Chimp & See Talk

Delicious trees?

  • Snorticus by Snorticus

    Judging by the initial clips the trees seem exceptionally delicious to many animals here at Green Snowflake. Is there a lot of bee & honey activity here or something else?

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    I did see already several tree-connected feeding activity, e.g. ACP000dsy3 / ACP000dtdc / ACP000daj8 - but no bees or tool use / grabbing in holes as you would expect for extracting honey. They seem to feed on something related to the tree. You can also see that the trees desintegrate on several places because of this feeding. Either the trees tasted especially well or there are some insects included. That would be my guess.

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  • Snorticus by Snorticus in response to AnLand's comment.

    Termites occurred to me but the monkeys were doing it too. And an elephant ACP000dl95 probing the same chimp ACP000dl92 spots under tree roots. And a black fronted duiker ACP000do1x So several different species like whatever it is. @NuriaM any thoughts?

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  • puddock by puddock

    It's fascinating to see such different behaviour here...I wonder if we'll find that the chimps don't use (don't need to?) tools like stones...

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Perhaps sap tastes good? Or some nutrient lacking from normal diet?

    There is this article about wood consumption by spider monkeys in North America: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025070, which states:

    "...decayed wood of L. platypus showed consistently higher levels of sodium and calcium compared to fruits."

    And this one about chimpanzees in Uganda: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006194

    The abstract states: "For some years, chimpanzees have been observed eating the pith of decaying palm trees of Raphia farinifera in the Budongo Forest, Uganda. The reasons for doing this have until now been unknown. An analysis of the pith for mineral content showed high levels of sodium to be present in the samples. By contrast, lower levels were found in bark of other tree species, and also in leaf and fruit samples eaten by chimpanzees. The differences between the Raphia samples and the non-Raphia samples were highly significant (p less than 0.001). It is concluded that Raphia provides a rich and possibly essential source of sodium for the Budongo chimpanzees. Comparison of a chewed sample (wadge) of Raphia pith with a sample from the tree showed a clear reduction in sodium content in the chewed sample. Black and white colobus monkeys in Budongo Forest also feed on the pith of Raphia. At present, the survival of Raphia palms in Budongo Forest is threatened by the use of this tree by local tobacco farmers."

    Clay and wood eating is elaborated on here:
    https://kar.kent.ac.uk/49864/1/journal.pone.0134075.pdf

    So maybe they are getting Calcium and/or Sodium from the pulp?

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    Good detective work guys! They are eating the decaying wood here 😃

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Do we want to start an official tag for this behavior? wood_feeding or wood_eating perhaps?

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  • Snorticus by Snorticus in response to lauraklynn's comment.

    Thanks for finding those abstracts, Laura & solving the mystery. I'm running across many clips of this behavior with quite a few different species. Interesting new thing.

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    @lauraklynn - yes please do ! you can discuss and/or just pick the tag and then add it to keyword list 😃

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    tree_eating it is! Added to the official tag list. (Edit oops! maybe not. 😃 )

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  • AnLand by AnLand moderator in response to lauraklynn's comment.

    But is not tree_eating very general and includes the fruits, nuts, and leaves of a tree and with that - in the sense of plant_eating - is not that special. I have not really an idea how unique and interesting this behavior is, but in my opinion wood_eating is more specific and also easier to understand for volunteers what we mean and don't mean with this tag.

    (But maybe that is my irritation about tree_eating as a non-native English speaker.)

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    You definitely make a valid argument @AnLand. Perhaps I was a bit over eager with my labeling. What do others think? Tree eating? Wood eating? Something more specific?

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  • puddock by puddock

    It's tricky. I wondered about bark eating but I guess the animals are mainly eating the internal parts of the trunk, rather than the bark...

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  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    Wood_eating would make sense to me. Mimi also stated that they are eating decaying wood.... Sorry Laura, I hope it's not too much work for changing it now? 😕

    Willl we be only using it for chimps or also for other primates?

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  • zoogirl1 by zoogirl1

    Perhaps he was eating termites or bugs that was on the wood.

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator in response to Boleyn's comment.

    I presumed we would use it for any species consuming wood. My other more specific suggestions would be pulp or pith eating, but I don't know if everyone would understand those.

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus in response to lauraklynn's comment.

    Maybe Mimi could decide whether to tag this behavior for 1) only chimps or for 2) all species so we know which is most helpful in terms of scientist's data usage, and volunteer's tagging time.

    I vote for #wood_eating It seems short and concise in describing the behavior.

    P.S. Laura - I love your avi chimp photo. What an expression. 😉

    Posted

  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator in response to Snorticus's comment.

    I'll wait for Mimi before tagging anything again, but I feel like more data is better than less. Better to tag all wood eating videos now and sort them later if necessary. Theoretically all clips with chimps should be tagged as such and it should be easy to collect those with both chimp and wood eating tags if that specific info is needed.

    My avatar is Cindy from OKC Zoo. If that lady could talk, oh the stories she would tell! 😃

    Posted

  • Snorticus by Snorticus in response to lauraklynn's comment.

    Revisiting this - since tagging is voluntary my point above doesn't really matter so on with the tagging. 😃

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    Hi all ! Thanks to @AnLand for telling me you guys were waiting for me, sorry I missed this discussion!

    #wood_eating sounds good to me and would be cool to tag all species if you guys are so inclined - we are certainly interested in behaviours/activities where we see niche overlap between different species - either directly (like with the #multispecies tag) or indirectly (like here!)

    Thanks to all of you!

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    It sounds like #wood_eating is agreed upon. I have added it to the official tag list with a link to this discussion, in case anyone is uncertain about when to use it. 😃

    Posted

  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Do we think they are eating decaying wood at this location as well or it is the dirt/clay? Is this a salt/mineral lick?

    ACP000dpb5

    Posted

  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    Good question Laura! I was wondering too what they actually do here!

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    Hey i reached out to some researchers who work around there and got this reply 😃

    "We think the B&W here is drinking water, not eating dirt, wood, etc., from the channel you can see next to the dirt wall. Chimps do eat clay but from around the roots of upturned trