimpanzee * fiber * starch Subject RIV: EG - Zoology Impact factor: 2.459, year: 2012

All great ape species (Gorilla gorilla, Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, Pongo abelii) and two-and-a-half-year-old children (Homo sapiens) discriminate appearance from reality.

Science.gov (United States)

Karg, Katja; Schmelz, Martin; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael

2014-11-01

Nonhuman great apes and human children were tested for an understanding that appearance does not always correspond to reality. Subjects were 29 great apes (bonobos [Pan paniscus], chimpanzees [Pan troglodytes], gorillas [Gorilla gorilla], and orangutans [Pongo abelii]) and 24 2½-year-old children. In our task, we occluded portions of 1 large and 1 small food stick such that the size relations seemed reversed. Subjects could then choose which one they wanted. There was 1 control condition and 2 experimental conditions (administered within subjects). In the control condition subjects saw only the apparent stick sizes, whereas in the 2 experimental conditions they saw the true stick sizes as well (the difference between them being what the subjects saw first: the apparent or the real stick sizes). All great ape species and children successfully identified the bigger stick, despite its smaller appearance, in the experimental conditions, but not in the control. We discuss these results in relation to the understanding of object permanence and conservation, and exclude reversed reward contingency learning as an explanation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Personality in wild bonobos (Pan paniscus).

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Garai, Cintia; Weiss, Alexander; Arnaud, Coline; Furuichi, Takeshi

2016-11-01

To understand the evolution of personality structure requires examining personality dimensions in multiple species using a common set of traits. Little research has been conducted on personality in wild populations of nonhuman primates. Using behavioral observations and questionnaire ratings, we examined factors influencing personality in 16 wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) at Wamba, Luo Scientific Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo. We extracted five factors from 31 of the items from the Hominoid Personality Questionnaire (HPQ) and three factors from observed behaviors. The HPQ factors were labeled Unemotionality Q , Friendliness Q , Aggressiveness Q , Irritability Q , and Activity Q . The behavioral factors were labeled Grooming B , Playfulness B , and Introversion B . We established the convergent and divergent validity of these factors by obtaining correlations between the HPQ and behavioral factors. We tested for sex differences and found that males were significantly higher on Introversion B and significantly lower in Irritability Q . We then tested for age differences and found that Friendliness Q was lower and Aggressiveness Q was higher in older individuals. Finally, we found that, among males, hierarchical rank was associated with higher Aggressiveness Q . These findings contrast with findings in chimpanzees in ways consistent with known species differences. For one, consistent with the more egalitarian structure of bonobo society, we did not identify a clear Dominance factor. Also, the results related to sex differences were consistent with previous findings that reveal closer bonds between female bonobos than female chimpanzees. These findings highlight the importance of studying personality in closely related species and the need to consider species' socioecology when studying personality. Am. J. Primatol. 78:1178-1189, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Controlled studies of chimpanzee cultural transmission.

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Horner, Victoria; de Waal, Frans B M

2009-01-01

Following the first long-term field studies of chimpanzees in the 1960s, researchers began to suspect that chimpanzees from different African populations varied in their behavior, and that some of these variations were transmitted through social learning, thus suggesting culture. Additional reports of chimpanzee culture have since accumulated, which involve an increasing amount of behavioral variation that has no obvious ecological or genetic explanation. To date, close to 50 cultural variants have been reported, including subsistence behavior, tool-use, communication signals, and grooming patterns. Nevertheless, field studies lack the experimental controls and manipulations necessary to conclusively demonstrate that the observed variation results from differential invention and social transmission of behavior. This would require that behavioral variants have been learned from others, a question best addressed in a controlled experimental setting. The following chapter details a series of experimental studies at Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University. In each case, the behavior of two captive groups (each N=12 individuals) was compared before and after the introduction of a novel foraging behavior by a trained conspecific "inventor." The studies were designed to investigate (i) the conditions under which chimpanzees learn from one another, (ii) how behaviors are transmitted, (iii) how cultures are maintained over generations. The results emphasize the importance of integrating both fieldwork and experimental approaches. Previous studies have reported deficits in chimpanzees' cultural capacities, but did so after testing them with human models, which are largely irrelevant to the problem at hand. A representative understanding of culture can only be gained when efforts are made to create a naturalistic learning environment in which chimpanzees have opportunities to learn spontaneously from conspecifics in a familiar social setting.

Is primate tool use special? Chimpanzee and New Caledonian crow compared.

Science.gov (United States)

McGrew, W C

2013-11-19

The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is well-known in both nature and captivity as an impressive maker and user of tools, but recently the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides) has been championed as being equivalent or superior to the ape in elementary technology. I systematically compare the two taxa, going beyond simple presence/absence scoring of tool-using and -making types, on four more precise aspects of material culture: (i) types of associative technology (tools used in combination); (ii) modes of tool making; (iii) modes of tool use; and (iv) functions of tool use. I emphasize tool use in nature, when performance is habitual or customary, rather than in anecdotal or idiosyncratic. On all four measures, the ape shows more variety than does the corvid, especially in modes and functions that go beyond extractive foraging. However, more sustained field research is required on the crows before this contrast is conclusive.

Social comparison mediates chimpanzees' responses to loss, not frustration

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hopper, Lydia M; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steve

2014-01-01

Why do chimpanzees react when their partner gets a better deal than them? Do they note the inequity or do their responses reflect frustration in response to unattainable rewards? To tease apart inequity and contrast, we tested chimpanzees in a series of conditions that created loss through...... individual contrast, through inequity, or by both. Chimpanzees were tested in four social and two individual conditions in which they received food rewards in return for exchanging tokens with an experimenter. In conditions designed to create individual contrast, after completing an exchange, the chimpanzees...... were given a relatively less-preferred reward than the one they were previously shown. The chimpanzees' willingness to accept the less-preferred rewards was independent of previously offered foods in both the social and individual conditions. In conditions that created frustration through inequity...

Chimpanzees show a developmental increase in susceptibility to contagious yawning: a test of the effect of ontogeny and emotional closeness on yawn contagion.

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Elainie Alenkær Madsen

Full Text Available Contagious yawning has been reported for humans, dogs and several non-human primate species, and associated with empathy in humans and other primates. Still, the function, development and underlying mechanisms of contagious yawning remain unclear. Humans and dogs show a developmental increase in susceptibility to yawn contagion, with children showing an increase around the age of four, when also empathy-related behaviours and accurate identification of others' emotions begin to clearly evince. Explicit tests of yawn contagion in non-human apes have only involved adult individuals and examined the existence of conspecific yawn contagion. Here we report the first study of heterospecific contagious yawning in primates, and the ontogeny of susceptibility thereto in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus. We examined whether emotional closeness, defined as attachment history with the yawning model, affected the strength of contagion, and compared the contagiousness of yawning to nose-wiping. Thirty-three orphaned chimpanzees observed an unfamiliar and familiar human (their surrogate human mother yawn, gape and nose-wipe. Yawning, but not nose-wiping, was contagious for juvenile chimpanzees, while infants were immune to contagion. Like humans and dogs, chimpanzees are subject to a developmental trend in susceptibility to contagious yawning, and respond to heterospecific yawn stimuli. Emotional closeness with the model did not affect contagion. The familiarity-biased social modulatory effect on yawn contagion previously found among some adult primates, seem to only emerge later in development, or be limited to interactions with conspecifics. The influence of the 'chameleon effect', targeted vs. generalised empathy, perspective-taking and visual attention on contagious yawning is discussed.

Behavioural diversity among the wild chimpanzee populations of Bossou and neighbouring areas, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. A preliminary report.

Science.gov (United States)

Humle, T; Matsuzawa, T

2001-01-01

We present a preliminary report on the differences and similarities in material culture among four neighbouring chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) communities. One of these communities includes Bossou, a long-term field site of wild chimpanzees, in Guinea, West Africa. We also conducted surveys of three new sites. Two of those surveyed areas, Seringbara in Guinea and Yealé in Côte d'Ivoire, are located less than 12 km away from Bossou in the Nimba Mountains region, which forms a natural boundary between Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. The third, Diécké, is situated further south-west, closer to the border with Liberia. During the surveys, we gathered behavioural information about these neighbouring populations of chimpanzees. The differences, as well as similarities, in material culture were tabulated based on our findings. The three behavioural variants found so far involve differences in nut cracking behaviour with regard to the species of nut cracked. Some variation in materials used for nut cracking has also been recorded. However, we still need to establish whether these local variations can be explained by the demands of the physical and biotic environments in which the populations of chimpanzees live. If these alternative hypotheses can be excluded with continuing research at the study sites, these differences are likely to be cultural behaviours that are influenced by the social context and mode, i.e. horizontal, vertical or oblique, of transmission, by the social structure and organisation of each community and/or perhaps by some form of social norms prevalent within these communities. Copyright 2001 S. Karger AG, Basel

Neural representation of face familiarity in an awake chimpanzee

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Hirokata Fukushima

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Evaluating the familiarity of faces is critical for social animals as it is the basis of individual recognition. In the present study, we examined how face familiarity is reflected in neural activities in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Skin-surface event-related brain potentials (ERPs were measured while a fully awake chimpanzee observed photographs of familiar and unfamiliar chimpanzee faces (Experiment 1 and human faces (Experiment 2. The ERPs evoked by chimpanzee faces differentiated unfamiliar individuals from familiar ones around midline areas centered on vertex sites at approximately 200 ms after the stimulus onset. In addition, the ERP response to the image of the subject’s own face did not significantly diverge from those evoked by familiar chimpanzees, suggesting that the subject’s brain at a minimum remembered the image of her own face. The ERPs evoked by human faces were not influenced by the familiarity of target individuals. These results indicate that chimpanzee neural representations are more sensitive to the familiarity of conspecific than allospecific faces.

Chimpanzee culture extends beyond matrilineal family units.

Science.gov (United States)

van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Mundry, Roger; Cronin, Katherine A; Bodamer, Mark; Haun, Daniel B M

2017-06-19

The 'grooming handclasp' is one of the most well-established cultural traditions in chimpanzees. A recent study by Wrangham et al.[1] reduced the cultural scope of grooming-handclasp behavior by showing that grooming-handclasp style convergence is "explained by matrilineal relationship rather than conformity" [1]. Given that we previously reported cultural differences in grooming-handclasp style preferences in captive chimpanzees [2], we tested the alternative view posed by Wrangham et al.[1] in the chimpanzee populations that our original results were based on. Using the same outcome variable as Wrangham et al.[1] - the proportion of high-arm grooming featuring palm-to-palm clasping - we found that matrilineal relationships explained neither within-group homogeneity nor between-group heterogeneity, thereby corroborating our original conclusion that grooming-handclasp behavior can represent a group-level cultural tradition in chimpanzees. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The beginning of the end for chimpanzee experiments?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Knight Andrew

2008-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract The advanced sensory, psychological and social abilities of chimpanzees confer upon them a profound ability to suffer when born into unnatural captive environments, or captured from the wild – as many older research chimpanzees once were – and when subsequently subjected to confinement, social disruption, and involuntary participation in potentially harmful biomedical research. Justifications for such research depend primarily on the important contributions advocates claim it has made toward medical advancements. However, a recent large-scale systematic review indicates that invasive chimpanzee experiments rarely provide benefits in excess of their profound animal welfare, bioethical and financial costs. The approval of large numbers of these experiments – particularly within the US – therefore indicates a failure of the ethics committee system. By 2008, legislative or policy bans or restrictions on invasive great ape experimentation existed in seven European countries, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In continuing to conduct such experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes, the US was almost completely isolated internationally. In 2007, however, the US National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources implemented a permanent funding moratorium on chimpanzee breeding, which is expected to result in a major decline in laboratory chimpanzee numbers over the next 30 years, as most are retired or die. Additionally, in 2008, The Great Ape Protection Act was introduced to Congress. The bill proposed to end invasive research and testing on an estimated 1,200 chimpanzees confined within US laboratories, and, for approximately 600 federally-owned, to ensure their permanent retirement to sanctuaries. These events have created an unprecedented opportunity for US legislators, researchers, and others, to consider a global ban on invasive chimpanzee research. Such a ban would not only uphold the best interests of

Age-related effects in the neocortical organization of chimpanzees

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Autrey, Michelle M; Reamer, Lisa A; Mareno, Mary Catherine

2014-01-01

chimpanzees. We used the BrainVisa software to measure total brain volume, gray and white matter volumes, gray matter thickness, and gyrification index in a cross-sectional sample of 219 captive chimpanzees (8-53 years old), with 38 subjects being 40 or more years of age. Mean depth and cortical fold opening...... of 11 major sulci of the chimpanzee brains were also measured. We found that chimpanzees showed increased gyrification with age and a cubic relationship between age and white matter volume. For the association between age and sulcus depth and width, the results were mostly non......Among primates, humans exhibit the most profound degree of age-related brain volumetric decline in particular regions, such as the hippocampus and the frontal lobe. Recent studies have shown that our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, experience little to no volumetric decline in gray...

Evaluation of lung immunity in chimpanzees

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bice, D.E.; Harris, D.L.; Muggenburg, B.A.; Bowen, J.A.

1980-01-01

The effects of inhaled pollutants on the immune defenses in the lung can be studied in several animal species. To assure that the data obtained can be extrapolated to man, it is essential that the development of lung immunity is similar in the experimental animal selected and in humans. Because of the similarity of immune responses in chimpanzees and in humans, the development of immunity in the chimpanzee after lung immunization was evaluated. The results from the chimpanzees were qualitatively the same as those from previous studies in which single lung lobes of dogs were immunized. It was concluded that immunotoxicology data obtained in dogs can be used to estimate the effects of inhaled pollutants on the immune defense mechanism in the human lung

76 FR 67401 - Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 90-Day Finding on a Petition To List All...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-11-01

... To List All Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as Endangered AGENCY: Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior... chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. We are now... details. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Janine Van Norman, Chief, Branch of Foreign Species, Endangered...

No impact of strongylid infections on the detection of Plasmodium spp. in faeces of western lowland gorillas and eastern chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Mapua, Mwanahamisi I; Pafčo, Barbora; Burgunder, Jade; Profousová-Pšenková, Ilona; Todd, Angelique; Hashimoto, Chie; Qablan, Moneeb A; Modrý, David; Petrželková, Klára J

2017-04-26

Although a high genetic diversity of Plasmodium spp. circulating in great apes has been revealed recently due to non-invasive methods enabling detection in faecal samples, little is known about the actual mechanisms underlying the presence of Plasmodium DNA in faeces. Great apes are commonly infected by strongylid nematodes, including hookworms, which cause intestinal bleeding. The impact of strongylid infections on the detection of Plasmodium DNA in faeces was assessed in wild, western, lowland gorillas from Dzanga Sangha Protected Areas, Central African Republic and eastern chimpanzees from Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Uganda. Fifty-one faecal samples from 22 habituated gorillas and 74 samples from 15 habituated chimpanzees were analysed using Cytochrome-b PCR assay and coprological methods. Overall, 26.4% of the analysed samples were positive for both Plasmodium spp. and strongylids. However, the results showed no significant impact of intensity of infections of strongylids on detection of Plasmodium DNA in gorilla and chimpanzee faeces. Bleeding caused by strongylid nematode Necator spp. cannot explain the presence of Plasmodium DNA in ape faeces.

Interactional synchrony in chimpanzees: Examination through a finger-tapping experiment.

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Yu, Lira; Tomonaga, Masaki

2015-05-11

Humans often unconsciously coordinate behaviour with that of others in daily life. This interpersonal coordination, including mimicry and interactional synchrony, has been suggested to play a fundamental role in social interaction. If this coordinative behavior is socially adaptive, it may be shared with other highly social animal species. The current study targeted chimpanzees, which phylogenetically are the closest living relatives of humans and live in complex social groups, and examined whether interactional synchrony would emerge in pairs of chimpanzees when auditory information about a partner's movement was provided. A finger-tapping task was introduced via touch panels to elicit repetitive and rhythmic movement from each chimpanzee. We found that one of four chimpanzees produced significant changes in both tapping tempo and timing of the tapping relative to its partner's tap when auditory sounds were provided. Although the current results may have limitations in generalizing to chimpanzees as a species, we suggest that a finger-tapping task is one potential method to investigate interactional synchrony in chimpanzees under a laboratory setup.

'Adoption' by maternal siblings in wild chimpanzees.

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Catherine Hobaiter

Full Text Available The adoption of unrelated orphaned infants is something chimpanzees and humans have in common. Providing parental care has fitness implications for both the adopter and orphan, and cases of adoption have thus been cited as evidence for a shared origin of an altruistic behaviour. We provide new data on adoptions in the free-living Sonso chimpanzee community in Uganda, together with an analysis of published data from other long-term field sites. As a default pattern, we find that orphan chimpanzees do not become adopted by adult group members but wherever possible associate with each other, usually as maternal sibling pairs. This occurs even if both partners are still immature, with older individuals effectively becoming 'child household heads'. Adoption of orphans by unrelated individuals does occur but usually only if no maternal siblings or other relatives are present and only after significant delays. In conclusion, following the loss of their mother, orphaned chimpanzees preferentially associate along pre-existing social bonds, which are typically strongest amongst maternal siblings.

Do wild chimpanzee populations develop diverse cultures? [Latest Thinking

OpenAIRE

Boesch, C.

2017-01-01

Humans pride themselves on having extensive and diverse cultures. However, cultures can also be observed in animals. The research presented in this video aims at understanding the cultures of wild chimpanzee populations in several African countries and how they differ from each other. As chimpanzees avoid human contact, CHRISTOPHE BOESCH explains, the research team conducted the study by setting up camera traps to catch chimpanzee behavior on video. Forty locations were carefully selected to ...

The knowns and unknowns of chimpanzee culture.

Science.gov (United States)

Gruber, Thibaud; Reynolds, Vernon; Zuberbühler, Klaus

2010-05-01

Claims of culture in chimpanzees appeared soon after the launch of the first field studies in africa.1 The notion of chimpanzee 'material cultures' was coined,2 and this was followed by a first formal comparison, which revealed an astonishing degree of behavioural diversity between the different study communities, mainly in terms of tool use.3 Although this behavioural diversity is still undisputed, the question of chimpanzee cultures has remained controversial.4-6 The debate has less to do with the definition of culture (most animal behaviour researchers accept the notion for behaviour that is 'transmitted repeatedly through social or observational learning to become a population-level characteristic' 3), but more with whether some key criteria are met.

Chimpanzee Food Preferences, Associative Learning, and the Origins of Cooking

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Beran, Michael J.; Hopper, Lydia M.; de Waal, Frans B.M.; Sayers, Ken; Brosnan, Sarah F.

2015-01-01

A recent report suggested that chimpanzees demonstrate the cognitive capacities necessary to understand cooking (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). We offer alternate explanations and mechanisms that could account for the behavioral responses of those chimpanzees without invoking the understanding of cooking as a process. We discuss broader issues surrounding the use of chimpanzees in modeling hominid behavior and understanding aspects of human evolution. PMID:26659967

Chimpanzee Food Preferences, Associative Learning, and the Origins of Cooking

OpenAIRE

Beran, Michael J.; Hopper, Lydia M.; de Waal, Frans B.M.; Sayers, Ken; Brosnan, Sarah F.

2016-01-01

A recent report suggested that chimpanzees demonstrate the cognitive capacities necessary to understand cooking (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). We offer alternate explanations and mechanisms that could account for the behavioral responses of those chimpanzees without invoking the understanding of cooking as a process. We discuss broader issues surrounding the use of chimpanzees in modeling hominid behavior and understanding aspects of human evolution.

Chimpanzee food preferences, associative learning, and the origins of cooking.

Science.gov (United States)

Beran, Michael J; Hopper, Lydia M; de Waal, Frans B M; Sayers, Ken; Brosnan, Sarah F

2016-06-01

A recent report suggested that chimpanzees demonstrate the cognitive capacities necessary to understand cooking (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). We offer alternate explanations and mechanisms that could account for the behavioral responses of those chimpanzees, without invoking the understanding of cooking as a process. We discuss broader issues surrounding the use of chimpanzees in modeling hominid behavior and understanding aspects of human evolution.

Pan-Tropical Analysis of Climate Effects on Seasonal Tree Growth

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Wagner, Fabien; Rossi, Vivien; Aubry-Kientz, Mélaine; Bonal, Damien; Dalitz, Helmut; Gliniars, Robert; Stahl, Clément; Trabucco, Antonio; Hérault, Bruno

2014-01-01

Climate models predict a range of changes in tropical forest regions, including increased average temperatures, decreased total precipitation, reduced soil moisture and alterations in seasonal climate variations. These changes are directly related to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, primarily CO2. Assessing seasonal forest growth responses to climate is of utmost importance because woody tissues, produced by photosynthesis from atmospheric CO2, water and light, constitute the main component of carbon sequestration in the forest ecosystem. In this paper, we combine intra-annual tree growth measurements from published tree growth data and the corresponding monthly climate data for 25 pan-tropical forest sites. This meta-analysis is designed to find the shared climate drivers of tree growth and their relative importance across pan-tropical forests in order to improve carbon uptake models in a global change context. Tree growth reveals significant intra-annual seasonality at seasonally dry sites or in wet tropical forests. Of the overall variation in tree growth, 28.7% was explained by the site effect, i.e. the tree growth average per site. The best predictive model included four climate variables: precipitation, solar radiation (estimated with extrasolar radiation reaching the atmosphere), temperature amplitude and relative soil water content. This model explained more than 50% of the tree growth variations across tropical forests. Precipitation and solar radiation are the main seasonal drivers of tree growth, causing 19.8% and 16.3% of the tree growth variations. Both have a significant positive association with tree growth. These findings suggest that forest productivity due to tropical tree growth will be reduced in the future if climate extremes, such as droughts, become more frequent. PMID:24670981

Mammals consumed by bonobos (Pan paniscus): new data from the Iyondji forest, Tshuapa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Sakamaki, Tetsuya; Maloueki, Ulrich; Bakaa, Batuafe; Bongoli, Lingomo; Kasalevo, Phila; Terada, Saeko; Furuichi, Takeshi

2016-07-01

Findings of regional variations in the behavioral patterns of non-human primates have led to the vigorous study of animal traditions (or culture), which contribute to a biological understanding of diversity in human cultures. Although our knowledge of behavioral variations of the bonobo (Pan paniscus) is limited compared with its sister species, the chimpanzee (P. troglodytes), variations in the prey of this species have been reported across study sites. This study describes evidence of mammals consumed by bonobos in the Iyondji site, which was established in 2010. We found evidence that Iyondji bonobos consumed duikers (Cephalophus dorsalis, C. monticola) and diurnal monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius), which is notable because only anomalures (Anomalurus spp.) are consumed by bonobos in Wamba, a long-term study site established in 1973, located in an area adjacent to Iyondji. Moreover, bonobos do not transfer between the two populations due to the river between the sites. According to our census of duikers and diurnal monkeys, Iyondji bonobos appeared to encounter diurnal monkeys more frequently than did Wamba bonobos. Although humans have apparently had a more pronounced impact on the habitats in Wamba than on those in Iyondji, it remains unclear how such environmental conditions may have contributed to the differences in the prey consumed by bonobos in different sites. Our findings suggest that additional research at various sites could reveal the nature of the variations in the behavior of bonobos.

Assessment of Above-Ground Biomass of Borneo Forests through a New Data-Fusion Approach Combining Two Pan-Tropical Biomass Maps

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Andreas Langner

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This study investigates how two existing pan-tropical above-ground biomass (AGB maps (Saatchi 2011, Baccini 2012 can be combined to derive forest ecosystem specific carbon estimates. Several data-fusion models which combine these AGB maps according to their local correlations with independent datasets such as the spectral bands of SPOT VEGETATION imagery are analyzed. Indeed these spectral bands convey information about vegetation type and structure which can be related to biomass values. Our study area is the island of Borneo. The data-fusion models are evaluated against a reference AGB map available for two forest concessions in Sabah. The highest accuracy was achieved by a model which combines the AGB maps according to the mean of the local correlation coefficients calculated over different kernel sizes. Combining the resulting AGB map with a new Borneo land cover map (whose overall accuracy has been estimated at 86.5% leads to average AGB estimates of 279.8 t/ha and 233.1 t/ha for forests and degraded forests respectively. Lowland dipterocarp and mangrove forests have the highest and lowest AGB values (305.8 t/ha and 136.5 t/ha respectively. The AGB of all natural forests amounts to 10.8 Gt mainly stemming from lowland dipterocarp (66.4%, upper dipterocarp (10.9% and peat swamp forests (10.2%. Degraded forests account for another 2.1 Gt of AGB. One main advantage of our approach is that, once the best fitting data-fusion model is selected, no further AGB reference dataset is required for implementing the data-fusion process. Furthermore, the local harmonization of AGB datasets leads to more spatially precise maps. This approach can easily be extended to other areas in Southeast Asia which are dominated by lowland dipterocarp forest, and can be repeated when newer or more accurate AGB maps become available.

Neighbouring chimpanzee communities show different preferences in social grooming behaviour.

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van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Cronin, Katherine A; Haun, Daniel B M; Mundry, Roger; Bodamer, Mark D

2012-11-07

Grooming handclasp (GHC) behaviour was originally advocated as the first evidence of social culture in chimpanzees owing to the finding that some populations engaged in the behaviour and others do not. To date, however, the validity of this claim and the extent to which this social behaviour varies between groups is unclear. Here, we measured (i) variation, (ii) durability and (iii) expansion of the GHC behaviour in four chimpanzee communities that do not systematically differ in their genetic backgrounds and live in similar ecological environments. Ninety chimpanzees were studied for a total of 1029 h; 1394 GHC bouts were observed between 2010 and 2012. Critically, GHC style (defined by points of bodily contact) could be systematically linked to the chimpanzee's group identity, showed temporal consistency both within and between groups, and could not be accounted for by the arm-length differential between partners. GHC has been part of the behavioural repertoire of the chimpanzees under study for more than 9 years (surpassing durability criterion) and spread across generations (surpassing expansion criterion). These results strongly indicate that chimpanzees' social behaviour is not only motivated by innate predispositions and individual inclinations, but may also be partly cultural in nature.

Subtle behavioral variation in wild chimpanzees, with special reference to Imanishi's concept of kaluchua.

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Nakamura, Michio; Nishida, Toshisada

2006-01-01

Here we consider the concept of kaluchua (a word adopted from the English "culture") in group-living animals developed by Imanishi in the 1950s. He distinguished it from bunka (the Japanese equivalent to the English "culture") because he thought that bunka had strong connotations of noble and intellectual human-like activities. Although he did not rigidly define kaluchua, his original concept of kaluchua was much broader than bunka and represented non-hereditary, acquired behavior that was acknowledged socially. However, instead of social life, complex feeding skills have often formed the central topic in the current studies of animal culture. In order to provide evidence that more subtle behavioral variations exist among wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) populations, we directly compared the behaviors of two well-habituated chimpanzee groups, at Bossou and Mahale. During a 2-month stay at Bossou, M.N. (the first author) saw several behavioral patterns that were absent or rare at Mahale. Two of them, "mutual genital touch" and "heel tap" were probably customary for mature females and for mature males, respectively. "Index to palm" and "sputter" are still open to question. These subtle patterns occurred more often than tool use during the study period, suggesting that rarity is not the main reason for their being ignored. Unlike tool use, some cultural behavioral patterns do not seem to require complex skills or intellectual processes, and sometimes it is hard to explain the existence of such behaviors only in terms of function.

Trade in orphans and bushmeat threatens one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's most important populations of eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hicks, T.C.; Darby, L.; Hart, J.; Swinkels, J.; January, N.; Menken, S.

2010-01-01

Following the invasion of the Bili-Uéré Domaine de Chasse by illegal gold miners in June 2007 and the subsequent abandonment of a long-term community conservation and research project there, the first author conducted a survey of chimpanzees and other large mammals on the south side of the Uele

Specific image characteristics influence attitudes about chimpanzee conservation and use as pets.

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Stephen R Ross

Full Text Available Chimpanzees are endangered in their native Africa but in the United States, they are housed not only in zoos and research centers but owned privately as pets and performers. In 2008, survey data revealed that the public is less likely to think that chimpanzees are endangered compared to other great apes, and that this is likely the result of media misportrayals in movies, television and advertisements. Here, we use an experimental survey paradigm with composite images of chimpanzees to determine the effects of specific image characteristics. We found that those viewing a photograph of a chimpanzee with a human standing nearby were 35.5% more likely to consider wild populations to be stable/healthy compared to those seeing the exact same picture without a human. Likewise, the presence of a human in the photograph increases the likelihood that they consider chimpanzees as appealing as a pet. We also found that respondents seeing images in which chimpanzees are shown in typically human settings (such as an office space were more likely to perceive wild populations as being stable and healthy compared to those seeing chimpanzees in other contexts. These findings shed light on the way that media portrayals of chimpanzees influence public attitudes about this important and endangered species.

Specific image characteristics influence attitudes about chimpanzee conservation and use as pets.

Science.gov (United States)

Ross, Stephen R; Vreeman, Vivian M; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V

2011-01-01

Chimpanzees are endangered in their native Africa but in the United States, they are housed not only in zoos and research centers but owned privately as pets and performers. In 2008, survey data revealed that the public is less likely to think that chimpanzees are endangered compared to other great apes, and that this is likely the result of media misportrayals in movies, television and advertisements. Here, we use an experimental survey paradigm with composite images of chimpanzees to determine the effects of specific image characteristics. We found that those viewing a photograph of a chimpanzee with a human standing nearby were 35.5% more likely to consider wild populations to be stable/healthy compared to those seeing the exact same picture without a human. Likewise, the presence of a human in the photograph increases the likelihood that they consider chimpanzees as appealing as a pet. We also found that respondents seeing images in which chimpanzees are shown in typically human settings (such as an office space) were more likely to perceive wild populations as being stable and healthy compared to those seeing chimpanzees in other contexts. These findings shed light on the way that media portrayals of chimpanzees influence public attitudes about this important and endangered species.

Chimpanzee social intelligence: selfishness, altruism, and the mother-infant bond.

Science.gov (United States)

Hirata, Satoshi

2009-01-01

To better understand the human mind from an evolutionary perspective, a great deal of research has focused on the closest living relative of humans, the chimpanzee, using various approaches, including studies of social intelligence. Here, I review recent research related to several aspects of social intelligence, including deception, understanding of perception and intention, social learning, trading, cooperation, and regard for others. Many studies have demonstrated that chimpanzees are proficient in using their social intelligence for selfish motives to benefit from their interactions with others. In contrast, it is not yet clear whether chimpanzees engage in prosocial behaviors that benefit others; however, chimpanzee mother-infant interactions indicate the possibility of such behaviors. Therefore, I propose that chimpanzees possess rudimentary traits of human mental competence not only in terms of theory of mind in a broader sense but also in terms of prosociality involving regard for others. Mother-infant interactions appear to be particularly important to understanding the manifestation of social intelligence from an evolutionary perspective.

Social network analysis shows direct evidence for social transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees.

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Catherine Hobaiter

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Social network analysis methods have made it possible to test whether novel behaviors in animals spread through individual or social learning. To date, however, social network analysis of wild populations has been limited to static models that cannot precisely reflect the dynamics of learning, for instance, the impact of multiple observations across time. Here, we present a novel dynamic version of network analysis that is capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition--that is, how successive observations by an individual influence its acquisition of the novel behavior. We apply this model to studying the spread of two novel tool-use variants, "moss-sponging" and "leaf-sponge re-use," in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Chimpanzees are widely considered the most "cultural" of all animal species, with 39 behaviors suspected as socially acquired, most of them in the domain of tool-use. The cultural hypothesis is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzees and a range of observational data. However, for wild groups, there is still no direct experimental evidence for social learning, nor has there been any direct observation of social diffusion of behavioral innovations. Here, we tested both a static and a dynamic network model and found strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, were significantly better explained by social than individual learning. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounted for 85% of observed events, with an estimated 15-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in wild chimpanzees can be socially learned, adding to the evidence that this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.

Social network analysis shows direct evidence for social transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Hobaiter, Catherine; Poisot, Timothée; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Hoppitt, William; Gruber, Thibaud

2014-09-01

Social network analysis methods have made it possible to test whether novel behaviors in animals spread through individual or social learning. To date, however, social network analysis of wild populations has been limited to static models that cannot precisely reflect the dynamics of learning, for instance, the impact of multiple observations across time. Here, we present a novel dynamic version of network analysis that is capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition--that is, how successive observations by an individual influence its acquisition of the novel behavior. We apply this model to studying the spread of two novel tool-use variants, "moss-sponging" and "leaf-sponge re-use," in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Chimpanzees are widely considered the most "cultural" of all animal species, with 39 behaviors suspected as socially acquired, most of them in the domain of tool-use. The cultural hypothesis is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzees and a range of observational data. However, for wild groups, there is still no direct experimental evidence for social learning, nor has there been any direct observation of social diffusion of behavioral innovations. Here, we tested both a static and a dynamic network model and found strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, were significantly better explained by social than individual learning. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounted for 85% of observed events, with an estimated 15-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in wild chimpanzees can be socially learned, adding to the evidence that this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.

Constraints on the exploitation of the functional properties of objects in expert tool-using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

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Povinelli, Daniel J; Frey, Scott H

2016-09-01

Many species exploit immediately apparent dimensions of objects during tool use and manufacture and operate over internal perceptual representations of objects (they move and reorient objects in space, have rules of operation to deform or modify objects, etc). Humans, however, actively test for functionally relevant object properties before such operations begin, even when no previous percepts of a particular object's qualities in the domain have been established. We hypothesize that such prospective diagnostic interventions are a human specialization of cognitive function that has been entirely overlooked in the neuropsychological literature. We presented chimpanzees with visually identical rakes: one was functional for retrieving a food reward; the other was non-functional (its base was spring-loaded). Initially, they learned that only the functional tool could retrieve a distant reward. In test 1, we explored if they would manually test for the rakes' rigidity during tool selection, but before using it. We found no evidence of such behavior. In test 2, we obliged the apes to deform the non-functional tool's base before using it, in order to evaluate whether this would cause them to switch rakes. It did not. Tests 3-6 attempted to focus the apes' attention on the functionally relevant property (rigidity). Although one ape eventually learned to abandon the non-functional rake before using it, she still did not attempt to test the rakes for rigidity prior to use. While these results underscore the ability of chimpanzees to use novel tools, at the same time they point toward a fundamental (and heretofore unexplored) difference in causal reasoning between humans and apes. We propose that this behavioral difference reflects a human specialization in how object properties are represented, which could have contributed significantly to the evolution of our technological culture. We discuss developing a new line of evolutionarily motivated neuropsychological research on

A neuroanatomical predictor of mirror self-recognition in chimpanzees.

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Hecht, E E; Mahovetz, L M; Preuss, T M; Hopkins, W D

2017-01-01

The ability to recognize one's own reflection is shared by humans and only a few other species, including chimpanzees. However, this ability is highly variable across individual chimpanzees. In humans, self-recognition involves a distributed, right-lateralized network including frontal and parietal regions involved in the production and perception of action. The superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) is a system of white matter tracts linking these frontal and parietal regions. The current study measured mirror self-recognition (MSR) and SLF anatomy in 60 chimpanzees using diffusion tensor imaging. Successful self-recognition was associated with greater rightward asymmetry in the white matter of SLFII and SLFIII, and in SLFIII's gray matter terminations in Broca's area. We observed a visible progression of SLFIII's prefrontal extension in apes that show negative, ambiguous, and compelling evidence of MSR. Notably, SLFIII's terminations in Broca's area are not right-lateralized or particularly pronounced at the population level in chimpanzees, as they are in humans. Thus, chimpanzees with more human-like behavior show more human-like SLFIII connectivity. These results suggest that self-recognition may have co-emerged with adaptations to frontoparietal circuitry. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press.

Snakes as hazards: modelling risk by chasing chimpanzees.

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McGrew, William C

2015-04-01

Snakes are presumed to be hazards to primates, including humans, by the snake detection hypothesis (Isbell in J Hum Evol 51:1-35, 2006; Isbell, The fruit, the tree, and the serpent. Why we see so well, 2009). Quantitative, systematic data to test this idea are lacking for the behavioural ecology of living great apes and human foragers. An alternative proxy is snakes encountered by primatologists seeking, tracking, and observing wild chimpanzees. We present 4 years of such data from Mt. Assirik, Senegal. We encountered 14 species of snakes a total of 142 times. Almost two-thirds of encounters were with venomous snakes. Encounters occurred most often in forest and least often in grassland, and more often in the dry season. The hypothesis seems to be supported, if frequency of encounter reflects selective risk of morbidity or mortality.

Pan-pan Girls: Humiliating Liberation in Postwar Japanese Literature

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Rumi Sakamoto

2010-09-01

Full Text Available This paper looks at some literary representations of the ‘pan-pan girls’ in postwar Japan. ‘Pan-pan’ is a derogatory term for street prostitutes who (mostly served the soldiers of the occupying forces. Immediately after World War II, the Japanese government established the RAA (Recreation Amusement Association and employed several thousand women to provide sexual services for foreign soldiers, ostensibly to protect Japanese women of middle and upper classes from rape and other violence. When the RAA was closed down in 1946 due to the US concern over widespread VD, many of the women who lost their jobs went out on the street and became private and illegal prostitutes – the pan-pan girls. With their red lipstick, cigarettes, nylon stockings and high-heel shoes, often holding onto the arms of tall, uniformed American GIs, the ‘pan-pan girls’ became a symbol of the occupation, and have been textually reproduced throughout the postwar period. This paper analyses the images and representations of the ‘pan-pan girls’ in postwar Japanese literature, to consider how the ‘pan-pan girls’ have functioned as a metaphor for the occupation and contributed to the public memory construction of the occupation. I identify some major codes of representations (victimisation, humiliation, and national trauma; eroticism and decadence; sexual freedom and materialism and argue that the highly gendered and sexualised bodies of the ‘pan-pan girls’ have continued to allow simplistic and selective remembering of the occupation at the expense of recalling the pivotal role of Japanese patriarchy in the postwar period.

Are behavioral differences among wild chimpanzee communities genetic or cultural? An assessment using tool-use data and phylogenetic methods.

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Lycett, Stephen J; Collard, Mark; McGrew, William C

2010-07-01

Over the last 30 years it has become increasingly apparent that there are many behavioral differences among wild communities of Pan troglodytes. Some researchers argue these differences are a consequence of the behaviors being socially learned, and thus may be considered cultural. Others contend that the available evidence is too weak to discount the alternative possibility that the behaviors are genetically determined. Previous phylogenetic analyses of chimpanzee behavior have not supported the predictions of the genetic hypothesis. However, the results of these studies are potentially problematic because the behavioral sample employed did not include communities from central Africa. Here, we present the results of a study designed to address this shortcoming. We carried out cladistic analyses of presence/absence data pertaining to 19 tool-use behaviors in 10 different P. troglodytes communities plus an outgroup (P. paniscus). Genetic data indicate that chimpanzee communities in West Africa are well differentiated from those in eastern and central Africa, while the latter are not reciprocally monophyletic. Thus, we predicted that if the genetic hypothesis is correct, the tool-use data should mirror the genetic data in terms of structure. The three measures of phylogenetic structure we employed (the Retention Index, the bootstrap, and the Permutation Tail Probability Test) did not support the genetic hypothesis. They were all lower when all 10 communities were included than when the three western African communities are excluded. Hence, our study refutes the genetic hypothesis and provides further evidence that patterns of behavior in chimpanzees are the product of social learning and therefore meet the main condition for culture. (c) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Obesity Related Alterations in Plasma Cytokines and Metabolic Hormones in Chimpanzees

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Pramod Nehete

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Obesity is characterized by chronic low-grade inflammation and serves as a major risk factor for hypertension, coronary artery disease, dyslipidemias, and type-2 diabetes. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in metabolic hormones, inflammatory cytokines, and immune function, in lean, overweight, and obese chimpanzees in a controlled environment. We observed increased plasma circulating levels of proinflammatory TH-1 cytokines, Interferon gamma, interleukin-6, interleukin-12p40, tumor necrosis factor, soluble CD40 ligand, and Interleukin-1β and anti-inflammatory TH-2 cytokines, Interleukin-4, Interleukin-RA, Interleukin-10, and Interleukin-13 in overweight and obese chimpanzees. We also observed increased levels of metabolic hormones glucagon-like-peptide-1, glucagon, connecting peptide, insulin, pancreatic peptide YY3–36, and leptin in the plasma of overweight and obese chimpanzees. Chemokine, eotaxin, fractalkine, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 were higher in lean compared to obese chimpanzees, while chemokine ligand 8 increased in plasma of obese chimpanzees. We also observed an obesity-related effect on immune function as demonstrated by lower mitogen induced proliferation, and natural killer activity and higher production of IFN-γ by PBMC in Elispot assay, These findings suggest that lean, overweight, and obese chimpanzees share circulating inflammatory cytokines and metabolic hormone levels with humans and that chimpanzees can serve as a useful animal model for human studies.

Chimpanzees, conflicts and cognition : The functions and mechanisms of chimpanzee conflict resolution

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Koski, S.E.

2007-01-01

In this thesis I studied conflict resolution in captive chimpanzees of the Arnhem Zoo, NL. Specifically, I investigated the occurrence and functions of various post-conflict strategies. Furthermore, I addressed the likely proximate cognitive and emotional mechanisms used in post-conflict

Agricultural expansion as risk to endangered wildlife: Pesticide exposure in wild chimpanzees and baboons displaying facial dysplasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Krief, Sabrina; Berny, Philippe; Gumisiriza, Francis; Gross, Régine; Demeneix, Barbara; Fini, Jean Baptiste; Chapman, Colin A; Chapman, Lauren J; Seguya, Andrew; Wasswa, John

2017-11-15

Prenatal exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors can affect development and induce irreversible abnormalities in both humans and wildlife. The northern part of Kibale National Park, a mid-altitude rainforest in western Uganda, is largely surrounded by industrial tea plantations and wildlife using this area (Sebitoli) must cope with proximity to human populations and their activities. The chimpanzees and baboons in this area raid crops (primarily maize) in neighboring gardens. Sixteen young individuals of the 66 chimpanzees monitored (25%) exhibit abnormalities including reduced nostrils, cleft lip, limb deformities, reproductive problems and hypopigmentation. Each pathology could have a congenital component, potentially exacerbated by environmental factors. In addition, at least six of 35 photographed baboons from a Sebitoli troop (17%) have similar severe nasal deformities. Our inquiries in villages and tea factories near Sebitoli revealed use of eight pesticides (glyphosate, cypermethrin, profenofos, mancozeb, metalaxyl, dimethoate, chlorpyrifos and 2,4-D amine). Chemical analysis of samples collected from 2014 to 2016 showed that mean levels of pesticides in fresh maize stems and seeds, soils, and river sediments in the vicinity of the chimpanzee territory exceed recommended limits. Notably, excess levels were found for total DDT and its metabolite pp'-DDE and for chlorpyrifos in fresh maize seeds and in fish from Sebitoli. Imidacloprid was detected in coated maize seeds planted at the edge the forest and in fish samples from the Sebitoli area, while no pesticides were detected in fish from central park areas. Since some of these pesticides are thyroid hormone disruptors, we postulate that excessive pesticide use in the Sebitoli area may contribute to facial dysplasia in chimpanzees and baboons through this endocrine pathway. Chimpanzees are considered as endangered by IUCN and besides their intrinsic value and status as closely related to humans, they

Chimpanzees in AIDS research: A biomedical and bioethical perspective.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

R. van den Akker (Ruud); M. Balls; J.W. Eichberg; J. Goodall; J.L. Heeney (Jonathan); A.D.M.E. Osterhaus (Albert); A.M. Prince; I. Spruit

1993-01-01

textabstractThe present article represents a consensus view of the appropriate utilization of chimpanzees in AIDS research arrived at as a result of a meeting of a group of scientists involved in AIDS research with chimpanzees and bioethicists. The paper considers which types of studies are

Do chimpanzees use weight to select hammer tools?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cornelia Schrauf

Full Text Available The extent to which tool-using animals take into account relevant task parameters is poorly understood. Nut cracking is one of the most complex forms of tool use, the choice of an adequate hammer being a critical aspect in success. Several properties make a hammer suitable for nut cracking, with weight being a key factor in determining the impact of a strike; in general, the greater the weight the fewer strikes required. This study experimentally investigated whether chimpanzees are able to encode the relevance of weight as a property of hammers to crack open nuts. By presenting chimpanzees with three hammers that differed solely in weight, we assessed their ability to relate the weight of the different tools with their effectiveness and thus select the most effective one(s. Our results show that chimpanzees use weight alone in selecting tools to crack open nuts and that experience clearly affects the subjects' attentiveness to the tool properties that are relevant for the task at hand. Chimpanzees can encode the requirements that a nut-cracking tool should meet (in terms of weight to be effective.

Chimpanzees, cooking, and a more comparative psychology.

Science.gov (United States)

Beran, Michael J; Hopper, Lydia M; de Waal, Frans B M; Brosnan, Sarah F; Sayers, Ken

2016-06-01

A recent report suggested that chimpanzees demonstrate the cognitive capacities necessary to understand cooking (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). We offered alternative explanations and mechanisms that could account for the behavioral responses of those chimpanzees, and questioned the manner in which the data were used to examine human evolution (Beran, Hopper, de Waal, Sayers, & Brosnan, 2015). Two commentaries suggested either that we were overly critical of the original report's claims and methodology (Rosati & Warneken, 2016), or that, contrary to our statements, early biological thinkers contributed little to questions concerning the evolutionary importance of cooking (Wrangham, 2016). In addition, both commentaries took issue with our treatment of chimpanzee referential models in human evolutionary studies. Our response offers points of continued disagreement as well as points of conciliation. We view Warneken and Rosati's general conclusions as a case of affirming the consequent-a logical conundrum in which, in this case, a demonstration of a partial list of the underlying abilities required for a cognitive trait/suite (understanding of cooking) are suggested as evidence for that ability. And although we strongly concur with both Warneken and Rosati (2015) and Wrangham (2016) that chimpanzee research is invaluable and essential to understanding humanness, it can only achieve its potential via the holistic inclusion of all available evidence-including that from other animals, evolutionary theory, and the fossil and archaeological records.

A Guttman-Based Approach to Identifying Cumulativeness Applied to Chimpanzee Culture

OpenAIRE

Graber, RB; de Cock, DR; Burton, ML

2012-01-01

Human culture appears to build on itself-that is, to be to some extent cumulative. Whether this property is shared by culture in the common chimpanzee is controversial. The question previously has been approached, qualitatively (and inconclusively), by debating whether any chimpanzee culture traits have resulted from individuals building on one another's work ("ratcheting"). The fact that the chimpanzees at different sites have distinctive repertoires of traits affords a different avenue of a...

The first chimpanzee sanctuary in Japan: an attempt to care for the "surplus" of biomedical research.

Science.gov (United States)

Morimura, Naruki; Idani, Gen'ichi; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro

2011-03-01

This article specifically examines several aspects of the human-captive chimpanzee bond and the effort to create the first chimpanzee sanctuary in Japan. We discuss our ethical responsibility for captive chimpanzees that have been used in biomedical research. On April 1, 2007, the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Uto (CSU) was established as the first sanctuary for retired laboratory chimpanzees in Japan. This initiative was the result of the continuous efforts by members of Support for African/Asian Great Apes (SAGA), and the Great Ape Information Network to provide a solution to the large chimpanzee colony held in biomedical facilities. However, the cessation of invasive biomedical studies using chimpanzees has created a new set of challenges because Japan lacks registration and laws banning invasive ape experiments and lacks a national policy for the life-long care of retired laboratory chimpanzees. Therefore, CSU has initiated a relocation program in which 79 retired laboratory chimpanzees will be sent to domestic zoos and receive life-long care. By the end of 2009, the number of chimpanzees living at CSU had decreased from 79 to 59 individuals. A nationwide network of care facilities and CSU to provide life-long care of retired laboratory chimpanzees is growing across Japan. This will result in humane treatment of these research animals. 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees.

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Gruber, Thibaud; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Neumann, Christof

2016-07-19

Ecological variation influences the appearance and maintenance of tool use in animals, either due to necessity or opportunity, but little is known about the relative importance of these two factors. Here, we combined long-term behavioural data on feeding and travelling with six years of field experiments in a wild chimpanzee community. In the experiments, subjects engaged with natural logs, which contained energetically valuable honey that was only accessible through tool use. Engagement with the experiment was highest after periods of low fruit availability involving more travel between food patches, while instances of actual tool-using were significantly influenced by prior travel effort only. Additionally, combining data from the main chimpanzee study communities across Africa supported this result, insofar as groups with larger travel efforts had larger tool repertoires. Travel thus appears to foster tool use in wild chimpanzees and may also have been a driving force in early hominin technological evolution.

Occlusal relief changes with molar wear in Pan troglodytes troglodytes and Gorilla gorilla gorilla.

Science.gov (United States)

M'kirera, Francis; Ungar, Peter S

2003-06-01

Most research on primate tooth form-function relationships has focused on unworn teeth. This study presents a morphological comparison of variably worn lower second molars (M(2)s) of lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla; n=47) and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes; n=54) using dental topographic analysis. High-resolution replicas of occlusal surfaces were prepared and scanned in 3D by laser scanning. The resulting elevation data were used to create a geographic information system (GIS) for each tooth. Occlusal relief, defined as the ratio of 3D surface area to 2D planometric area of the occlusal table, was calculated and compared between wear stages, taxa, and sexes. The results failed to show a difference in occlusal relief between males and females of a given taxon, but did evince differences between wear stages and between taxa. A lack of significant interaction between wear stage and taxon factors suggests that differences in occlusal relief between chimpanzees and gorillas are maintained throughout the wear sequence. These results add to a growing body of information on how molar teeth change with wear, and how differences between primate species are maintained at comparable points throughout the wear sequence. Such studies provide new insights into form-function relationships, which will allow us to infer certain aspects of diet in fossils with worn teeth.

Raking it in: the impact of enculturation on chimpanzee tool use.

Science.gov (United States)

Furlong, E E; Boose, K J; Boysen, S T

2008-01-01

Recent evidence for different tool kits, proposed to be based upon culture-like transmission, have been observed across different chimpanzee communities across Western Africa. In light of these findings, the reported failures by seven captive juvenile chimpanzees tested with 27 tool use tasks (Povinelli 2000) seem enigmatic. Here we report successful performance by a group of nine captive, enculturated chimpanzees, and limited success by a group of six semi-enculturated chimpanzees, on two of the Povinelli tasks, the Flimsy Tool task, and the Hybrid Tool task. All chimpanzees were presented with a rake with a flimsy head and a second rake with a rigid head, either of which could be used to attempt to retrieve a food reward that was out of reach. The rigid rake was constructed such that it had the necessary functional features to permit successful retrieval, while the flimsy rake did not. Both chimpanzee groups in the present experiment selected the functional rigid tool correctly to use during the Flimsy Tool task. All animals were then presented with two "hybrid rakes" A and B, with one half of each rake head constructed from flimsy, non-functional fabric, and the other half of the head was made of wood. Food rewards were placed in front of the rigid side of Rake A and the flimsy side of Rake B. To be successful, the chimps needed to choose the rake that had the reward in front of the rigid side of the rake head. The fully enculturated animals were successful in selecting the functional rake, while the semi-enculturated subjects chose randomly between the two hybrid tools. Compared with findings from Povinelli, whose non-enculturated animals failed both tasks, our results demonstrate that chimpanzees reared under conditions of semi-enculturation could learn to discriminate correctly the necessary tool through trial-and-error during the Flimsy Tool task, but were unable to recognize the functional relationship necessary for retrieving the reward with the "hybrid

The behavioral development of free-living chimpanzee babies and infants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Plooij, Fransiscus Xaverius

1980-01-01

This study aims to achieve an ontogenetically oriented understanding of behavioural phenomena during early development (first 2 years) of free-living chimpanzees. For this purpose, six chimpanzee babies and infants were observed in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania. The main question which dominates

Does geography or ecology best explain 'cultural' variation among chimpanzee communities?

Science.gov (United States)

Kamilar, Jason M; Marshack, Joshua L

2012-02-01

Much attention has been paid to geographic variation in chimpanzee behavior, but few studies have applied quantitative techniques to explain this variation. Here, we apply methods typically utilized in macroecology to explain variation in the putative cultural traits of chimpanzees. We analyzed published data containing 39 behavioral traits from nine chimpanzee communities. We used a canonical correspondence analysis to examine the relative importance of environmental characteristics and geography, which may be a proxy for inter-community gene flow and/or social transmission, for explaining geographic variation in chimpanzee behavior. We found that geography, and longitude in particular, was the best predictor of behavioral variation. Chimpanzee communities in close longitudinal proximity to each other exhibit similar behavioral repertoires, independent of local ecological factors. No ecological variables were significantly related to behavioral variation. These results support the idea that inter-community dispersal patterns have played a major role in structuring behavioral variation. We cannot be certain whether behavioral variation has a genetic basis, is the result of innovation and diffusion, or a combination of the two. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Humans with chimpanzee-like major histocompatibility complex-specificities control HIV-1 infection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hoof, Ilka; Kesmir, Can; Lund, Ole

2008-01-01

and the progression rate to AIDS. Chimpanzees control HIV-1 viral replication and develop a chronic infection without progressing to AIDS. A similar course of disease is observed in human long-term non-progressors. Objective: To investigate if long-term non-progressors and chimpanzees have functional similarities...... in their MHC class I repertoire. Methods: We compared the specificity of groups of human MHC molecules associated with different levels of viremia in HIV-1 infected individuals with those of chimpanzee. Results and conclusion: We demonstrate that human MHC with control of HIV-1 viral load share binding motifs...... with chimpanzee MHC. Moreover, we find that chimpanzee and human MHC associated with low viral load are predicted to elicit broader Gag-specific immune responses than human MHC associated with high viral load, thus supporting earlier findings that Gag-specific immune responses are essential for HIV-1 control....

The price of play: self-organized infant mortality cycles in chimpanzees.

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Hjalmar S Kuehl

Full Text Available Chimpanzees have been used extensively as a model system for laboratory research on infectious diseases. Ironically, we know next to nothing about disease dynamics in wild chimpanzee populations. Here, we analyze long-term demographic and behavioral data from two habituated chimpanzee communities in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, where previous work has shown respiratory pathogens to be an important source of infant mortality. In this paper we trace the effect of social connectivity on infant mortality dynamics. We focus on social play which, as the primary context of contact between young chimpanzees, may serve as a key venue for pathogen transmission. Infant abundance and mortality rates at Taï cycled regularly and in a way that was not well explained in terms of environmental forcing. Rather, infant mortality cycles appeared to self-organize in response to the ontogeny of social play. Each cycle started when the death of multiple infants in an outbreak synchronized the reproductive cycles of their mothers. A pulse of births predictably arrived about twelve months later, with social connectivity increasing over the following two years as the large birth cohort approached the peak of social play. The high social connectivity at this play peak then appeared to facilitate further outbreaks. Our results provide the first evidence that social play has a strong role in determining chimpanzee disease transmission risk and the first record of chimpanzee disease cycles similar to those seen in human children. They also lend more support to the view that infectious diseases are a major threat to the survival of remaining chimpanzee populations.

Chimpanzee females queue but males compete for social status

Science.gov (United States)

Foerster, Steffen; Franz, Mathias; Murray, Carson M.; Gilby, Ian C.; Feldblum, Joseph T.; Walker, Kara K.; Pusey, Anne E.

2016-01-01

Dominance hierarchies are widespread in animal social groups and often have measureable effects on individual health and reproductive success. Dominance ranks are not static individual attributes, however, but instead are influenced by two independent processes: 1) changes in hierarchy membership and 2) successful challenges of higher-ranking individuals. Understanding which of these processes dominates the dynamics of rank trajectories can provide insights into fitness benefits of within-sex competition. This question has yet to be examined systematically in a wide range of taxa due to the scarcity of long-term data and a lack of appropriate methodologies for distinguishing between alternative causes of rank changes over time. Here, we expand on recent work and develop a new likelihood-based Elo rating method that facilitates the systematic assessment of rank dynamics in animal social groups, even when interaction data are sparse. We apply this method to characterize long-term rank trajectories in wild eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and find remarkable sex differences in rank dynamics, indicating that females queue for social status while males actively challenge each other to rise in rank. Further, our results suggest that natal females obtain a head start in the rank queue if they avoid dispersal, with potential fitness benefits. PMID:27739527

Animal culture: chimpanzee conformity?

Science.gov (United States)

van Schaik, Carel P

2012-05-22

Culture-like phenomena in wild animals have received much attention, but how good is the evidence and how similar are they to human culture? New data on chimpanzees suggest their culture may even have an element of conformity. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Specificity of chimpanzee antibodies binding a strain-specific HIV-1 neutralization epitope of the external envelope

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Goudsmit, J.; Bakker, M.; Smit, L.; Meloen, R. H.

1989-01-01

Sera from three chimpanzees infected with a primary lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV-1) or human T-lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-IIIB) passage, from two chimpanzees infected with blood from the primary infected chimpanzees, and from one chimpanzee infected with blood from a secondary

Influence of personality, age, sex, and estrous state on chimpanzee problem-solving success

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hopper, Lydia M; Price, Sara A; Freeman, Hani D

2014-01-01

Despite the importance of individual problem solvers for group- and individual-level fitness, the correlates of individual problem-solving success are still an open topic of investigation. In addition to demographic factors, such as age or sex, certain personality dimensions have also been revealed...... as reliable correlates of problem-solving by animals. Such correlates, however, have been little-studied in chimpanzees. To empirically test the influence of age, sex, estrous state, and different personality factors on chimpanzee problem-solving, we individually tested 36 captive chimpanzees with two novel...... with the luteinizing hormone surge of a female's estrous cycle) and again when it was detumescent. Although we found no correlation between the chimpanzees' success with either puzzle and their age or sex, the chimpanzees' personality ratings did correlate with responses to the novel foraging puzzles. Specifically...

Chimpanzees' socially maintained food preferences indicate both conservatism and conformity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hopper, LM; Schapiro, Steve; Lambeth, SP

2011-01-01

. This study provides the first evidence that chimpanzees show such conservatism even when the new method employs the identical required behaviour as the first, but for a different reward. Groups of chimpanzees could choose to exchange one of two types of inedible tokens, with each token type being associated...... with a different food reward: one type was rewarded with a highly preferred food (grape) and the other type was rewarded with a less preferred food (carrot). Individuals first observed a model chimpanzee from their social group trained to choose one of the two types of tokens. In one group, this token earned...... a carrot, while in the other, control, group the token earned a grape. In both groups, chimpanzees conformed to the trained model’s choice. This was especially striking for those gaining the pieces of carrot, the less favoured reward. This resulted in a population-level trend of food choices, even when...

Chimpanzees and bonobos differ in intrinsic motivation for tool use.

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Koops, Kathelijne; Furuichi, Takeshi; Hashimoto, Chie

2015-06-16

Tool use in nonhuman apes can help identify the conditions that drove the extraordinary expansion of hominin technology. Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living relatives. Whereas chimpanzees are renowned for their tool use, bonobos use few tools and none in foraging. We investigated whether extrinsic (ecological and social opportunities) or intrinsic (predispositions) differences explain this contrast by comparing chimpanzees at Kalinzu (Uganda) and bonobos at Wamba (DRC). We assessed ecological opportunities based on availability of resources requiring tool use. We examined potential opportunities for social learning in immature apes. Lastly, we investigated predispositions by measuring object manipulation and object play. Extrinsic opportunities did not explain the tool use difference, whereas intrinsic predispositions did. Chimpanzees manipulated and played more with objects than bonobos, despite similar levels of solitary and social play. Selection for increased intrinsic motivation to manipulate objects likely also played an important role in the evolution of hominin tool use.

Social disappointment explains chimpanzees' behaviour in the inequity aversion task.

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Engelmann, Jan M; Clift, Jeremy B; Herrmann, Esther; Tomasello, Michael

2017-08-30

Chimpanzees' refusal of less-preferred food when an experimenter has previously provided preferred food to a conspecific has been taken as evidence for a sense of fairness. Here, we present a novel hypothesis-the social disappointment hypothesis-according to which food refusals express chimpanzees' disappointment in the human experimenter for not rewarding them as well as they could have. We tested this hypothesis using a two-by-two design in which food was either distributed by an experimenter or a machine and with a partner present or absent. We found that chimpanzees were more likely to reject food when it was distributed by an experimenter rather than by a machine and that they were not more likely to do so when a partner was present. These results suggest that chimpanzees' refusal of less-preferred food stems from social disappointment in the experimenter and not from a sense of fairness. © 2017 The Author(s).

Human children rely more on social information than chimpanzees do.

Science.gov (United States)

van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Call, Josep; Haun, Daniel B M

2014-11-01

Human societies are characterized by more cultural diversity than chimpanzee communities. However, it is currently unclear what mechanism might be driving this difference. Because reliance on social information is a pivotal characteristic of culture, we investigated individual and social information reliance in children and chimpanzees. We repeatedly presented subjects with a reward-retrieval task on which they had collected conflicting individual and social information of equal accuracy in counterbalanced order. While both species relied mostly on their individual information, children but not chimpanzees searched for the reward at the socially demonstrated location more than at a random location. Moreover, only children used social information adaptively when individual knowledge on the location of the reward had not yet been obtained. Social information usage determines information transmission and in conjunction with mechanisms that create cultural variants, such as innovation, it facilitates diversity. Our results may help explain why humans are more culturally diversified than chimpanzees. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Niche partitioning in sympatric Gorilla and Pan from Cameroon: implications for life history strategies and for reconstructing the evolution of hominin life history.

Science.gov (United States)

Macho, Gabriele A; Lee-Thorp, Julia A

2014-01-01

Factors influencing the hominoid life histories are poorly understood, and little is known about how ecological conditions modulate the pace of their development. Yet our limited understanding of these interactions underpins life history interpretations in extinct hominins. Here we determined the synchronisation of dental mineralization/eruption with brain size in a 20th century museum collection of sympatric Gorilla gorilla and Pan troglodytes from Central Cameroon. Using δ13C and δ15N of individuals' hair, we assessed whether and how differences in diet and habitat use may have impacted on ape development. The results show that, overall, gorilla hair δ13C and δ15N values are more variable than those of chimpanzees, and that gorillas are consistently lower in δ13C and δ15N compared to chimpanzees. Within a restricted, isotopically-constrained area, gorilla brain development appears delayed relative to dental mineralization/eruption [or dental development is accelerated relative to brains]: only about 87.8% of adult brain size is attained by the time first permanent molars come into occlusion, whereas it is 92.3% in chimpanzees. Even when M1s are already in full functional occlusion, gorilla brains lag behind those of chimpanzee (91% versus 96.4%), relative to tooth development. Both bootstrap analyses and stable isotope results confirm that these results are unlikely due to sampling error. Rather, δ15N values imply that gorillas are not fully weaned (physiologically mature) until well after M1 are in full functional occlusion. In chimpanzees the transition from infant to adult feeding appears (a) more gradual and (b) earlier relative to somatic development. Taken together, the findings are consistent with life history theory that predicts delayed development when non-density dependent mortality is low, i.e. in closed habitats, and with the "risk aversion" hypothesis for frugivorous species as a means to avert starvation. Furthermore, the results highlight

Niche partitioning in sympatric Gorilla and Pan from Cameroon: implications for life history strategies and for reconstructing the evolution of hominin life history.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gabriele A Macho

Full Text Available Factors influencing the hominoid life histories are poorly understood, and little is known about how ecological conditions modulate the pace of their development. Yet our limited understanding of these interactions underpins life history interpretations in extinct hominins. Here we determined the synchronisation of dental mineralization/eruption with brain size in a 20th century museum collection of sympatric Gorilla gorilla and Pan troglodytes from Central Cameroon. Using δ13C and δ15N of individuals' hair, we assessed whether and how differences in diet and habitat use may have impacted on ape development. The results show that, overall, gorilla hair δ13C and δ15N values are more variable than those of chimpanzees, and that gorillas are consistently lower in δ13C and δ15N compared to chimpanzees. Within a restricted, isotopically-constrained area, gorilla brain development appears delayed relative to dental mineralization/eruption [or dental development is accelerated relative to brains]: only about 87.8% of adult brain size is attained by the time first permanent molars come into occlusion, whereas it is 92.3% in chimpanzees. Even when M1s are already in full functional occlusion, gorilla brains lag behind those of chimpanzee (91% versus 96.4%, relative to tooth development. Both bootstrap analyses and stable isotope results confirm that these results are unlikely due to sampling error. Rather, δ15N values imply that gorillas are not fully weaned (physiologically mature until well after M1 are in full functional occlusion. In chimpanzees the transition from infant to adult feeding appears (a more gradual and (b earlier relative to somatic development. Taken together, the findings are consistent with life history theory that predicts delayed development when non-density dependent mortality is low, i.e. in closed habitats, and with the "risk aversion" hypothesis for frugivorous species as a means to avert starvation. Furthermore, the

Ontogenetic study of the skull in modern humans and the common chimpanzees: neotenic hypothesis reconsidered with a tridimensional Procrustes analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Penin, Xavier; Berge, Christine; Baylac, Michel

2002-05-01

Heterochronic studies compare ontogenetic trajectories of an organ in different species: here, the skulls of common chimpanzees and modern humans. A growth trajectory requires three parameters: size, shape, and ontogenetic age. One of the great advantages of the Procrustes method is the precise definition of size and shape for whole organs such as the skull. The estimated ontogenetic age (dental stages) is added to the plot to give a graphical representation to compare growth trajectories. We used the skulls of 41 Homo sapiens and 50 Pan troglodytes at various stages of growth. The Procrustes superimposition of all specimens was completed by statistical procedures (principal component analysis, multivariate regression, and discriminant function) to calculate separately size-related shape changes (allometry common to chimpanzees and humans), and interspecific shape differences (discriminant function). The results confirm the neotenic theory of the human skull (sensu Gould [1977] Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Cambridge: Harvard University Press; Alberch et al. [1979] Paleobiology 5:296-317), but modify it slightly. Human growth is clearly retarded in terms of both the magnitude of changes (size-shape covariation) and shape alone (size-shape dissociation) with respect to the chimpanzees. At the end of growth, the adult skull in humans reaches an allometric shape (size-related shape) which is equivalent to that of juvenile chimpanzees with no permanent teeth, and a size which is equivalent to that of adult chimpanzees. Our results show that human neoteny involves not only shape retardation (paedomorphosis), but also changes in relative growth velocity. Before the eruption of the first molar, human growth is accelerated, and then strongly decelerated, relative to the growth of the chimpanzee as a reference. This entails a complex process, which explains why these species reach the same overall (i.e., brain + face) size in adult stage. The neotenic traits seem to concern

A critical role for the chimpanzee model in the study of hepatitis C.

Science.gov (United States)

Bukh, Jens

2004-06-01

Chimpanzees remain the only recognized animal model for the study of hepatitis C virus (HCV). Studies performed in chimpanzees played a critical role in the discovery of HCV and are continuing to play an essential role in defining the natural history of this important human pathogen. In the absence of a reproducible cell culture system, the infectivity titer of HCV challenge pools can be determined only in chimpanzees. Recent studies in chimpanzees have provided new insight into the nature of host immune responses-particularly the intrahepatic responses-following primary and secondary experimental HCV infections. The immunogenicity and efficacy of vaccine candidates against HCV can be tested only in chimpanzees. Finally, it would not have been possible to demonstrate the infectivity of infectious clones of HCV without chimpanzees. Chimpanzees became infected when RNA transcripts from molecular clones were inoculated directly into the liver. The infection generated by such transfection did not differ significantly from that observed in animals infected intravenously with wild-type HCV. The RNA inoculated into chimpanzees originated from a single sequence, and the animals therefore had a monoclonal HCV infection. Monoclonal infection simplifies studies of HCV, because virus interaction with the host is not confounded by the quasispecies invariably present in a natural infection. It furthermore permits true homologous challenge in studies of protective immunity and in testing the efficacy of vaccine candidates. Finally, this in vivo transfection system has made it possible to test for the first time the importance of genetic elements for HCV infectivity.

Depression of T lymphocyte function in chimpanzees receiving thymectomy and irradiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gilbertsen, R.B.; Metzgar, R.S.

1978-01-01

In studies analogous to those in which the thymus dependency of immune functions in murine systems was determined, three chimpanzees were thymectomized, splenectomized, exposed to lethal doses of whole body x-irradiation with limited bone marrow shielding, and subsequently evaluated for lymphocyte markers and functions over a period of years. In the oldest animal studied (Irena, 7.2 years at surgery), the percentage of peripheral blood T cells decreased to about 60% of control values and remained at that level for approximately 1 1 / 2 years before returning to normal. In the two youngest chimpanzees T cell rosette values dropped to 15 to 40% of control values after irradiation. T cell percentages in one of these young chimpanzees returned to about 75% of the controls 2 1 / 2 years after x-irradiation. Phytohemagglutinin and concanavalin A mitogen responses were less affected in the oldest chimpanzee. However, even in the oldest animal, the responses to phytohemagglutinin and concanavalin A began to show a gradual and consistent decline 1 1 / 2 years after irradiation. Mixed leukocyte culture responsiveness was most affected by the experimental procedures, being greatly reduced in all three chimpanzees during varying time intervals. In general, the effects of the experimental procedures used to produce T cell deficiencies varied with the age of the chimpanzee at surgery, the time after irradiation when the animal was tested, and the lymphocyte marker or function studied

Evolution of the NANOG pseudogene family in the human and chimpanzee genomes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maughan Peter J

2006-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The NANOG gene is expressed in mammalian embryonic stem cells where it maintains cellular pluripotency. An unusually large family of pseudogenes arose from it with one unprocessed and ten processed pseudogenes in the human genome. This article compares the NANOG gene and its pseudogenes in the human and chimpanzee genomes and derives an evolutionary history of this pseudogene family. Results The NANOG gene and all pseudogenes except NANOGP8 are present at their expected orthologous chromosomal positions in the chimpanzee genome when compared to the human genome, indicating that their origins predate the human-chimpanzee divergence. Analysis of flanking DNA sequences demonstrates that NANOGP8 is absent from the chimpanzee genome. Conclusion Based on the most parsimonious ordering of inferred source-gene mutations, the deduced evolutionary origins for the NANOG pseudogene family in the human and chimpanzee genomes, in order of most ancient to most recent, are NANOGP6, NANOGP5, NANOGP3, NANOGP10, NANOGP2, NANOGP9, NANOGP7, NANOGP1, and NANOGP4. All of these pseudogenes were fixed in the genome of the human-chimpanzee common ancestor. NANOGP8 is the most recent pseudogene and it originated exclusively in the human lineage after the human-chimpanzee divergence. NANOGP1 is apparently an unprocessed pseudogene. Comparison of its sequence to the functional NANOG gene's reading frame suggests that this apparent pseudogene remained functional after duplication and, therefore, was subject to selection-driven conservation of its reading frame, and that it may retain some functionality or that its loss of function may be evolutionarily recent.

The emergence of social cognition in three young chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Tomasello, Michael; Carpenter, Malinda

2005-01-01

We report a series of 10 studies on the social-cognitive abilities of three young chimpanzees. The studies were all ones previously conducted with human infants. The chimpanzees were 1-5 years of age, had been raised mostly by humans, and were tested mostly directly by a familiar human experimenter. First, in a longitudinal investigation with repeated measurements from a social-cognitive test battery, the three young chimpanzees were similar in many ways to human infants; the major difference was a total lack of attempts to share attention with others either in joint attentional interactions or through declarative gestures. Second, in imitation-based tests of the understanding of intentional action, the chimpanzees, like human infants, showed an understanding of failed attempts and accidents; but they did not pay attention to the behavioral style of the actor or the actor's reasons for choosing a particular behavioral means. Third, in tests of their understanding of visual perception, the chimpanzees followed the gaze direction of a human to an out-of-sight location behind a barrier and gestured more to a human who could see them than to one who could not; but they showed no understanding that perceivers can focus their attention on one thing, or one aspect of a thing, within their perceptual fields for a reason. Finally, in tests of joint intentions and joint attention, the chimpanzees showed no ability to either reverse roles with a partner in a collaborative interaction or to set up a joint attentional framework for understanding the communicative intentions behind a pointing gesture. Taken together, these findings support the idea that the early ontogeny of human social cognition comprises two distinct trajectories, each with its own evolutionary history: one for understanding the basics of goal-directed action and perception, common to all apes, and another for sharing psychological states with others in collaborative acts involving joint intentions and

Able-bodied wild chimpanzees imitate a motor procedure used by a disabled individual to overcome handicap.

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Catherine Hobaiter

2010-08-01

Full Text Available Chimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions. Here we take advantage of an unusual chimpanzee population as a 'natural experiment' to identify evidence for imitative learning of this kind in wild chimpanzees. The Sonso chimpanzee community has suffered from high levels of snare injury and now has several manually disabled members. Adult male Tinka, with near-total paralysis of both hands, compensates inability to scratch his back manually by employing a distinctive technique of holding a growing liana taut while making side-to-side body movements against it. We found that seven able-bodied young chimpanzees also used this 'liana-scratch' technique, although they had no need to. The distribution of the liana-scratch technique was statistically associated with individuals' range overlap with Tinka and the extent of time they spent in parties with him, confirming that the technique is acquired by social learning. The motivation for able-bodied chimpanzees copying his variant is unknown, but the fact that they do is evidence that the imitative learning of motor procedures from others is a natural trait of wild chimpanzees.

Able-bodied wild chimpanzees imitate a motor procedure used by a disabled individual to overcome handicap.

Science.gov (United States)

Hobaiter, Catherine; Byrne, Richard W

2010-08-05

Chimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions. Here we take advantage of an unusual chimpanzee population as a 'natural experiment' to identify evidence for imitative learning of this kind in wild chimpanzees. The Sonso chimpanzee community has suffered from high levels of snare injury and now has several manually disabled members. Adult male Tinka, with near-total paralysis of both hands, compensates inability to scratch his back manually by employing a distinctive technique of holding a growing liana taut while making side-to-side body movements against it. We found that seven able-bodied young chimpanzees also used this 'liana-scratch' technique, although they had no need to. The distribution of the liana-scratch technique was statistically associated with individuals' range overlap with Tinka and the extent of time they spent in parties with him, confirming that the technique is acquired by social learning. The motivation for able-bodied chimpanzees copying his variant is unknown, but the fact that they do is evidence that the imitative learning of motor procedures from others is a natural trait of wild chimpanzees.

The Role of the Antiviral APOBEC3 Gene Family in Protecting Chimpanzees against Lentiviruses from Monkeys.

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Lucie Etienne

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Cross-species transmissions of viruses from animals to humans are at the origin of major human pathogenic viruses. While the role of ecological and epidemiological factors in the emergence of new pathogens is well documented, the importance of host factors is often unknown. Chimpanzees are the closest relatives of humans and the animal reservoir at the origin of the human AIDS pandemic. However, despite being regularly exposed to monkey lentiviruses through hunting, chimpanzees are naturally infected by only a single simian immunodeficiency virus, SIVcpz. Here, we asked why chimpanzees appear to be protected against the successful emergence of other SIVs. In particular, we investigated the role of the chimpanzee APOBEC3 genes in providing a barrier to infection by most monkey lentiviruses. We found that most SIV Vifs, including Vif from SIVwrc infecting western-red colobus, the chimpanzee's main monkey prey in West Africa, could not antagonize chimpanzee APOBEC3G. Moreover, chimpanzee APOBEC3D, as well as APOBEC3F and APOBEC3H, provided additional protection against SIV Vif antagonism. Consequently, lentiviral replication in primary chimpanzee CD4(+ T cells was dependent on the presence of a lentiviral vif gene that could antagonize chimpanzee APOBEC3s. Finally, by identifying and functionally characterizing several APOBEC3 gene polymorphisms in both common chimpanzees and bonobos, we found that these ape populations encode APOBEC3 proteins that are uniformly resistant to antagonism by monkey lentiviruses.

Chimpanzee choice rates in competitive games match equilibrium game theory predictions.

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Martin, Christopher Flynn; Bhui, Rahul; Bossaerts, Peter; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Camerer, Colin

2014-06-05

The capacity for strategic thinking about the payoff-relevant actions of conspecifics is not well understood across species. We use game theory to make predictions about choices and temporal dynamics in three abstract competitive situations with chimpanzee participants. Frequencies of chimpanzee choices are extremely close to equilibrium (accurate-guessing) predictions, and shift as payoffs change, just as equilibrium theory predicts. The chimpanzee choices are also closer to the equilibrium prediction, and more responsive to past history and payoff changes, than two samples of human choices from experiments in which humans were also initially uninformed about opponent payoffs and could not communicate verbally. The results are consistent with a tentative interpretation of game theory as explaining evolved behavior, with the additional hypothesis that chimpanzees may retain or practice a specialized capacity to adjust strategy choice during competition to perform at least as well as, or better than, humans have.

Human fibroblasts display a differential focal adhesion phenotype relative to chimpanzee.

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Advani, Alexander S; Chen, Annie Y; Babbitt, Courtney C

2016-01-01

There are a number of documented differences between humans and our closest relatives in responses to wound healing and in disease susceptibilities, suggesting a differential cellular response to certain environmental factors. In this study, we sought to look at a specific cell type, fibroblasts, to examine differences in cellular adhesion between humans and chimpanzees in visualized cells and in gene expression. We have found significant differences in the number of focal adhesions between primary human and chimpanzee fibroblasts. Additionally, we see that adhesion related gene ontology categories are some of the most differentially expressed between human and chimpanzee in normal fibroblast cells. These results suggest that human and chimpanzee fibroblasts may have somewhat different adhesive properties, which could play a role in differential disease phenotypes and responses to external factors. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Foundation for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health.

Synchrony and motor mimicking in chimpanzee observational learning

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Fuhrmann, Delia; Ravignani, Andrea; Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Whiten, Andrew

2014-01-01

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success, and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function. PMID:24923651

Social Learning and Culture in Child and Chimpanzee.

Science.gov (United States)

Whiten, Andrew

2017-01-03

A few decades ago, we knew next to nothing about the behavior of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, but long-term field studies have since revealed an undreamed-of richness in the diversity of their cultural traditions across Africa. These discoveries have been complemented by a substantial suite of experimental studies, now bridging to the wild through field experiments. These field and experimental studies, particularly those in which direct chimpanzee-child comparisons have been made, delineate a growing set of commonalities between the phenomena of social learning and culture in the lives of chimpanzees and humans. These commonalities in social learning inform our understanding of the evolutionary roots of the cultural propensities the species share. At the same time, such comparisons throw into clearer relief the unique features of the distinctive human capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, and new research has begun to probe the key psychological attributes that may explain it.

Synchrony and motor mimicking in chimpanzee observational learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Fuhrmann, Delia; Ravignani, Andrea; Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Whiten, Andrew

2014-06-13

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success, and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function.

The chimpanzee as a flight candidate. [for cardiovascular studies

Science.gov (United States)

1977-01-01

Some of the characteristics that make the chimpanzee an attractive animal model (anatomy, size, intelligence, and durability) also create some very unique problems. The universally recognized problems of availability and expensive maintenance, combined with the often underestimated problems associated with routine housing, husbandry, restraint, and medical management, severely limit the availabe avenues of approach. Problems involved in using implantable, multichannel radiotelemetry systems to monitor cardiodynamics in chimpanzees are discussed.

Specific Image Characteristics Influence Attitudes about Chimpanzee Conservation and Use as Pets

OpenAIRE

Ross, Stephen R.; Vreeman, Vivian M.; Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V.

2011-01-01

Chimpanzees are endangered in their native Africa but in the United States, they are housed not only in zoos and research centers but owned privately as pets and performers. In 2008, survey data revealed that the public is less likely to think that chimpanzees are endangered compared to other great apes, and that this is likely the result of media misportrayals in movies, television and advertisements. Here, we use an experimental survey paradigm with composite images of chimpanzees to determ...

Activity of a potent hepatitis C virus polymerase inhibitor in the chimpanzee model.

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Chen, Chih-Ming; He, Yupeng; Lu, Liangjun; Lim, Hock Ben; Tripathi, Rakesh L; Middleton, Tim; Hernandez, Lisa E; Beno, David W A; Long, Michelle A; Kati, Warren M; Bosse, Todd D; Larson, Daniel P; Wagner, Rolf; Lanford, Robert E; Kohlbrenner, William E; Kempf, Dale J; Pilot-Matias, Tami J; Molla, Akhteruzzaman

2007-12-01

A-837093 is a potent and specific nonnucleoside inhibitor of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) nonstructural protein 5B (NS5B) RNA-dependent RNA polymerase. It possesses nanomolar potencies in both enzymatic and replicon-based cell culture assays. In rats and dogs this compound demonstrated an oral plasma half-life of greater than 7 h, and its bioavailability was >60%. In monkeys it had a half-life of 1.9 h and 15% bioavailability. Its antiviral efficacy was evaluated in two chimpanzees infected with HCV in a proof-of-concept study. The design included oral dosing of 30 mg per kg of body weight twice a day for 14 days, followed by a 14-day posttreatment observation. Maximum viral load reductions of 1.4 and 2.5 log(10) copies RNA/ml for genotype 1a- and 1b-infected chimpanzees, respectively, were observed within 2 days after the initiation of treatment. After this initial drop in the viral load, a rebound of plasma HCV RNA was observed in the genotype 1b-infected chimpanzee, while the genotype 1a-infected chimpanzee experienced a partial rebound that lasted throughout the treatment period. Clonal analysis of NS5B gene sequences derived from the plasma of A-837093-treated chimpanzees revealed the presence of several mutations associated with resistance to A-837093, including Y448H, G554D, and D559G in the genotype 1a-infected chimpanzee and C316Y and G554D in the genotype 1b-infected chimpanzee. The identification of resistance-associated mutations in both chimpanzees is consistent with the findings of in vitro selection studies, in which many of the same mutations were selected. These findings validate the antiviral efficacy and resistance development of benzothiadiazine HCV polymerase inhibitors in vivo.

Emotional engagements predict and enhance social cognition in young chimpanzees.

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Bard, Kim A; Bakeman, Roger; Boysen, Sarah T; Leavens, David A

2014-09-01

Social cognition in infancy is evident in coordinated triadic engagements, that is, infants attending jointly with social partners and objects. Current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition tend to highlight species differences in cognition based on human-unique cooperative motives. We consider a developmental model in which engagement experiences produce differential outcomes. We conducted a 10-year-long study in which two groups of laboratory-raised chimpanzee infants were given quantifiably different engagement experiences. Joint attention, cooperativeness, affect, and different levels of cognition were measured in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees, and compared to outcomes derived from a normative human database. We found that joint attention skills significantly improved across development for all infants, but by 12 months, the humans significantly surpassed the chimpanzees. We found that cooperativeness was stable in the humans, but by 12 months, the chimpanzee group given enriched engagement experiences significantly surpassed the humans. Past engagement experiences and concurrent affect were significant unique predictors of both joint attention and cooperativeness in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees. When engagement experiences and concurrent affect were statistically controlled, joint attention and cooperation were not associated. We explain differential social cognition outcomes in terms of the significant influences of previous engagement experiences and affect, in addition to cognition. Our study highlights developmental processes that underpin the emergence of social cognition in support of evolutionary continuity. © 2014 The Authors. Developmental Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Differences in the cognitive skills of bonobos and chimpanzees.

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Esther Herrmann

Full Text Available While bonobos and chimpanzees are both genetically and behaviorally very similar, they also differ in significant ways. Bonobos are more cautious and socially tolerant while chimpanzees are more dependent on extractive foraging, which requires tools. The similarities suggest the two species should be cognitively similar while the behavioral differences predict where the two species should differ cognitively. We compared both species on a wide range of cognitive problems testing their understanding of the physical and social world. Bonobos were more skilled at solving tasks related to theory of mind or an understanding of social causality, while chimpanzees were more skilled at tasks requiring the use of tools and an understanding of physical causality. These species differences support the role of ecological and socio-ecological pressures in shaping cognitive skills over relatively short periods of evolutionary time.

Using reporter gene assays to identify cis regulatory differences between humans and chimpanzees.

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Chabot, Adrien; Shrit, Ralla A; Blekhman, Ran; Gilad, Yoav

2007-08-01

Most phenotypic differences between human and chimpanzee are likely to result from differences in gene regulation, rather than changes to protein-coding regions. To date, however, only a handful of human-chimpanzee nucleotide differences leading to changes in gene regulation have been identified. To hone in on differences in regulatory elements between human and chimpanzee, we focused on 10 genes that were previously found to be differentially expressed between the two species. We then designed reporter gene assays for the putative human and chimpanzee promoters of the 10 genes. Of seven promoters that we found to be active in human liver cell lines, human and chimpanzee promoters had significantly different activity in four cases, three of which recapitulated the gene expression difference seen in the microarray experiment. For these three genes, we were therefore able to demonstrate that a change in cis influences expression differences between humans and chimpanzees. Moreover, using site-directed mutagenesis on one construct, the promoter for the DDA3 gene, we were able to identify three nucleotides that together lead to a cis regulatory difference between the species. High-throughput application of this approach can provide a map of regulatory element differences between humans and our close evolutionary relatives.

Emulation, imitation, over-imitation and the scope of culture for child and chimpanzee.

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Whiten, Andrew; McGuigan, Nicola; Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Hopper, Lydia M

2009-08-27

We describe our recent studies of imitation and cultural transmission in chimpanzees and children, which question late twentieth-century characterizations of children as imitators, but chimpanzees as emulators. As emulation entails learning only about the results of others' actions, it has been thought to curtail any capacity to sustain cultures. Recent chimpanzee diffusion experiments have by contrast documented a significant capacity for copying local behavioural traditions. Additionally, in recent 'ghost' experiments with no model visible, chimpanzees failed to replicate the object movements on which emulation is supposed to focus. We conclude that chimpanzees rely more on imitation and have greater cultural capacities than previously acknowledged. However, we also find that they selectively apply a range of social learning processes that include emulation. Recent studies demonstrating surprisingly unselective 'over-imitation' in children suggest that children's propensity to imitate has been underestimated too. We discuss the implications of these developments for the nature of social learning and culture in the two species. Finally, our new experiments directly address cumulative cultural learning. Initial results demonstrate a relative conservatism and conformity in chimpanzees' learning, contrasting with cumulative cultural learning in young children. This difference may contribute much to the contrast in these species' capacities for cultural evolution.

Stereotypical Behaviors in Chimpanzees Rescued from the African Bushmeat and Pet Trade

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Ashlynn Dube

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Many orphaned chimpanzees whose mothers are illegally killed for their meat (bushmeat in Africa are sold as pets or kept caged at hotels and businesses to attract tourists. As a result of being separated from their mothers and other chimpanzees at an early age, and spending years in impoverished captive conditions, some of these individuals engage in abnormal behaviors, including stereotypically scratching at their flesh and repetitively rocking back and forth. This paper presents case studies of Poco and Safari, two chimpanzees who were rescued by sanctuaries after living alone on display for humans at businesses for the first 7 to 8 years of their lives. Decades after their rescue, they still engage in stereotypical behaviors as a result of the psychological and physical trauma they endured early on. This paper combines data from in depth interviews with caregivers and direct observations of abnormal behaviors to assess psychological distress in captive-living chimpanzees. Our results highlight some lesser known harms of the bushmeat trade and the detrimental life-long consequences that keeping chimpanzees as “pets” can have on their mental health.

Non-invasive body temperature measurement of wild chimpanzees using fecal temperature decline.

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Jensen, Siv Aina; Mundry, Roger; Nunn, Charles L; Boesch, Christophe; Leendertz, Fabian H

2009-04-01

New methods are required to increase our understanding of pathologic processes in wild mammals. We developed a noninvasive field method to estimate the body temperature of wild living chimpanzees habituated to humans, based on statistically fitting temperature decline of feces after defecation. The method was established with the use of control measures of human rectal temperature and subsequent changes in fecal temperature over time. The method was then applied to temperature data collected from wild chimpanzee feces. In humans, we found good correspondence between the temperature estimated by the method and the actual rectal temperature that was measured (maximum deviation 0.22 C). The method was successfully applied and the average estimated temperature of the chimpanzees was 37.2 C. This simple-to-use field method reliably estimates the body temperature of wild chimpanzees and probably also other large mammals.

Pan Eurasian EXperiment (PEEX) - towards a new multinational environment and climate research effort in Eurasia

Science.gov (United States)

Petäjä, Tuukka; Kulmala, Markku; Lappalainen, Hanna; Sipilä, Mikko; Sorvari, Sanna; Alekseychik, Pavel; Paramonov, Mikhail; Kerminen, Veli-Matti; Zilitinkevich, Sergej

2013-04-01

Boreal forests are a substantial source of greenhouse gases, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) and natural aerosols, the critical atmospheric components related to climate change processes. A large fraction of boreal forests of the world is situated in Siberian region. Representative measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) concentrations, BVOC emissions and aerosols production from Siberian are of special importance when estimating global budgets of climate change relevant factors. The scope of a new concept of the Pan Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) is to set up a process for planning of a large-scale, long-term, coordinated observations and modeling experiment in the Pan Eurasian region, especially to cover ground base, airborne and satellite observations together with global and regional models to find out different forcing and feedback mechanisms in the changing climate. University of Helsinki together with Finnish Meteorological institute are organizing the Pan-Eurasian Experiment and to gather all the European and Russian key players in the field of climate and Earth system science to plan the future research activities in the Pan-Eurasian region. In the European scale PEEX is part of the JPI Climate Fast Track Activity 1.3. "Changing cryosphere in the climate system - from observations to climate modeling". PEEX research topics are closely related the NordForsk's Top Research Initiative CRAICC - Cryosphere - atmosphere interaction in the changing Arctic climate. PEEX is also a central part of the ongoing the Finnish Cultural Foundation - Earth System modeling Working Group activity (2012-2013). PEEX scientific aims and future actions to develop Pan Eurasian research infrastructure can be linked to several EC and ESA funded activities aiming to develop next generation research infrastructures and data products: EU-FP7-ACTRIS-I3-project (Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure Network-project 2011-2015); ICOS a research

Non-invasive genetic monitoring of wild central chimpanzees.

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Mimi Arandjelovic

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: An assessment of population size and structure is an important first step in devising conservation and management plans for endangered species. Many threatened animals are elusive, rare and live in habitats that prohibit directly counting individuals. For example, a well-founded estimate of the number of great apes currently living in the wild is lacking. Developing methods to obtain accurate population estimates for these species is a priority for their conservation management. Genotyping non-invasively collected faecal samples is an effective way of evaluating a species' population size without disruption, and can also reveal details concerning population structure. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We opportunistically collected wild chimpanzee faecal samples for genetic capture-recapture analyses over a four-year period in a 132 km(2 area of Loango National Park, Gabon. Of the 444 samples, 46% yielded sufficient quantities of DNA for genotyping analysis and the consequent identification of 121 individuals. Using genetic capture-recapture, we estimate that 283 chimpanzees (range: 208-316 inhabited the research area between February 2005 and July 2008. Since chimpanzee males are patrilocal and territorial, we genotyped samples from males using variable Y-chromosome microsatellite markers and could infer that seven chimpanzee groups are present in the area. Genetic information, in combination with field data, also suggested the occurrence of repeated cases of intergroup violence and a probable group extinction. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The poor amplification success rate resulted in a limited number of recaptures and hence only moderate precision (38%, measured as the entire width of the 95% confidence interval, but this was still similar to the best results obtained using intensive nest count surveys of apes (40% to 63%. Genetic capture-recapture methods applied to apes can provide a considerable amount of novel information on

Consolation in the aftermath of robberies resembles post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lindegaard, Marie Rosenkrantz; Liebst, Lasse Suonperä; Bernasco, Wim

2017-01-01

Post-aggression consolation is assumed to occur in humans as well as in chimpanzees. While consolation following peer aggression has been observed in children, systematic evidence of consolation in human adults is rare. We used surveillance camera footage of the immediate aftermath of nonfatal...... to be consoled. Furthermore, we show that high levels of threat during the robbery increased the likelihood of receiving consolation afterwards. These patterns resemble post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees and suggest that emotions of empathic concern are involved in consolation across humans...... and chimpanzees....

Serological cross-reactivity between Merkel cell polyomavirus and two closely related chimpanzee polyomaviruses.

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Jérôme T J Nicol

Full Text Available Phylogenetic analyses based on the major capsid protein sequence indicate that Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV and chimpanzee polyomaviruses (PtvPyV1, PtvPyV2, and similarly Trichodysplasia spinulosa-associated polyomavirus (TSPyV and the orangutan polyomavirus (OraPyV1 are closely related. The existence of cross-reactivity between these polyomaviruses was therefore investigated. The findings indicated serological identity between the two chimpanzee polyomaviruses investigated and a high level of cross-reactivity with Merkel cell polyomavirus. In contrast, cross-reactivity was not observed between TSPyV and OraPyV1. Furthermore, specific antibodies to chimpanzee polyomaviruses were detected in chimpanzee sera by pre-incubation of sera with the different antigens, but not in human sera.

Chimpanzee responding during matching to sample: control by exclusion.

OpenAIRE

Beran, Michael J; Washburn, David A

2002-01-01

Three chimpanzees performed a computerized matching-to-sample task in which samples were photographs of items and comparison stimuli were geometric symbols called lexigrams. In Experiment 1, samples were either defined (i.e., they represented items that were associated already with a specific lexigram label by the chimpanzees) or undefined (i.e., they did not have an already learned association with a specific lexigram). On each trial, the foil (incorrect) comparison could be either a defined...

Characterization and potential functional significance of human-chimpanzee large INDEL variation

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Polavarapu Nalini

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Although humans and chimpanzees have accumulated significant differences in a number of phenotypic traits since diverging from a common ancestor about six million years ago, their genomes are more than 98.5% identical at protein-coding loci. This modest degree of nucleotide divergence is not sufficient to explain the extensive phenotypic differences between the two species. It has been hypothesized that the genetic basis of the phenotypic differences lies at the level of gene regulation and is associated with the extensive insertion and deletion (INDEL variation between the two species. To test the hypothesis that large INDELs (80 to 12,000 bp may have contributed significantly to differences in gene regulation between the two species, we categorized human-chimpanzee INDEL variation mapping in or around genes and determined whether this variation is significantly correlated with previously determined differences in gene expression. Results Extensive, large INDEL variation exists between the human and chimpanzee genomes. This variation is primarily attributable to retrotransposon insertions within the human lineage. There is a significant correlation between differences in gene expression and large human-chimpanzee INDEL variation mapping in genes or in proximity to them. Conclusions The results presented herein are consistent with the hypothesis that large INDELs, particularly those associated with retrotransposons, have played a significant role in human-chimpanzee regulatory evolution.

Forest Cover Estimation in Ireland Using Radar Remote Sensing: A Comparative Analysis of Forest Cover Assessment Methodologies

Science.gov (United States)

Devaney, John; Barrett, Brian; Barrett, Frank; Redmond, John; O`Halloran, John

2015-01-01

Quantification of spatial and temporal changes in forest cover is an essential component of forest monitoring programs. Due to its cloud free capability, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an ideal source of information on forest dynamics in countries with near-constant cloud-cover. However, few studies have investigated the use of SAR for forest cover estimation in landscapes with highly sparse and fragmented forest cover. In this study, the potential use of L-band SAR for forest cover estimation in two regions (Longford and Sligo) in Ireland is investigated and compared to forest cover estimates derived from three national (Forestry2010, Prime2, National Forest Inventory), one pan-European (Forest Map 2006) and one global forest cover (Global Forest Change) product. Two machine-learning approaches (Random Forests and Extremely Randomised Trees) are evaluated. Both Random Forests and Extremely Randomised Trees classification accuracies were high (98.1–98.5%), with differences between the two classifiers being minimal (forest area and an increase in overall accuracy of SAR-derived forest cover maps. All forest cover products were evaluated using an independent validation dataset. For the Longford region, the highest overall accuracy was recorded with the Forestry2010 dataset (97.42%) whereas in Sligo, highest overall accuracy was obtained for the Prime2 dataset (97.43%), although accuracies of SAR-derived forest maps were comparable. Our findings indicate that spaceborne radar could aid inventories in regions with low levels of forest cover in fragmented landscapes. The reduced accuracies observed for the global and pan-continental forest cover maps in comparison to national and SAR-derived forest maps indicate that caution should be exercised when applying these datasets for national reporting. PMID:26262681

Long-Term Evaluation of Abnormal Behavior in Adult Ex-laboratory Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes Following Re-socialization

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Karl Crailsheim

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Adverse rearing conditions are considered a major factor in the development of abnormal behavior. We investigated the overall levels, the prevalence and the diversity of abnormal behavior of 18 adult former laboratory chimpanzees, who spent about 20 years single caged, over a two-year period following re-socialization. According to the onset of deprivation, the individuals were classified as early deprived (EDs, mean: 1.2 years or late deprived (LDs, mean: 3.6 years. The results are based on 187.5 hours of scan sampling distributed over three sample periods: subsequent to re-socialization and during the first and second year of group-living. While the overall levels and the diversity of abnormal behavior remained stable over time in this study population, the amplifying effects of age at onset of deprivation became apparent as the overall levels of abnormal behavior of EDs were far above those of LDs in the first and second year of group-living, but not immediately after re-socialization. The most prevalent abnormal behaviors, including eating disorders and self-directed behaviors, however, varied in their occurrence within subjects across the periods. Most important, the significance of social companionship became obvious as the most severe forms of abnormal behavior, such as dissociative and self-injurious behaviors declined.

Deadly Respiratory Disease in Wild Chimpanzees

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

Dr. Tony Goldberg, Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Associate Director for Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Global Health Institute, discusses an outbreak of rhinovirus C in chimpanzees in Uganda.

PAN SHARPENING QUALITY INVESTIGATION OF TURKISH IN-OPERATION REMOTE SENSING SATELLITES: APPLICATIONS WITH RASAT AND GÖKTÜRK-2 IMAGES

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Ozendi

2016-10-01

The aim of this study is to investigate pan-sharpening performance of RASAT and GÖKTÜRK-2 images. For this purpose, pan-sharpened images are generated using most popular pan-sharpening methods IHS, Brovey and PCA at first. This procedure is followed by quantitative evaluation of pan-sharpened images using Correlation Coefficient (CC, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE, Relative Average Spectral Error (RASE, Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM and Erreur Relative Globale Adimensionnelle de Synthése (ERGAS metrics. For generation of pan-sharpened images and computation of metrics SharpQ tool is used which is developed with MATLAB computing language. According to metrics, PCA derived pan-sharpened image is the most similar one to multispectral image for RASAT, and Brovey derived pan-sharpened image is the most similar one to multispectral image for GÖKTÜRK-2. Finally, pan-sharpened images are evaluated qualitatively in terms of object availability and completeness for various land covers (such as urban, forest and flat areas by a group of operators who are experienced in remote sensing imagery.

The effect of climate fluctuation on chimpanzee birth sex ratio.

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Hjalmar S Kühl

Full Text Available Climate and weather conditions, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, precipitation and temperature influence the birth sex ratio (BSR of various higher latitude species, including deer, elephant seals or northern human populations. Although, tropical regions show only little variation in temperature, climate and weather conditions can fluctuate with consequences for phenology and food resource availability. Here, we evaluate, whether the BSR of chimpanzees, inhabiting African tropical forests, is affected by climate fluctuations as well. Additionally, we evaluate, if variation in consumption of a key food resource with high nutritional value, Coula edulis nuts, is linked to both climate fluctuations and variation in BSR. We use long-term data from two study groups located in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire to assess the influence of local weather conditions and the global climate driver El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO on offspring sex. Côte d'Ivoire has experienced considerable climate variation over the last decades, with increasing temperature and declining precipitation. For both groups we find very similar time windows around the month of conception, in which offspring sex is well predicted by ENSO, with more males following low ENSO values, corresponding to periods of high rainfall. Furthermore, we find that the time spent cracking and feeding on Coula nuts is strongly influenced by climate conditions. Although, some of our analysis suggest that a higher proportion of males is born after periods with higher nut consumption frequency, we cannot conclude decisively at this point that nut consumption may influence shifts in BSR. All results combined suggest that also chimpanzees may experience climate related shifts in offspring sex ratios as response to climate fluctuation.

Gastrointestinal parasites of the chimpanzee population introduced onto Rubondo Island National Park, Tanzania.

Science.gov (United States)

Petrzelková, Klára J; Hasegawa, Hideo; Appleton, Chris C; Huffman, Michael A; Archer, Colleen E; Moscovice, Liza R; Mapua, Mwanahamissi Issa; Singh, Jatinder; Kaur, Taranjit

2010-04-01

The release of any species into a novel environment can evoke transmission of parasites that do not normally parasitize the host as well as potentially introducing new parasites into the environment. Species introductions potentially incur such risks, yet little is currently known about the parasite fauna of introduced primate species over the long term. We describe the results of long-term monitoring of the intestinal parasite fauna of an unprovisioned, reproducing population of chimpanzees introduced 40 years earlier (1966-1969) onto Rubondo Island in Lake Victoria, Tanzania, a non-native habitat for chimpanzees. Two parasitological surveys (March 1997-October 1998 and October 2002-December 2005) identified Entamoeba spp. including E. coli, Iodamoeba buetschlii, Troglodytella abrassarti, Chilomastix mesnili, Trichuris sp., Anatrichosoma sp., Strongyloides spp., Strongylida fam. gen. sp., Enterobius anthropopitheci, Subulura sp., Ascarididae gen. sp., and Protospirura muricola. The parasite fauna of the Rubondo chimpanzees is similar to wild chimpanzees living in their natural habitats, but Rubondo chimpanzees have a lower prevalence of strongylids (9%, 3.8%) and a higher prevalence of E. anthropopitheci (8.6%, 17.9%) than reported elsewhere. Species prevalence was similar between our two surveys, with the exception of Strongyloides spp. being higher in the first survey. None of these species are considered to pose a serious health risk to chimpanzees, but continued monitoring of the population and surveys of the parasitic fauna of the two coinhabitant primate species and other animals, natural reservoir hosts of some of the same parasites, is important to better understand the dynamics of host-parasite ecology and potential long-term implications for chimpanzees introduced into a new habitat. 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Probable transmission of coxsackie B3 virus from human to chimpanzee, Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Sandra Cathrine Abel; Mourier, Tobias; Baandrup, Ulrik

2012-01-01

In 2010, a chimpanzee died at Copenhagen Zoo following an outbreak of respiratory disease among chimpanzees in the zoo. Identification of coxsackie B3 virus, a common human pathogen, as the causative agent, and its severe manifestation, raise questions about pathogenicity and transmissibility among...

On the possible adaptive value of coprophagy in free-ranging chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Krief, Sabrina; Jamart, Aliette; Hladik, Claude-Marcel

2004-04-01

Coprophagy occurred during major periods of feeding on fruits of Dialium spp. (Caesalpiniaceae) in a group of orphaned chimpanzees released in Conkouati Douli National Park, Republic of Congo. Since stress, boredom or food scarcity could not explain coprophagy according to our daily behavioral and veterinary control observations, we suggest that Dialium seeds were the item of interest in the feces. Two types of Dialium seeds were commonly found in the feces after chimpanzees swallowed the mesocarp and whole seeds together. These seeds were either whole and hard or whole/broken and soft imbibed. A mechanical and/or chemical effect of the gut passage may enable the chimpanzees to chew and ingest the seeds, thus providing nutritional intake.

Genetic and 'cultural' similarity in wild chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Langergraber, Kevin E; Boesch, Christophe; Inoue, Eiji; Inoue-Murayama, Miho; Mitani, John C; Nishida, Toshisada; Pusey, Anne; Reynolds, Vernon; Schubert, Grit; Wrangham, Richard W; Wroblewski, Emily; Vigilant, Linda

2011-02-07

The question of whether animals possess 'cultures' or 'traditions' continues to generate widespread theoretical and empirical interest. Studies of wild chimpanzees have featured prominently in this discussion, as the dominant approach used to identify culture in wild animals was first applied to them. This procedure, the 'method of exclusion,' begins by documenting behavioural differences between groups and then infers the existence of culture by eliminating ecological explanations for their occurrence. The validity of this approach has been questioned because genetic differences between groups have not explicitly been ruled out as a factor contributing to between-group differences in behaviour. Here we investigate this issue directly by analysing genetic and behavioural data from nine groups of wild chimpanzees. We find that the overall levels of genetic and behavioural dissimilarity between groups are highly and statistically significantly correlated. Additional analyses show that only a very small number of behaviours vary between genetically similar groups, and that there is no obvious pattern as to which classes of behaviours (e.g. tool-use versus communicative) have a distribution that matches patterns of between-group genetic dissimilarity. These results indicate that genetic dissimilarity cannot be eliminated as playing a major role in generating group differences in chimpanzee behaviour.

Comprehension of iconic gestures by chimpanzees and human children.

Science.gov (United States)

Bohn, Manuel; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael

2016-02-01

Iconic gestures-communicative acts using hand or body movements that resemble their referent-figure prominently in theories of language evolution and development. This study contrasted the abilities of chimpanzees (N=11) and 4-year-old human children (N=24) to comprehend novel iconic gestures. Participants learned to retrieve rewards from apparatuses in two distinct locations, each requiring a different action. In the test, a human adult informed the participant where to go by miming the action needed to obtain the reward. Children used the iconic gestures (more than arbitrary gestures) to locate the reward, whereas chimpanzees did not. Some children also used arbitrary gestures in the same way, but only after they had previously shown comprehension for iconic gestures. Over time, chimpanzees learned to associate iconic gestures with the appropriate location faster than arbitrary gestures, suggesting at least some recognition of the iconicity involved. These results demonstrate the importance of iconicity in referential communication. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Toshisada Nishida (1941–2011: Chimpanzee Rapport.

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Frans B. M. de Waal

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Frans de Waal pays tribute to pioneering primatologist Toshisada Nishida, who transformed our understanding of chimpanzee behavior and culture and galvanized efforts to ensure their conservation.

Depression of T lymphocyte function in chimpanzees receiving thymectomy and irradiation. [X Radiation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Gilbertsen, R.B.; Metzgar, R.S.

1978-03-01

In studies analogous to those in which the thymus dependency of immune functions in murine systems was determined, three chimpanzees were thymectomized, splenectomized, exposed to lethal doses of whole body x-irradiation with limited bone marrow shielding, and subsequently evaluated for lymphocyte markers and functions over a period of years. In the oldest animal studied (Irena, 7.2 years at surgery), the percentage of peripheral blood T cells decreased to about 60% of control values and remained at that level for approximately 1/sup 1///sub 2/ years before returning to normal. In the two youngest chimpanzees T cell rosette values dropped to 15 to 40% of control values after irradiation. T cell percentages in one of these young chimpanzees returned to about 75% of the controls 2/sup 1///sub 2/ years after x-irradiation. Phytohemagglutinin and concanavalin A mitogen responses were less affected in the oldest chimpanzee. However, even in the oldest animal, the responses to phytohemagglutinin and concanavalin A began to show a gradual and consistent decline 1/sup 1///sub 2/ years after irradiation. Mixed leukocyte culture responsiveness was most affected by the experimental procedures, being greatly reduced in all three chimpanzees during varying time intervals. In general, the effects of the experimental procedures used to produce T cell deficiencies varied with the age of the chimpanzee at surgery, the time after irradiation when the animal was tested, and the lymphocyte marker or function studied.

The malagarasi river does not form an absolute barrier to chimpanzee movement in Western Tanzania.

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Alex K Piel

Full Text Available The Malagarasi River has long been thought to be a barrier to chimpanzee movements in western Tanzania. This potential geographic boundary could affect chimpanzee ranging behavior, population connectivity and pathogen transmission, and thus has implications for conservation strategies and government policy. Indeed, based on mitochondrial DNA sequence comparisons it was recently argued that chimpanzees from communities to the north and to the south of the Malagarasi are surprisingly distantly related, suggesting that the river prevents gene flow. To investigate this, we conducted a survey along the Malagarasi River. We found a ford comprised of rocks that researchers could cross on foot. On a trail leading to this ford, we collected 13 fresh fecal samples containing chimpanzee DNA, two of which tested positive for SIVcpz. We also found chimpanzee feces within the riverbed. Taken together, this evidence suggests that the Malagarasi River is not an absolute barrier to chimpanzee movements and communities from the areas to the north and south should be considered a single population. These results have important consequences for our understanding of gene flow, disease dynamics and conservation management.

First observation of Dorylus ant feeding in Budongo chimpanzees supports absence of stick-tool culture.

Science.gov (United States)

Mugisha, Steven; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Hobaiter, Catherine

2016-07-01

The use of stick- or probe-tools is a chimpanzee universal, recorded in all long-term study populations across Africa, except one: Budongo, Uganda. Here, after 25 years of observation, stick-tool use remains absent under both natural circumstances and strong experimental scaffolding. Instead, the chimpanzees employ a rich repertoire of leaf-tools for a variety of dietary and hygiene tasks. One use of stick-tools in other communities is in feeding on the aggressive Dorylus 'army ant' species, consumed by chimpanzees at all long-term study sites outside of mid-Western Uganda. Here we report the first observation of army-ant feeding in Budongo, in which individuals from the Waibira chimpanzee community employed detached leaves to feed on a ground swarm. We describe the behaviour and discuss whether or not it can be considered tool use, together with its implication for the absence of stick-tool 'culture' in Budongo chimpanzees.

Differences in Cognitive Processes Underlying the Collaborative Activities of Children and Chimpanzees

Science.gov (United States)

Fletcher, Grace E.; Warneken, Felix; Tomasello, Michael

2012-01-01

We compared the performance of 3- and 5-year-old children with that of chimpanzees in two tasks requiring collaboration via complementary roles. In both tasks, children and chimpanzees were able to coordinate two complementary roles with peers and solve the problem cooperatively. This is the first experimental demonstration of the coordination of…

Pan tropical biomass equations for Mexico's dry forests

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José Návar

2014-12-01

Full Text Available This study reports a set of robust regional M-tree allometric equations for Mexico's tropical dry forests and their application to a forest inventory dataset for the States of Durango and Sinaloa, Mexico. Calculated M data from 15 reported equations were fitted, applied and validated for regional and global models. Proposed theoretical models, empirically derived equations, as well as global and local reported equations were fitted and applied to calculated M-tree data using wood specific gravity, diameter at breast height, and top height as exogenous variables. Empirically-derived, computer-based equations assessed the M-tree evaluations slightly better than the theoretical, the global and the local models. However, the theoretical models projected compatible M-tree values and deserve further attention once wood specific gravity data are collected in the field. Using the best fit equation, mean M plot density values of 30, 41 and 35 Mg ha-1 were estimated from 57 plots (1,600 m² each, 217 plots (1,000 m² each and 166 plots (1,000 m² each in the tropical dry forests of the States of Durango, Tiniaquis and Vado Hondo (Sinaloa, respectively. The large sample size, the richness of the tested allometric models, the economic and ecological importance of this data-source, and the spatial coverage of these equations made this dataset uniquely useful for biomass, charcoal, and other bio-energy estimations, as well as for understanding the inherent heterogeneity of the stand-structure in dynamic tropical forest environments.

Genome sequencing of chimpanzee malaria parasites reveals possible pathways of adaptation to human hosts

KAUST Repository

Otto, Thomas D.; Rayner, Julian C.; Bö hme, Ulrike; Pain, Arnab; Spottiswoode, Natasha; Sanders, Mandy; Quail, Michael; Ollomo, Benjamin; Renaud, Franç ois; Thomas, Alan W.; Prugnolle, Franck; Conway, David J.; Newbold, Chris; Berriman, Matthew

2014-01-01

related chimpanzee parasite species P. reichenowi, and obtaining partial sequence data from a more distantly related chimpanzee parasite (P. gaboni). The close relationship between P. reichenowi and P. falciparum is emphasized by almost complete

Adolescent male chimpanzees do not form a dominance hierarchy with their peers.

Science.gov (United States)

Sandel, Aaron A; Reddy, Rachna B; Mitani, John C

2017-01-01

Dominance hierarchies are a prominent feature of the lives of many primate species. These hierarchies have important fitness consequences, as high rank is often positively correlated with reproduction. Although adult male chimpanzees strive for status to gain fitness benefits, the development of dominance relationships is not well understood. While two prior studies found that adolescent males do not display dominance relationships with peers, additional research at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda, indicates that adolescents there form a linear dominance hierarchy. These conflicting findings could reflect different patterns of rank acquisition across sites. An alternate possibility arises from a recent re-evaluation of age estimates at Ngogo and suggests that the report describing decided dominance relationships between adolescent males may have been due to the accidental inclusion of young adult males in the sample. To investigate these issues, we conducted a study of 23 adolescent male chimpanzees of known age during 12 months at Ngogo. Adolescent male chimpanzees exchanged pant grunts, a formal signal of submission, only 21 times. Recipients of pant grunts were late adolescent males, ranging between 14 and 16 years old. In contrast, younger adolescent males never received pant grunts from other males. Aggression between adolescent males was also rare. Analysis of pant grunts and aggressive interactions did not produce a linear dominance hierarchy among adolescent males. These data indicate that adolescent male chimpanzees do not form decided dominance relationships with their peers and are consistent with the hypothesis that the hierarchy described previously at Ngogo resulted from inaccurate age estimates of male chimpanzees. Because dominance relationships develop before adulthood in other primates, our finding that adolescent male chimpanzees do not do so is surprising. We offer possible explanations for why this is the case and suggest future studies

Wild chimpanzees are infected by Trypanosoma brucei

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Jirků, M.; Votýpka, J.; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Jirků-Pomajbíková, K.; Kriegová, E.; Vodička, R.; Lankester, F.; Leendertz, S. A. J.; Wittig, R. M.; Boesch, C.; Modrý, D.; Ayala, F. J.; Leendertz, F. H.; Lukeš, J.

2015-01-01

Roč. 4, č. 3 (2015), s. 277-282 ISSN 0020-7519 Institutional support: RVO:68081766 Keywords : Trypanosomes * Chimpanzee * Non-human primates * Transmission * Diagnostics Subject RIV: EG - Zoology Impact factor: 4.242, year: 2015

Genetic subspecies diversity of the chimpanzee CD4 virus-receptor gene

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvilsom, Christina; Carlsen, Frands; Siegismund, Hans R

2008-01-01

six among the subspecies of chimpanzees. We found the CD4 receptor to be conserved in individuals belonging to the P. t. verus subspecies and divergent from the other three subspecies, which harbored highly variable CD4 receptors. The CD4 receptor of chimpanzees differed from that of humans. We...... question whether the observed diversity can explain the species-specific differences in susceptibility to and pathogenicity of SIV/HIV....

Serological responses in chimpanzees inoculated with human immunodeficiency virus glycoprotein (gp120) subunit vaccine

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Arthur, L.O.; Pyle, S.W.; Nara, P.L.

1987-01-01

The major envelope glycoprotein of a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has been purified and was utilized as a prototype vaccine in chimpanzees. The 120,000-dalton glycoprotein (gp120) was purified from membranes of human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV)-IIIB-infected cells and the final preparation contained low levels to no detectable HTLV-IIIB core antigen (p24) and low levels of endotoxin. Chimpanzees inoculated with gp120 responded by developing antibodies that precipitated radiolabeled gp120 and neutralized in vitro infection of HTLV-IIIB. Antibodies to HTLV-IIIB p24 were not detected in the gp120-immunized chimpanzees. Peripheral blood leukocytes from the vaccinated animals were examined for T4 + and T8 + cells, and no decrease in the T4/T8 ratio was found, indicating that immunization with a ligand (gp120) that binds to T4 has not detectable adverse effect on the population of T4 + cells. The only current animal model that can be reproducibly infected with HIV is the chimpanzee. Immunization of chimpanzees with HIV proteins will provide an experimental system for testing the effectiveness of prototype vaccines for preventing HIV infection in vivo

Understanding geographic origins and history of admixture among chimpanzees in European zoos, with implications for future breeding programmes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvilsom, Christina; Frandsen, Peter; Børsting, Claus

2013-01-01

Despite ample focus on this endangered species, conservation planning for chimpanzees residing outside Africa has proven a challenge because of the lack of ancestry information. Here, we analysed the largest number of chimpanzee samples to date, examining microsatellites in >100 chimpanzees from ...

Chimpanzees and humans mimic pupil-size of conspecifics.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mariska E Kret

Full Text Available Group-living typically provides benefits to individual group members but also confers costs. To avoid incredulity and betrayal and allow trust and cooperation, individuals must understand the intentions and emotions of their group members. Humans attend to other's eyes and from gaze and pupil-size cues, infer information about the state of mind of the observed. In humans, pupil-size tends to mimic that of the observed. Here we tested whether pupil-mimicry exists in our closest relative, the chimpanzee (P. troglodytes. We conjectured that if pupil-mimicry has adaptive value, e.g. to promote swift communication of inner states and facilitate shared understanding and coordination, pupil-mimicry should emerge within but not across species. Pupillometry data was collected from human and chimpanzee subjects while they observed images of the eyes of both species with dilating/constricting pupils. Both species showed enhanced pupil-mimicry with members of their own species, with effects being strongest in humans and chimpanzee mothers. Pupil-mimicry may be deeply-rooted, but probably gained importance from the point in human evolution where the morphology of our eyes became more prominent. Humans' white sclera surrounding the iris, and the fine muscles around their eyes facilitate non-verbal communication via eye signals.

Spontaneous cross-species imitation in interactions between chimpanzees and zoo visitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Persson, Tomas; Sauciuc, Gabriela-Alina; Madsen, Elainie Alenkær

2018-01-01

Imitation is a cornerstone of human development, serving both a cognitive function (e.g. in the acquisition and transmission of skills and knowledge) and a social-communicative function, whereby the imitation of familiar actions serves to maintain social interaction and promote prosociality. In nonhuman primates, this latter function is poorly understood, or even claimed to be absent. In this observational study, we documented interactions between chimpanzees and zoo visitors and found that the two species imitated each other at a similar rate, corresponding to almost 10% of all produced actions. Imitation appeared to accomplish a social-communicative function, as cross-species interactions that contained imitative actions lasted significantly longer than interactions without imitation. In both species, physical proximity promoted cross-species imitation. Overall, imitative precision was higher among visitors than among chimpanzees, but this difference vanished in proximity contexts, i.e. in the indoor environment. Four of five chimpanzees produced imitations; three of them exhibited comparable imitation rates, despite large individual differences in level of cross-species interactivity. We also found that chimpanzees evidenced imitation recognition, yet only when visitors imitated their actions (as opposed to postures). Imitation recognition was expressed by returned imitation in 36% of the cases, and all four imitating chimpanzees engaged in so-called imitative games. Previously regarded as unique to early human socialization, such games serve to maintain social engagement. The results presented here indicate that nonhuman apes exhibit spontaneous imitation that can accomplish a communicative function. The study raises a number of novel questions for imitation research and highlights the imitation of familiar behaviours as a relevant-yet thus far understudied-research topic.

Sustainable forest management in Serbia: State and potentials

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Medarević Milan

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Starting from the internationally adopted definition of sustainable forest management, this paper points to the demands of sustainable forest management that can be satisfied by meeting the definite assumptions. The first part presents the objectives of forest and woodland management planning and utilisation, hunting management, and protection of protected areas, as well as the all-inclusive compatible goals of forest policy in Serbia. The second part presents the analysis of the present state of forests in Serbia, in relation to the Pan-European criteria for the assessment of sustainability, and the potentials of our forests to meet all the demands.

Different Social Motives in the Gestural Communication of Chimpanzees and Human Children

Science.gov (United States)

Bullinger, Anke F.; Zimmermann, Felizitas; Kaminski, Juliane; Tomasello, Michael

2011-01-01

Both chimpanzees and human infants use the pointing gesture with human adults, but it is not clear if they are doing so for the same social motives. In two studies, we presented chimpanzees and human 25-month-olds with the opportunity to point for a hidden tool (in the presence of a non-functional distractor). In one condition it was clear that…

Captive chimpanzee takes down a drone: tool use toward a flying object.

Science.gov (United States)

van Hooff, Jan A R A M; Lukkenaar, Bas

2015-10-01

On 10 April 2015, a Dutch TV crew was filming at the Royal Burgers Zoo in Arnhem, The Netherlands. It was the intention to film the chimpanzees in the enclosure from close-by and from above with the means of a drone. When the drone came a bit closer to the chimpanzees, a female individual made two sweeps with a branch that she held in one hand. The second one was successful and downed the drone. The use of the stick in this context was a unique action. It seemed deliberate given the decision to collect it and carry it to a place where the drone might be attacked. This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts.

Use of a tool-set by Pan troglodytes troglodytes to obtain termites (Macrotermes) in the periphery of the Dja Biosphere Reserve, southeast Cameroon.

Science.gov (United States)

Deblauwe, Isra; Guislain, Patrick; Dupain, Jef; Van Elsacker, Linda

2006-12-01

At the northern periphery of the Dja Biosphere Reserve (southeastern Cameroon) we recorded a new use of a tool-set by Pan troglodytes troglodytes to prey on Macrotermes muelleri, M. renouxi, M. lilljeborgi, and M. nobilis. We recovered 79 puncturing sticks and 47 fishing probes at 17 termite nests between 2002 and 2005. The mean length of the puncturing sticks (n = 77) and fishing probes (n = 45) was 52 cm and 56 cm, respectively, and the mean diameter was 9 mm and 4.5 mm, respectively. Sixty-eight percent of 138 chimpanzee fecal samples contained major soldiers of four Macrotermes species. The chimpanzees in southeastern Cameroon appeared to be selective in their choice of plant material to make their tools. The tools found at our study site resemble those from other sites in this region. However, in southeastern Cameroon only one tool-set type was found, whereas two tool-set types have been reported in Congo. Our study suggests that, along with the different vegetation types and the availability of plant material around termite nests, the nest and gallery structure and foraging behavior of the different Macrotermes spp. at all Central African sites must be investigated before we can attribute differences in tool-use behavior to culture. (c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Spontaneous reoccurrence of “scooping”, a wild tool-use behaviour, in naïve chimpanzees

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elisa Bandini

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Modern human technological culture depends on social learning. A widespread assumption for chimpanzee tool-use cultures is that they, too, are dependent on social learning. However, we provide evidence to suggest that individual learning, rather than social learning, is the driver behind determining the form of these behaviours within and across individuals. Low-fidelity social learning instead merely facilitates the reinnovation of these behaviours, and thus helps homogenise the behaviour across chimpanzees, creating the population-wide patterns observed in the wild (what here we call “socially mediated serial reinnovations”. This is the main prediction of the Zone of Latent Solutions (ZLS hypothesis. This study directly tested the ZLS hypothesis on algae scooping, a wild chimpanzee tool-use behaviour. We provided naïve chimpanzees (n = 14, Mage = 31.33, SD = 10.09 with ecologically relevant materials of the wild behaviour but, crucially, without revealing any information on the behavioural form required to accomplish this task. This study found that naïve chimpanzees expressed the same behavioural form as their wild counterparts, suggesting that, as the ZLS theory predicts, individual learning is the driver behind the frequency of this behavioural form. As more behaviours are being found to be within chimpanzee’s ZLS, this hypothesis now provides a parsimonious explanation for chimpanzee tool cultures.

In vivo neutralization of hepatitis B virus infection by an anti-preS1 humanized antibody in chimpanzees

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hong, Hyo Jeong; Ryu, Chun Jeih; Hur, Hyangsuk; Kim, Seho; Oh, Han Kyu; Oh, Mee Sook; Park, Song Yong

2004-01-01

Previously, we generated a murine monoclonal antibody (mAb), KR127, that recognizes amino acids (aa) 37-45 of the preS1 of hepatitis B virus (HBV). In this study, we have constructed a humanized version of KR127 and evaluated its HBV-neutralizing activity in chimpanzees. A study chimpanzee was given a single intravenous dose of the humanized antibody, followed by intravenous challenge with adr subtype of wild type HBV, while a control chimpanzee was only challenged with the virus. The result showed that the study chimpanzee did not develop HBV infection during 1 year, while the control chimpanzee was infected, indicating that the humanized antibody exhibited in vivo virus-neutralizing activity and thus protected the chimpanzee from HBV infection. In addition, the humanized antibody bound to the preS1 of all subtypes of HBV. We first demonstrate that an anti-preS1 mAb can neutralize HBV infection in vivo. This humanized antibody will be useful for the immunoprophylaxis of HBV infection

Superficial Velocity Effects on HZ-PAN and AgZ-PAN for Kr/Xe Capture

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Welty, Amy Keil [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Garn, Troy Gerry [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States); Greenhalgh, Mitchell Randy [Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)

2016-04-01

Nearly all previous testing of HZ-PAN and AgZ-PAN was conducted at the same flow rate in order to maintain consistency among tests. This testing was sufficient for sorbent capacity determinations, but did not ensure that sorbents were capable of functioning under a range of flow regimes. Tests were conducted on both HZ-PAN and AgZ-PAN at superficial velocities between 20 and 700 cm/min. For HZ-PAN, Kr capacity increased from 60 mmol/kg to 110 mmol/kg as superficial velocity increased from 21 to 679 cm/min. Results for AgZ-PAN were similar, with capacity ranging from 72 to 124 mmol/kg over the same range of superficial. These results are promising for scaling up to process flows, demonstrating flexibility to operate in a broad range of superficial velocities while maintaining sorbent capacity. While preparing for superficial velocity testing it was also discovered that AgZ-PAN Xe capacity, previously observed to diminish over time, could be recovered with increased desorption temperature. Further, a substantial Xe capacity increase was observed. Previous room temperature capacities in the range of 22-25 mmol Xe/kg AgZ-PAN were increased to over 60 mmol Xe/kg AgZ-PAN. While this finding has not yet been fully explored to optimize activation and desorption temperatures, it is encouraging.

Effects of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) on vegetation. I. Herbaceous plants PAN injury symptoms

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Nouchi, I.; Iijima, T.; Oodaira, T.

1975-01-01

A series of exposure experiments were conducted in a controlled-atmosphere exposure chamber equipped with artificial light apparatus, using PAN synthesized from ultraviolet irradiation of ethyl nitrite vapor in oxygen. Exposures of 6 approx. 16 hours and 10 pphm PAN caused serious damage like caving with glazing or bronzing in caved lesions to the lower surface of younger leaves. Leaves of white-flowered petunia were found to be most sensitive to PAN and were damaged even by a 3 pphm exposure. Microscopic examinations showed that the PAN characteristically caused injuries of spongy cells and that these cells collapsed and turned brown. Leaf injury symptoms on herbaceous plants caused by synthesized PAN in the exposure experiments were found to be quite similar to those seen in the field under high oxidant emergence. Therefore, it seems that the said type of injuries to leaf beet, kidney bean, and head lettuce observed in the field were caused by PAN. 21 references. 4 figures, 3 tables.

Transmission of multiple traditions within and between chimpanzee groups.

Science.gov (United States)

Whiten, Andrew; Spiteri, Antoine; Horner, Victoria; Bonnie, Kristin E; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; de Waal, Frans B M

2007-06-19

Field reports provide increasing evidence for local behavioral traditions among fish, birds, and mammals. These findings are significant for evolutionary biology because social learning affords faster adaptation than genetic change and has generated new (cultural) forms of evolution. Orangutan and chimpanzee field studies suggest that like humans, these apes are distinctive among animals in each exhibiting over 30 local traditions. However, direct evidence is lacking in apes and, with the exception of vocal dialects, in animals generally for the intergroup transmission that would allow innovations to spread widely and become evolutionarily significant phenomena. Here, we provide robust experimental evidence that alternative foraging techniques seeded in different groups of chimpanzees spread differentially not only within groups but serially across two further groups with substantial fidelity. Combining these results with those from recent social-diffusion studies in two larger groups offers the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman species can sustain unique local cultures, each constituted by multiple traditions. The convergence of these results with those from the wild implies a richness in chimpanzees' capacity for culture, a richness that parsimony suggests was shared with our common ancestor.

Wild chimpanzees are infected by Trypanosoma brucei

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Milan Jirků

2015-12-01

Finally, we demonstrated that the mandrill serum was able to efficiently lyse T. b. brucei and T. b. rhodesiense, and to some extent T. b. gambiense, while the chimpanzee serum failed to lyse any of these subspecies.

Muscle-specific integrins in masseter muscle fibers of chimpanzees: an immunohistochemical study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gianluigi Vaccarino

2010-05-01

Full Text Available Most notably, recent comparative genomic analyses strongly indicate that the marked differences between modern human and chimpanzees are likely due more to changes in gene regulation than to modifications of the genes. The most peculiar aspect of hominoid karyotypes is that human have 46 chromosomes whereas gorillas and chimpanzees have 48. Interestingly, human and chimpanzees do share identical inversions on chromosome 7 and 9 that are not evident in the gorilla karyotype. Thus, the general phylogeny suggests that humans and chimpanzees are sister taxa; based on this, it seems that human-chimpanzee sequence similarity is an astonishing 99%. At this purpose, of particular interest is the inactivation of the myosin heavy chain 16 (MYH16 gene, most prominently expressed in the masticatory muscle of mammals. It has been showed that the loss of this gene in humans may have resulted in smaller masticatory muscle and consequential changes to cranio-facial morphology and expansion of the human brain case. Powerful masticatory muscles are found in most primates; contrarily, in both modern and fossil member Homo, these muscles are considerably smaller. The evolving hominid masticatory apparatus shifted towards a pattern of gracilization nearly simultaneously with accelerated encephalization in early Homo. To better comprehend the real role of the MYH16 gene, we studied the primary proteins present in the muscle fibers of humans and non-humans, in order to understand if they really can be influenced by MYH16 gene. At this aim we examined the muscle-specific integrins, alpha 7B and beta 1D-integrins, and their relative fetal isoforms, alpha 7A and beta 1A-integrins, analyzing, by immunohistochemistry, muscle biopsies of two components of a chimpanzee's group in captivity, an alpha male and a non-alpha male subjects; all these integrins participate in vital biological processes such as maintenance of tissue integrity, embryonic development, cell

Comparative Serum Challenges Show Divergent Patterns of Gene Expression and Open Chromatin in Human and Chimpanzee.

Science.gov (United States)

Pizzollo, Jason; Nielsen, William J; Shibata, Yoichiro; Safi, Alexias; Crawford, Gregory E; Wray, Gregory A; Babbitt, Courtney C

2018-03-01

Humans experience higher rates of age-associated diseases than our closest living evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees. Environmental factors can explain many of these increases in disease risk, but species-specific genetic changes can also play a role. Alleles that confer increased disease susceptibility later in life can persist in a population in the absence of selective pressure if those changes confer positive adaptation early in life. One age-associated disease that disproportionately affects humans compared with chimpanzees is epithelial cancer. Here, we explored genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees in a well-defined experimental assay that mimics gene expression changes that happen during cancer progression: A fibroblast serum challenge. We used this assay with fibroblasts isolated from humans and chimpanzees to explore species-specific differences in gene expression and chromatin state with RNA-Seq and DNase-Seq. Our data reveal that human fibroblasts increase expression of genes associated with wound healing and cancer pathways; in contrast, chimpanzee gene expression changes are not concentrated around particular functional categories. Chromatin accessibility dramatically increases in human fibroblasts, yet decreases in chimpanzee cells during the serum response. Many regions of opening and closing chromatin are in close proximity to genes encoding transcription factors or genes involved in wound healing processes, further supporting the link between changes in activity of regulatory elements and changes in gene expression. Together, these expression and open chromatin data show that humans and chimpanzees have dramatically different responses to the same physiological stressor, and how a core physiological process can evolve quickly over relatively short evolutionary time scales.

Comparative kinomics of human and chimpanzee reveal unique kinship and functional diversity generated by new domain combinations

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Martin Juliette

2008-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Phosphorylation by protein kinases is a common event in many cellular processes. Further, many kinases perform specialized roles and are regulated by non-kinase domains tethered to kinase domain. Perturbation in the regulation of kinases leads to malignancy. We have identified and analysed putative protein kinases encoded in the genome of chimpanzee which is a close evolutionary relative of human. Result The shared core biology between chimpanzee and human is characterized by many orthologous protein kinases which are involved in conserved pathways. Domain architectures specific to chimp/human kinases have been observed. Chimp kinases with unique domain architectures are characterized by deletion of one or more non-kinase domains in the human kinases. Interestingly, counterparts of some of the multi-domain human kinases in chimp are characterized by identical domain architectures but with kinase-like non-kinase domain. Remarkably, out of 587 chimpanzee kinases no human orthologue with greater than 95% sequence identity could be identified for 160 kinases. Variations in chimpanzee kinases compared to human kinases are brought about also by differences in functions of domains tethered to the catalytic kinase domain. For example, the heterodimer forming PB1 domain related to the fold of ubiquitin/Ras-binding domain is seen uniquely tethered to PKC-like chimpanzee kinase. Conclusion Though the chimpanzee and human are evolutionary very close, there are chimpanzee kinases with no close counterpart in the human suggesting differences in their functions. This analysis provides a direction for experimental analysis of human and chimpanzee protein kinases in order to enhance our understanding on their specific biological roles.

Identification of chimpanzee leukocyte antigens (ChL-A) and their relation to HL-A

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Balner, H.

1971-01-01

The identification of a number of leukocyte antigens of chimpanzees is described. Suggestive evidence was obtained that some of the isoantisera recognize specificities of a hypothetical genetic system of chimpanzee antigens which, in analogy with the human HL-A system, is tentatively called ChL-A.

Analysis list: pan [Chip-atlas[Archive

Lifescience Database Archive (English)

Full Text Available pan Embryo,Larvae,Pupae + dm3 http://dbarchive.biosciencedbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/target.../pan.1.tsv http://dbarchive.biosciencedbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/target/pan.5.tsv http://dbarchive.biosciencedbc.jp.../kyushu-u/dm3/target/pan.10.tsv http://dbarchive.biosciencedbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/colo/pan.Embryo.tsv,http://dbarchive.bioscience...dbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/colo/pan.Larvae.tsv,http://dbarchive.bioscience...dbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/colo/pan.Pupae.tsv http://dbarchive.biosciencedbc.jp/kyushu-u/dm3/colo/Embryo.gml,http://dbarchive.bioscience

Rates of genomic divergence in humans, chimpanzees and their lice.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Kevin P; Allen, Julie M; Olds, Brett P; Mugisha, Lawrence; Reed, David L; Paige, Ken N; Pittendrigh, Barry R

2014-02-22

The rate of DNA mutation and divergence is highly variable across the tree of life. However, the reasons underlying this variation are not well understood. Comparing the rates of genetic changes between hosts and parasite lineages that diverged at the same time is one way to begin to understand differences in genetic mutation and substitution rates. Such studies have indicated that the rate of genetic divergence in parasites is often faster than that of their hosts when comparing single genes. However, the variation in this relative rate of molecular evolution across different genes in the genome is unknown. We compared the rate of DNA sequence divergence between humans, chimpanzees and their ectoparasitic lice for 1534 protein-coding genes across their genomes. The rate of DNA substitution in these orthologous genes was on average 14 times faster for lice than for humans and chimpanzees. In addition, these rates were positively correlated across genes. Because this correlation only occurred for substitutions that changed the amino acid, this pattern is probably produced by similar functional constraints across the same genes in humans, chimpanzees and their ectoparasites.

Bayesian inference of shared recombination hotspots between humans and chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Ying; Rannala, Bruce

2014-12-01

Recombination generates variation and facilitates evolution. Recombination (or lack thereof) also contributes to human genetic disease. Methods for mapping genes influencing complex genetic diseases via association rely on linkage disequilibrium (LD) in human populations, which is influenced by rates of recombination across the genome. Comparative population genomic analyses of recombination using related primate species can identify factors influencing rates of recombination in humans. Such studies can indicate how variable hotspots for recombination may be both among individuals (or populations) and over evolutionary timescales. Previous studies have suggested that locations of recombination hotspots are not conserved between humans and chimpanzees. We made use of the data sets from recent resequencing projects and applied a Bayesian method for identifying hotspots and estimating recombination rates. We also reanalyzed SNP data sets for regions with known hotspots in humans using samples from the human and chimpanzee. The Bayes factors (BF) of shared recombination hotspots between human and chimpanzee across regions were obtained. Based on the analysis of the aligned regions of human chromosome 21, locations where the two species show evidence of shared recombination hotspots (with high BFs) were identified. Interestingly, previous comparative studies of human and chimpanzee that focused on the known human recombination hotspots within the β-globin and HLA regions did not find overlapping of hotspots. Our results show high BFs of shared hotspots at locations within both regions, and the estimated locations of shared hotspots overlap with the locations of human recombination hotspots obtained from sperm-typing studies. Copyright © 2014 by the Genetics Society of America.

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lovert : on the evolution of the human reproductive strategy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Schuiling, GA

2003-01-01

Human reproductive strategy differs from that of most other mammals, including Apes such as the closely related chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo (Pan paniscus). For example, humans, although basically polygamic, exhibit a strong tendency to (serial) monogamy and-very rare for a

Postnatal stem/progenitor cells derived from the dental pulp of adult chimpanzee.

Science.gov (United States)

Cheng, Pei-Hsun; Snyder, Brooke; Fillos, Dimitri; Ibegbu, Chris C; Huang, Anderson Hsien-Cheng; Chan, Anthony W S

2008-04-22

Chimpanzee dental pulp stem/stromal cells (ChDPSCs) are very similar to human bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hBMSCs) as demonstrated by the expression pattern of cell surface markers and their multipotent differentiation capability. ChDPSCs were isolated from an incisor and a canine of a forty-seven year old female chimpanzee. A homogenous population of ChDPSCs was established in early culture at a high proliferation rate and verified by the expression pattern of thirteen cell surface markers. The ChDPSCs are multipotent and were capable of differentiating into osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages under appropriate in vitro culture conditions. ChDPSCs also express stem cell (Sox-2, Nanog, Rex-1, Oct-4) and osteogenic (Osteonectin, osteocalcin, osteopontin) markers, which is comparable to reported results of rhesus monkey BMSCs (rBMSCs), hBMSCs and hDPSCs. Although ChDPSCs vigorously proliferated during the initial phase and gradually decreased in subsequent passages, the telomere length indicated that telomerase activity was not significantly reduced. These results demonstrate that ChDPSCs can be efficiently isolated from post-mortem teeth of adult chimpanzees and are multipotent. Due to the almost identical genome composition of humans and chimpanzees, there is an emergent need for defining the new role of chimpanzee modeling in comparative medicine. Teeth are easy to recover at necropsy and easy to preserve prior to the retrieval of dental pulp for stem/stromal cells isolation. Therefore, the establishment of ChDPSCs would preserve and maximize the applications of such a unique and invaluable animal model, and could advance the understanding of cellular functions and differentiation control of adult stem cells in higher primates.

Male chimpanzees' grooming rates vary by female age, parity, and fertility status.

Science.gov (United States)

Proctor, Darby P; Lambeth, Susan P; Schapiro, Steven J; Brosnan, Sarah F

2011-10-01

Copulation preferences in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, suggest that males prefer older females who have had previous offspring. However, this finding is counter to some behavioral models, which predict that chimpanzee males, as promiscuous breeders with minimal costs to mating, should show little or no preference when choosing mating partners (e.g. should mate indiscriminately). To determine if the preferences indicated by copulations appear in other contexts as well as how they interact, we examined how male chimpanzees' grooming patterns varied amongst females. We found that males' preferences were based on interactions among females' fertility status, age, and parity. First, grooming increased with increasing female parity. We further found an effect of the estrous cycle on grooming; when females were at the lowest point of their cycle, males preferentially groomed parous females at peak reproductive age, but during maximal tumescence, males preferred the oldest multiparous females. Nulliparous females received relatively little grooming regardless of age or fertility. Thus, male chimpanzees apparently chose grooming partners based on both female's experience and fertility, possibly indicating a two-pronged social investment strategy. Male selectivity seems to have evolved to effectively distribute costly social resources in a pattern which may increase their overall reproductive success. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Deadly Respiratory Disease in Wild Chimpanzees

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Podcasts

2018-04-19

Dr. Tony Goldberg, Professor of Epidemiology at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Associate Director for Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Global Health Institute, discusses an outbreak of rhinovirus C in chimpanzees in Uganda.  Created: 4/19/2018 by National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID).   Date Released: 4/19/2018.

Gestation period and twinning in chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

PEACOCK, L J; ROGERS, C M

1959-04-10

The length of the gestation period in 118 births in a colony of chimpanzees was found to be 226.8 days, with a standard deviation of 13.3 and a range of 196 to 260 days. Six pairs of twins were born in 120 parturitions; thus the apparent twinning rate is higher than that in man.

4,300-year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology.

Science.gov (United States)

Mercader, Julio; Barton, Huw; Gillespie, Jason; Harris, Jack; Kuhn, Steven; Tyler, Robert; Boesch, Christophe

2007-02-27

Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte d'Ivoire constitute the only evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The "Chimpanzee Stone Age" pre-dates the advent of settled farming villages in this part of the African rainforest and suggests that percussive material culture could have been inherited from an common human-chimpanzee clade, rather than invented by hominins, or have arisen by imitation, or resulted from independent technological convergence.

Sex differences in wild chimpanzee behavior emerge during infancy.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elizabeth V Lonsdorf

Full Text Available The role of biological and social influences on sex differences in human child development is a persistent topic of discussion and debate. Given their many similarities to humans, chimpanzees are an important study species for understanding the biological and evolutionary roots of sex differences in human development. In this study, we present the most detailed analyses of wild chimpanzee infant development to date, encompassing data from 40 infants from the long-term study of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Our goal was to characterize age-related changes, from birth to five years of age, in the percent of observation time spent performing behaviors that represent important benchmarks in nutritional, motor, and social development, and to determine whether and in which behaviors sex differences occur. Sex differences were found for indicators of social behavior, motor development and spatial independence with males being more physically precocious and peaking in play earlier than females. These results demonstrate early sex differentiation that may reflect adult reproductive strategies. Our findings also resemble those found in humans, which suggests that biologically-based sex differences may have been present in the common ancestor and operated independently from the influences of modern sex-biased parental behavior and gender socialization.

Climate seasonality limits leaf carbon assimilation and wood productivity in tropical forests

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wagner, Fabien H.; Hérault, Bruno; Bonal, Damien; Stahl, Clément; Anderson, Liana O.; Baker, Timothy R.; Becker, Gabriel Sebastian; Beeckman, Hans; Boanerges Souza, Danilo; Botosso, Paulo Cesar; Bowman, David M.J.S.; Bräuning, Achim; Brede, Benjamin; Brown, Foster Irving; Camarero, Jesus Julio; Camargo, Plínio Barbosa; Cardoso, Fernanda C.G.; Carvalho, Fabrício Alvim; Castro, Wendeson; Chagas, Rubens Koloski; Chave, Jérome; Chidumayo, Emmanuel N.; Clark, Deborah A.; Costa, Flavia Regina Capellotto; Couralet, Camille; Silva Mauricio, Da Paulo Henrique; Dalitz, Helmut; Castro, De Vinicius Resende; Freitas Milani, De Jaçanan Eloisa; Oliveira, De Edilson Consuelo; Souza Arruda, De Luciano; Devineau, Jean-Louis; Drew, David M.; Dünisch, Oliver; Durigan, Giselda; Elifuraha, Elisha; Fedele, Marcio; Ferreira Fedele, Ligia; Figueiredo Filho, Afonso; Finger, César Augusto Guimarães; Franco, Augusto César; Freitas Júnior, João Lima; Galvão, Franklin; Gebrekirstos, Aster; Gliniars, Robert; Lima De Alencastro Graça, Paulo Maurício; Griffiths, Anthony D.; Grogan, James; Guan, Kaiyu; Homeier, Jürgen; Kanieski, Maria Raquel; Kho, Lip Khoon; Koenig, Jennifer; Kohler, Sintia Valerio; Krepkowski, Julia; Lemos-filho, José Pires; Lieberman, Diana; Lieberman, Milton Eugene; Lisi, Claudio Sergio; Longhi Santos, Tomaz; López Ayala, José Luis; Maeda, Eduardo Eijji; Malhi, Yadvinder; Maria, Vivian R.B.; Marques, Marcia C.M.; Marques, Renato; Maza Chamba, Hector; Mbwambo, Lawrence; Melgaço, Karina Liana Lisboa; Mendivelso, Hooz Angela; Murphy, Brett P.; O'Brien, Joseph J.; Oberbauer, Steven F.; Okada, Naoki; Pélissier, Raphaël; Prior, Lynda D.; Roig, Fidel Alejandro; Ross, Michael; Rossatto, Davi Rodrigo; Rossi, Vivien; Rowland, Lucy; Rutishauser, Ervan; Santana, Hellen; Schulze, Mark; Selhorst, Diogo; Silva, Williamar Rodrigues; Silveira, Marcos; Spannl, Susanne; Swaine, Michael D.; Toledo, José Julio; Toledo, Marcos Miranda; Toledo, Marisol; Toma, Takeshi; Tomazello Filho, Mario; Valdez Hernández, Juan Ignacio; Verbesselt, Jan; Vieira, Simone Aparecida; Vincent, Grégoire; Volkmer De Castilho, Carolina; Volland, Franziska; Worbes, Martin; Zanon, Magda Lea Bolzan; Aragão, Luiz E.O.C.

2016-01-01

The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cycle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combination of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68

HOW TO PAN-SHARPEN IMAGES USING THE GRAM-SCHMIDT PAN-SHARPEN METHOD – A RECIPE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T. Maurer

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Since its publication in 1998 (Laben and Brower, 2000, the Gram-Schmidt pan-sharpen method has become one of the most popular algorithms to pan-sharpen multispectral (MS imagery. It outperforms most other pan-sharpen methods in both maximizing image sharpness and minimizing color distortion. It is, on the other hand, also more complex and computationally expensive than most other methods, as it requires forward and backward transforming the entire image. Another complication is the lack of a clear recipe of how to compute the sensor dependent MS to Pan weights that are needed to compute the simulated low resolution pan band. Estimating them from the sensor’s spectral sensitivity curves (in different ways, or using linear regression or least square methods are typical candidates which can include other degrees of freedom such as adding a constant offset or not. As a result, most companies and data providers do it somewhat differently. Here we present a solution to both problems. The transform coefficients can be computed directly and in advance from the MS covariance matrix and the MS to Pan weights. Once the MS covariance matrix is computed and stored with the image statistics, any small section of the image can be pan-sharpened on the fly, without having to compute anything else over the entire image. Similarly, optimal MS to Pan weights can be computed directly from the full MS-Pan covariance matrix, guaranteeing optimal image quality and consistency.

Aping expressions? Chimpanzees produce distinct laugh types when responding to laughter of others.

Science.gov (United States)

Davila-Ross, Marina; Allcock, Bethan; Thomas, Chris; Bard, Kim A

2011-10-01

Humans have the ability to replicate the emotional expressions of others even when they undergo different emotions. Such distinct responses of expressions, especially positive expressions, play a central role in everyday social communication of humans and may give the responding individuals important advantages in cooperation and communication. The present work examined laughter in chimpanzees to test whether nonhuman primates also use their expressions in such distinct ways. The approach was first to examine the form and occurrence of laugh replications (laughter after the laughter of others) and spontaneous laughter of chimpanzees during social play and then to test whether their laugh replications represented laugh-elicited laugh responses (laughter triggered by the laughter of others) by using a quantitative method designed to measure responses in natural social settings. The results of this study indicated that chimpanzees produce laugh-elicited laughter that is distinct in form and occurrence from their spontaneous laughter. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that nonhuman primates have the ability to replicate the expressions of others by producing expressions that differ in their underlying emotions and social implications. The data further showed that the laugh-elicited laugh responses of the subjects were closely linked to play maintenance, suggesting that chimpanzees might gain important cooperative and communicative advantages by responding with laughter to the laughter of their social partners. Notably, some chimpanzee groups of this study responded more with laughter than others, an outcome that provides empirical support of a socialization of expressions in great apes similar to that of humans.

A Longitudinal Study on Feeding Behaviour and Activity Patterns of Released Chimpanzees in Conkouati-Douli National Park, Republic of Congo

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caroline Ross

2013-06-01

Full Text Available Wild chimpanzee populations are still declining due to logging, disease transmission and hunting. The bushmeat trade frequently leads to an increase in the number of orphaned primates. HELP Congo was the first project to successfully release wild-born orphan chimpanzees into an existing chimpanzee habitat. A collection of post monitoring data over 16 years now offers the unique opportunity to investigate possible behavioural adaptations in these chimpanzees. We investigated the feeding and activity patterns in eight individuals via focal observation techniques from 1997–1999 and 2001–2005. Our results revealed a decline in the number of fruit and insect species in the diet of released chimpanzees over the years, whereas within the same period of time, the number of consumed seed species increased. Furthermore, we found a decline in time spent travelling, but an increase in time spent on social activities, such as grooming, as individuals matured. In conclusion, the observed changes in feeding and activity patterns seem to reflect important long-term behavioural and ecological adaptations in wild-born orphan released chimpanzees, demonstrating that the release of chimpanzees can be successful, even if it takes time for full adaptation.

'Adoption' by maternal siblings in wild chimpanzees

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hobaiter, Catherine; Schel, Anne Marijke; Langergraber, Kevin; Zuberbühler, Klaus

2014-01-01

The adoption of unrelated orphaned infants is something chimpanzees and humans have in common. Providing parental care has fitness implications for both the adopter and orphan, and cases of adoption have thus been cited as evidence for a shared origin of an altruistic behaviour. We provide new data

O pan das ánimas

OpenAIRE

Antón, Fina; Mandianes Castro, Manuel

1996-01-01

O pan, ademais de cumprir una función alimenticia de primeira orde, está revestido dunha significación simbólica importante. O pan durante a vida axuda a pasa-los límites, a da-lo paso, a integrarse entre os cristiáns por cousa do bautismo e a integrarse no grupo dos homes e mulleres co adaxo da boda, pero o pan axuda, sobre todo, a pasa-lo río Xordán, que é, sen dúbida o límite que separa este mundo do outro; a serpe e as ánimas constitúen un límite e o pan facilita o seu paso. O pan está in...

Postnatal stem/progenitor cells derived from the dental pulp of adult chimpanzee

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fillos Dimitri

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Background Chimpanzee dental pulp stem/stromal cells (ChDPSCs are very similar to human bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hBMSCs as demonstrated by the expression pattern of cell surface markers and their multipotent differentiation capability. Results ChDPSCs were isolated from an incisor and a canine of a forty-seven year old female chimpanzee. A homogenous population of ChDPSCs was established in early culture at a high proliferation rate and verified by the expression pattern of thirteen cell surface markers. The ChDPSCs are multipotent and were capable of differentiating into osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages under appropriate in vitro culture conditions. ChDPSCs also express stem cell (Sox-2, Nanog, Rex-1, Oct-4 and osteogenic (Osteonectin, osteocalcin, osteopontin markers, which is comparable to reported results of rhesus monkey BMSCs (rBMSCs, hBMSCs and hDPSCs. Although ChDPSCs vigorously proliferated during the initial phase and gradually decreased in subsequent passages, the telomere length indicated that telomerase activity was not significantly reduced. Conclusion These results demonstrate that ChDPSCs can be efficiently isolated from post-mortem teeth of adult chimpanzees and are multipotent. Due to the almost identical genome composition of humans and chimpanzees, there is an emergent need for defining the new role of chimpanzee modeling in comparative medicine. Teeth are easy to recover at necropsy and easy to preserve prior to the retrieval of dental pulp for stem/stromal cells isolation. Therefore, the establishment of ChDPSCs would preserve and maximize the applications of such a unique and invaluable animal model, and could advance the understanding of cellular functions and differentiation control of adult stem cells in higher primates.

Prevalence of muzzle-rubbing and hand-rubbing behavior in wild chimpanzees in Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania.

Science.gov (United States)

Corp, Nadia; Hayaki, Hitoshige; Matsusaka, Takahisa; Fujita, Shiho; Hosaka, Kazuhiko; Kutsukake, Nobuyuki; Nakamura, Michio; Nakamura, Miho; Nishie, Hitonaru; Shimada, Masaki; Zamma, Koichiro; Wallauer, William; Nishida, Toshisada

2009-04-01

In 1998, four chimpanzees in the Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania, were observed wiping their mouths with non-detached leaves or stalks of grass, or rubbing their mouths with a tree trunk or branch, especially while eating lemons. The number of mouth-wiping/rubbing individuals increased to 18 in 1999. By 2005, 29 chimpanzees were documented wiping/rubbing their muzzles in this way. Although it is difficult to determine whether the chimpanzees acquired this behavior as a result of trial and error or social learning, the fact that chimpanzees at other sites perform this behavior with detached leaves or leafy twigs much more often than with intact items suggests the possibility that cleaning with intact plant parts at Mahale spread via social learning.

When maths trumps logic: probabilistic judgements in chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Hanus, Daniel; Call, Josep

2014-12-01

When searching for hidden food, do chimpanzees take into account both the number of hidden items and the number of potential hiding locations? We presented chimpanzees with two trays, each of them containing a different food/cup ratio and therefore a different likelihood of finding a baited cup among empty alternatives. Subjects' performance was directly influenced by the relative difference (probability ratio (PR)) between the two given probabilities. Interestingly, however, they did not appreciate the special value of a truly safe option (with P = 1.0). Instead, they seemed to 'blindly' rely on the PR between the two options, systematically preferring the more likely one once a certain threshold had been reached. A control condition ruled out the possibility of low-level learning explanations for the observed performance. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Play-solicitation gestures in chimpanzees in the wild: flexible adjustment to social circumstances and individual matrices.

Science.gov (United States)

Fröhlich, Marlen; Wittig, Roman M; Pika, Simone

2016-08-01

Social play is a frequent behaviour in great apes and involves sophisticated forms of communicative exchange. While it is well established that great apes test and practise the majority of their gestural signals during play interactions, the influence of demographic factors and kin relationships between the interactants on the form and variability of gestures are relatively little understood. We thus carried out the first systematic study on the exchange of play-soliciting gestures in two chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) communities of different subspecies. We examined the influence of age, sex and kin relationships of the play partners on gestural play solicitations, including object-associated and self-handicapping gestures. Our results demonstrated that the usage of (i) audible and visual gestures increased significantly with infant age, (ii) tactile gestures differed between the sexes, and (iii) audible and visual gestures were higher in interactions with conspecifics than with mothers. Object-associated and self-handicapping gestures were frequently used to initiate play with same-aged and younger play partners, respectively. Our study thus strengthens the view that gestures are mutually constructed communicative means, which are flexibly adjusted to social circumstances and individual matrices of interactants.

Wild chimpanzees are infected by Trypanosoma brucei

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Jirků, Milan; Votýpka, Jan; Petrželková, Klára Judita; Jirků-Pomajbíková, K.; Kriegová, Eva; Vodička, R.; Lankester, F.; Leendertz, S. A. J.; Wittig, R. M.; Boesch, C.; Modrý, David; Ayala, F. J.; Leendertz, F. H.; Lukeš, Julius

2015-01-01

Roč. 4, č. 3 (2015), s. 277-282 ISSN 2213-2244 R&D Projects: GA MŠk(CZ) EE2.3.30.0032 EU Projects: European Commission(XE) 316304 Institutional support: RVO:60077344 Keywords : Trypanosomes * Chimpanzee * Non-human primates * Transmission * Diagnostics Subject RIV: GJ - Animal Vermins ; Diseases, Veterinary Medicine

Great ape origins of personality maturation and sex differences: a study of orangutans and chimpanzees.

Science.gov (United States)

Weiss, Alexander; King, James E

2015-04-01

Human personality development evinces increased emotional stability, prosocial tendencies, and responsibility. One hypothesis offered to explain this pattern is Social-Investment Theory, which posits that culturally defined social roles, including marriage and employment, are responsible for the increased maturity. Alternatively, Five-Factor Theory emphasizes the role of biological factors, such as those governing physical development, which may predate the emergence of humans. Five-Factor Theory, unlike Social-Investment Theory, predicts that all or some of the human personality developmental trends should be present in great apes, our closest evolutionary relatives. To test this prediction and to better understand the evolutionary origins of sex differences, we examined age and sex differences in the chimpanzee and orangutan personality domains Extraversion, Dominance, Neuroticism, and Agreeableness. We also examined the Activity and Gregariousness facets of Extraversion and the orangutan Intellect domain. Extraversion and Neuroticism declined across age groups in both species, in common with humans. A significant interaction indicated that Agreeableness declined in orangutans but increased in chimpanzees, as it does in humans, though this may reflect differences in how Agreeableness was defined in each species. Significant interactions indicated that male chimpanzees, unlike male orangutans, displayed higher Neuroticism scores than females and maintained higher levels of Activity and Dominance into old age than female chimpanzees, male orangutans, and female orangutans. Personality-age correlations were comparable across orangutans and chimpanzees and were similar to those reported in human studies. Sex differences were stronger in chimpanzees than in humans or orangutans. These findings support Five-Factor Theory, suggest the role of gene-culture coevolution in shaping personality development, and suggest that sex differences evolved independently in different

New Insights into the Evolution of the Human Diet from Faecal Biomarker Analysis in Wild Chimpanzee and Gorilla Faeces.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ainara Sistiaga

Full Text Available Our understanding of early human diets is based on reconstructed biomechanics of hominin jaws, bone and teeth isotopic data, tooth wear patterns, lithic, taphonomic and zooarchaeological data, which do not provide information about the relative amounts of different types of foods that contributed most to early human diets. Faecal biomarkers are proving to be a valuable tool in identifying relative proportions of plant and animal tissues in Palaeolithic diets. A limiting factor in the application of the faecal biomarker approach is the striking absence of data related to the occurrence of faecal biomarkers in non-human primate faeces. In this study we explored the nature and proportions of sterols and stanols excreted by our closest living relatives. This investigation reports the first faecal biomarker data for wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes and mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei. Our results suggest that the chemometric analysis of faecal biomarkers is a useful tool for distinguishing between NHP and human faecal matter, and hence, it could provide information for palaeodietary research and early human diets.

New Insights into the Evolution of the Human Diet from Faecal Biomarker Analysis in Wild Chimpanzee and Gorilla Faeces.

Science.gov (United States)

Sistiaga, Ainara; Wrangham, Richard; Rothman, Jessica M; Summons, Roger E

2015-01-01

Our understanding of early human diets is based on reconstructed biomechanics of hominin jaws, bone and teeth isotopic data, tooth wear patterns, lithic, taphonomic and zooarchaeological data, which do not provide information about the relative amounts of different types of foods that contributed most to early human diets. Faecal biomarkers are proving to be a valuable tool in identifying relative proportions of plant and animal tissues in Palaeolithic diets. A limiting factor in the application of the faecal biomarker approach is the striking absence of data related to the occurrence of faecal biomarkers in non-human primate faeces. In this study we explored the nature and proportions of sterols and stanols excreted by our closest living relatives. This investigation reports the first faecal biomarker data for wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei). Our results suggest that the chemometric analysis of faecal biomarkers is a useful tool for distinguishing between NHP and human faecal matter, and hence, it could provide information for palaeodietary research and early human diets.

4,300-Year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology

OpenAIRE

Mercader, Julio; Barton, Huw; Gillespie, Jason; Harris, Jack; Kuhn, Steven; Tyler, Robert; Boesch, Christophe

2007-01-01

Archaeological research in the African rainforest reveals unexpected results in the search for the origins of hominoid technology. The ancient Panin sites from Côte d'Ivoire constitute the only evidence of prehistoric ape behavior known to date anywhere in the world. Recent archaeological work has yielded behaviorally modified stones, dated by chronometric means to 4,300 years of age, lodging starch residue suggestive of prehistoric dietary practices by ancient chimpanzees. The “Chimpanzee St...

Why do forest products become less available? A pan-tropical comparison of drivers of forest-resource degradation

OpenAIRE

Hermans, Kathleen; Gerstner, Katharina; Geijzendorffer, Ilse R.; Herold, Martin; Seppelt, Ralf; Wunder, Sven

2016-01-01

Forest products provide an important source of income and wellbeing for rural smallholder communities across the tropics. Although tropical forest products frequently become over-exploited, only few studies explicitly address the dynamics of degradation in response to socio-economic drivers. Our study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors driving changes in tropical forest products in the perception of rural smallholder communities. Using the poverty and environment network global datas...

Incomplete lineage sorting patterns among human, chimpanzee and orangutan suggest recent orangutan speciation and widespread selection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hobolth, Asger; Dutheil, Julien; Hawks, John

2011-01-01

We search the complete orangutan genome for regions where humans are more closely related to orangutans than to chimpanzees due to incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) in the ancestor of human and chimpanzees. The search uses our recently developed coalescent HMM framework. We find ILS present in ~1%...

Cultural assemblages show nested structure in humans and chimpanzees but not orangutans.

Science.gov (United States)

Kamilar, Jason M; Atkinson, Quentin D

2014-01-07

The evolution of hominin culture is well-documented in the archeological and fossil record, but such a record is largely absent for nonhuman primates. An alternative approach to studying cultural evolution is to examine patterns of modern cultural variation. In this article we measure nestedness across human and great ape "cultural repertoires" to gain insight into the accumulation and maintenance of putative cultural diversity in these species. Cultural assemblages are nested if cultures with a small repertoire of traits tend to comprise a proper subset of those traits present in more complex cultures. This nesting will occur if some traits are sequentially gained or lost, which may be because of the differential dispersal or extinction of traits. Here we apply statistical tools from ecology to examine the degree of nestedness in four datasets documenting the presence or absence of specific cultural traits across indigenous human populations in North America and New Guinea. We then compare the human data to patterns observed for putative cultural traits in chimpanzee and orangutan populations. In both humans and chimpanzees, cultural diversity is highly nonrandom, showing significant nested structure for all of the datasets examined. We find no evidence for nestedness in the orangutan cultural data. These findings are consistent with a sequential "layering" of cultural diversity in humans and chimpanzees, but not orangutans. Such an interpretation implies that the traits required for sequential cultural evolution first appeared in the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.

Wild Cultures: A Comparison between Chimpanzee and Human Cultures

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Diana Rocío Carvajal Contreras

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Review of Wild Cultures: A Comparison between Chimpanzee and Human Cultures. Christophe Boesch. 2012. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 276, 68 b & w illustrations, 11 tables. £60 (hardback. ISBN 9781109025370.

Climate seasonality limits leaf carbon assimilation and wood productivity in tropical forests

Science.gov (United States)

Fabien H. Wagner; Bruno Herault; Damien Bonal; Clement Stahl; Liana O. Anderson; Timothy R. Baker; Gabriel Sebastian Becker; Hans Beeckman; Danilo Boanerges Souza; Paulo Cesar Botosso; David M. J. S. Bowman; Achim Brauning; Benjamin Brede; Foster Irving Brown; Jesus Julio Camarero; Plinio Barbosa Camargo; Fernanda C. G. Cardoso; Fabricio Alvim Carvalho; Wendeson Castro; Rubens Koloski Chagas; Jerome Chave; Emmanuel N. Chidumayo; Deborah A. Clark; Flavia Regina Capellotto Costa; Camille Couralet; Paulo Henrique da Silva Mauricio; Helmut Dalitz; Vinicius Resende de Castro; Jacanan Eloisa de Freitas Milani; Edilson Consuelo de Oliveira; Luciano de Souza Arruda; Jean-Louis Devineau; David M. Drew; Oliver Dunisch; Giselda Durigan; Elisha Elifuraha; Marcio Fedele; Ligia Ferreira Fedele; Afonso Figueiredo Filho; Cesar Augusto Guimaraes Finger; Augusto Cesar Franco; Joao Lima Freitas Junior; Franklin Galvao; Aster Gebrekirstos; Robert Gliniars; Paulo Mauricio Lima de Alencastro Graca; Anthony D. Griffiths; James Grogan; Kaiyu Guan; Jurgen Homeier; Maria Raquel Kanieski; Lip Khoon Kho; Jennifer Koenig; Sintia Valerio Kohler; Julia Krepkowski; Jose Pires Lemos-Filho; Diana Lieberman; Milton Eugene Lieberman; Claudio Sergio Lisi; Tomaz Longhi Santos; Jose Luis Lopez Ayala; Eduardo Eijji Maeda; Yadvinder Malhi; Vivian R. B. Maria; Marcia C. M. Marques; Renato Marques; Hector Maza Chamba; Lawrence Mbwambo; Karina Liana Lisboa Melgaco; Hooz Angela Mendivelso; Brett P. Murphy; Joseph O' Brien; Steven F. Oberbauer; Naoki Okada; Raphael Pelissier; Lynda D. Prior; Fidel Alejandro Roig; Michael Ross; Davi Rodrigo Rossatto; Vivien Rossi; Lucy Rowland; Ervan Rutishauser; Hellen Santana; Mark Schulze; Diogo Selhorst; Williamar Rodrigues Silva; Marcos Silveira; Susanne Spannl; Michael D. Swaine; Jose Julio Toledo; Marcos Miranda Toledo; Marisol Toledo; Takeshi Toma; Mario Tomazello Filho; Juan Ignacio Valdez Hernandez; Jan Verbesselt; Simone Aparecida Vieira; Gregoire Vincent; Carolina Volkmer de Castilho; Franziska Volland; Martin Worbes; Magda Lea Bolzan Zanon; Luiz E. O. C. Aragao

2016-01-01

The seasonal climate drivers of the carbon cycle in tropical forests remain poorly known, although these forests account for more carbon assimilation and storage than any other terrestrial ecosystem. Based on a unique combination of seasonal pan-tropical data sets from 89 experimental sites (68 include aboveground wood productivity measurements and 35 litter...

Intensive monitoring of forest ecosystems in Europe; 1 objectives, set-up and evaluation strategy

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vries, de W.; Vel, E.M.; Reinds, G.J.; Deelstra, H.; Klap, J.M.; Leeters, E.E.J.M.; Hendriks, C.M.A.; Kerkvoorden, M.; Landmann, G.; Herkendell, J.; Haussmann, T.; Erisman, J.W.

2003-01-01

In order to contribute to a better understanding of the impact of air pollution and other environmental factors on forest ecosystems, a Pan-European Programme for Intensive and Continuous Monitoring of Forest Ecosystems has been implemented in 1994. Results of the Programme must contribute to a

Raw material procurement for termite fishing tools by wild chimpanzees in the Issa valley, Western Tanzania.

Science.gov (United States)

Almeida-Warren, Katarina; Sommer, Volker; Piel, Alex K; Pascual-Garrido, Alejandra

2017-10-01

Chimpanzee termite fishing has been studied for decades, yet the selective processes preceding the manufacture of fishing tools remain largely unexplored. We investigate raw material selection and potential evidence of forward planning in the chimpanzees of Issa valley, western Tanzania. Using traditional archaeological methods, we surveyed the location of plants from where chimpanzees sourced raw material to manufacture termite fishing tools, relative to targeted mounds. We measured raw material abundance to test for availability and selection. Statistics included Chi-Squared, two-tailed Wilcoxon, and Kruskall-Wallace tests. Issa chimpanzees manufactured extraction tools only from bark, despite availability of other suitable materials (e.g., twigs), and selected particular plant species as raw material sources, which they often also exploit for food. Most plants were sourced 1-16 m away from the mound, with a maximum of 33 m. The line of sight from the targeted mound was obscured for a quarter of these plants. The exclusive use of bark tools despite availability of other suitable materials indicates a possible cultural preference. The fact that Issa chimpanzees select specific plant species and travel some distance to source them suggests some degree of selectivity and, potentially, forward planning. Our results have implications for the reconstruction of early hominin behaviors, particularly with regard to the use of perishable tools, which remain archaeologically invisible. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The genetic signature of sex-biased migration in patrilocal chimpanzees and humans.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kevin E Langergraber

Full Text Available A large body of theoretical work suggests that analyses of variation at the maternally inherited mitochondrial (mtDNA and the paternally inherited non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome (NRY are a potentially powerful way to reveal the differing migratory histories of men and women across human societies. However, the few empirical studies comparing mtDNA and NRY variation and known patterns of sex-biased migration have produced conflicting results. Here we review some methodological reasons for these inconsistencies, and take them into account to provide an unbiased characterization of mtDNA and NRY variation in chimpanzees, one of the few mammalian taxa where males routinely remain in and females typically disperse from their natal groups. We show that patterns of mtDNA and NRY variation are more strongly contrasting in patrilocal chimpanzees compared with patrilocal human societies. The chimpanzee data we present here thus provide a valuable comparative benchmark of the patterns of mtDNA and NRY variation to be expected in a society with extremely female-biased dispersal.

ATLAS BigPanDA Monitoring

CERN Document Server

Padolski, Siarhei; The ATLAS collaboration; Klimentov, Alexei; Korchuganova, Tatiana

2017-01-01

BigPanDA monitoring is a web based application which provides various processing and representation of the Production and Distributed Analysis (PanDA) system objects states. Analyzing hundreds of millions of computation entities such as an event or a job BigPanDA monitoring builds different scale and levels of abstraction reports in real time mode. Provided information allows users to drill down into the reason of a concrete event failure or observe system bigger picture such as tracking the computation nucleus and satellites performance or the progress of whole production campaign. PanDA system was originally developed for the Atlas experiment and today effectively managing more than 2 million jobs per day distributed over 170 computing centers worldwide. BigPanDA is its core component commissioned in the middle of 2014 and now is the primary source of information for ATLAS users about state of their computations and the source of decision support information for shifters, operators and managers. In this wor...

ATLAS BigPanDA Monitoring

CERN Document Server

Padolski, Siarhei; The ATLAS collaboration

2017-01-01

BigPanDA monitoring is a web-based application that provides various processing and representation of the Production and Distributed Analysis (PanDA) system objects states. Analysing hundreds of millions of computation entities such as an event or a job BigPanDA monitoring builds different scale and levels of abstraction reports in real time mode. Provided information allows users to drill down into the reason of a concrete event failure or observe system bigger picture such as tracking the computation nucleus and satellites performance or the progress of whole production campaign. PanDA system was originally developed for the Atlas experiment and today effectively managing more than 2 million jobs per day distributed over 170 computing centers worldwide. BigPanDA is its core component commissioned in the middle of 2014 and now is the primary source of information for ATLAS users about state of their computations and the source of decision support information for shifters, operators and managers. In this work...

Children, chimpanzees, and bonobos adjust the visibility of their actions for cooperators and competitors.

Science.gov (United States)

Grueneisen, Sebastian; Duguid, Shona; Saur, Heiko; Tomasello, Michael

2017-08-17

Chimpanzees and bonobos are highly capable of tracking other's mental states. It has been proposed, however, that in contrast to humans, chimpanzees are only able to do this in competitive interactions but this has rarely been directly tested. Here, pairs of chimpanzees or bonobos (Study 1) and 4-year-old children (Study 2) were presented with two almost identical tasks differing only regarding the social context. In the cooperation condition, players' interests were matched: they had to make corresponding choices to be mutually rewarded. To facilitate coordination, subjects should thus make their actions visible to their partner whose view was partially occluded. In the competition condition, players' interests were directly opposed: the partner tried to match the subject's choice but subjects were only rewarded if they chose differently, so that they benefited from hiding their actions. The apes successfully adapted their decisions to the social context and their performance was markedly better in the cooperation condition. Children also distinguished between the two contexts, but somewhat surprisingly, performed better in the competitive condition. These findings demonstrate experimentally that chimpanzees and bonobos can take into account what others can see in cooperative interactions. Their social-cognitive skills are thus more flexible than previously assumed.

A Competitive Nonverbal False Belief Task for Children and Apes

Science.gov (United States)

Krachun, Carla; Carpenter, Malinda; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael

2009-01-01

A nonverbal false belief task was administered to children (mean age 5 years) and two great ape species: chimpanzees ("Pan troglodytes") and bonobos ("Pan paniscus"). Because apes typically perform poorly in cooperative contexts, our task was competitive. Two versions were run: in both, a human competitor witnessed an experimenter hide a reward in…

Why do forest products become less available? A pan-tropical comparison of drivers of forest-resource degradation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hermans, Kathleen; Gerstner, Katharina; Geijzendorffer, Ilse R.; Herold, Martin; Seppelt, Ralf; Wunder, Sven

2016-01-01

Forest products provide an important source of income and wellbeing for rural smallholder communities across the tropics. Although tropical forest products frequently become over-exploited, only few studies explicitly address the dynamics of degradation in response to socio-economic drivers. Our

New type of Sendai virus vector provides transgene-free iPS cells derived from chimpanzee blood.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yasumitsu Fujie

Full Text Available Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs are potentially valuable cell sources for disease models and future therapeutic applications; however, inefficient generation and the presence of integrated transgenes remain as problems limiting their current use. Here, we developed a new Sendai virus vector, TS12KOS, which has improved efficiency, does not integrate into the cellular DNA, and can be easily eliminated. TS12KOS carries KLF4, OCT3/4, and SOX2 in a single vector and can easily generate iPSCs from human blood cells. Using TS12KOS, we established iPSC lines from chimpanzee blood, and used DNA array analysis to show that the global gene-expression pattern of chimpanzee iPSCs is similar to those of human embryonic stem cell and iPSC lines. These results demonstrated that our new vector is useful for generating iPSCs from the blood cells of both human and chimpanzee. In addition, the chimpanzee iPSCs are expected to facilitate unique studies into human physiology and disease.

Can recent pan-tropical biomass maps be used to derive alternative Tier 1 values for reporting REDD+ activities under UNFCCC?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Langner, Andreas; Achard, Frédéric; Grassi, Giacomo

2014-01-01

The IPCC Guidelines propose 3 Tier levels for greenhouse gas monitoring within the forest land category with a hierarchical order in terms of accuracy, data requirements and complexity. Due to missing data and/or capacities, many developing countries, potentially interested in the reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation scheme, have to rely on Tier 1 default values with highest uncertainties. A possible way to increase the credibility of uncertain estimates is to apply a conservative approach, for which standard statistical information is needed. However, such information is currently not available for the IPCC values. In our study we combine a recent global forest mask, an ecological zoning map and the pan-tropical AGB datasets of Saatchi and Baccini to derive mean forest AGB values per ecological zone and continent as well as their corresponding confidence intervals. Such analysis can be considered transparent as the datasets/methodologies are well documented. Our study leads to alternative Tier 1 values and allows the application of statistically-based conservative approaches. Our AGB estimates derived from Saatchi and Baccini datasets are 35% and 24% lower respectively than the IPCC values. When restricting the analysis to intact forest landscapes resulting ABG estimates derived from Saatchi and Baccini datasets get closer to the IPCC values with 13% and 1% differences respectively (underestimation). This suggests that the IPCC default values are mainly based on plots in mature forest stands. However, as tropical forests generally consist of a mixture of intact and degraded stands, the use of IPCC values may not properly reflect the reality. Finally, we propose to use the average composite of the Saatchi and Baccini datasets to produce improved alternative IPCC Tier 1 values. The values derived from such approach can easily be updated when newer and/or improved pan-tropical AGB maps will be available. (letter)

Social grooming network in captive chimpanzees: does the wild or captive origin of group members affect sociality?

Science.gov (United States)

Levé, Marine; Sueur, Cédric; Petit, Odile; Matsuzawa, Tetsuro; Hirata, Satoshi

2016-01-01

Many chimpanzees throughout the world are housed in captivity, and there is an increasing effort to recreate social groups by mixing individuals with captive origins with those with wild origins. Captive origins may entail restricted rearing conditions during early infant life, including, for example, no maternal rearing and a limited social life. Early rearing conditions have been linked with differences in tool-use behavior between captive- and wild-born chimpanzees. If physical cognition can be impaired by non-natural rearing, what might be the consequences for social capacities? This study describes the results of network analysis based on grooming interactions in chimpanzees with wild and captive origins living in the Kumamoto Sanctuary in Kumamoto, Japan. Grooming is a complex social activity occupying up to 25% of chimpanzees' waking hours and plays a role in the emergence and maintenance of social relationships. We assessed whether the social centralities and roles of chimpanzees might be affected by their origin (captive vs wild). We found that captive- and wild-origin chimpanzees did not differ in their grooming behavior, but that theoretical removal of individuals from the network had differing impacts depending on the origin of the individual. Contrary to findings that non-natural early rearing has long-term effects on physical cognition, living in social groups seems to compensate for the negative effects of non-natural early rearing. Social network analysis (SNA) and, in particular, theoretical removal analysis, were able to highlight differences between individuals that would have been impossible to show using classical methods. The social environment of captive animals is important to their well-being, and we are only beginning to understand how SNA might help to enhance animal welfare.

Precision Photometry and Astrometry from Pan-STARRS

Science.gov (United States)

Magnier, Eugene A.; Pan-STARRS Team

2018-01-01

The Pan-STARRS 3pi Survey has been calibrated with excellent precision for both astrometry and photometry. The Pan-STARRS Data Release 1, opened to the public on 2016 Dec 16, provides photometry in 5 well-calibrated, well-defined bandpasses (grizy) astrometrically registered to the Gaia frame. Comparisons with other surveys illustrate the high quality of the calibration and provide tests of remaining systematic errors in both Pan-STARRS and those external surveys. With photometry and astrometry of roughly 3 billion astronomical objects, the Pan-STARRS DR1 has substantial overlap with Gaia, SDSS, 2MASS and other surveys. I will discuss the astrometric tie between Pan-STARRS DR1 and Gaia and show comparisons between Pan-STARRS and other large-scale surveys.

Fuel and energy saving in open pan furnace used in jaggery making through modified juice boiling/concentrating pans

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Anwar, S.I.

2010-01-01

In this paper the concept of fins has been used for heating purpose for improving efficiency of open pan jaggery making furnace. Pan is the integral part of these furnaces where boiling/concentration of sugarcane juice take place. Parallel fins were provided to the bottom of main pan and gutter pan of IISR Lucknow 2-pan furnace. Choice for type of fins was based on movement of flames and hot flue gases generated due to combustion of bagasse. Fins helped in more heat transfer to the sugarcane juice being concentrated. Considerable improvement in heat utilization efficiency (9.44%) was observed which resulted in saving of fuel and energy (31.34%).

Chimpanzees, bonobos and children successfully coordinate in conflict situations.

Science.gov (United States)

Sánchez-Amaro, Alejandro; Duguid, Shona; Call, Josep; Tomasello, Michael

2017-06-14

Social animals need to coordinate with others to reap the benefits of group-living even when individuals' interests are misaligned. We compare how chimpanzees, bonobos and children coordinate their actions with a conspecific in a Snowdrift game, which provides a model for understanding how organisms coordinate and make decisions under conflict. In study 1, we presented pairs of chimpanzees, bonobos and children with an unequal reward distribution. In the critical condition, the preferred reward could only be obtained by waiting for the partner to act, with the risk that if no one acted, both would lose the rewards. Apes and children successfully coordinated to obtain the rewards. Children used a 'both-partner-pull' strategy and communicated during the task, while some apes relied on an 'only-one-partner-pulls' strategy to solve the task, although there were also signs of strategic behaviour as they waited for their partner to pull when that strategy led to the preferred reward. In study 2, we presented pairs of chimpanzees and bonobos with the same set-up as in study 1 with the addition of a non-social option that provided them with a secure reward. In this situation, apes had to actively decide between the unequal distribution and the alternative. In this set-up, apes maximized their rewards by taking their partners' potential actions into account. In conclusion, children and apes showed clear instances of strategic decision-making to maximize their own rewards while maintaining successful coordination. © 2017 The Author(s).

A Scan for Positively Selected Genes in the Genomes of Humans and Chimpanzees

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Rasmus; Bustamente, Carlos; Clark, Andrew G.

2005-01-01

Since the divergence of humans and chimpanzees about 5 million years ago, these species have undergone a remarkable evolution with drastic divergence in anatomy and cognitive abilities. At the molecular level, despite the small overall magnitude of DNA sequence divergence, we might expect...... such evolutionary changes to leave a noticeable signature throughout the genome. We here compare 13,731 annotated genes from humans to their chimpanzee orthologs to identify genes that show evidence of positive selection. Many of the genes that present a signature of positive selection tend to be involved...

Image collection: 175 [Togo Picture Gallery[Archive

Lifescience Database Archive (English)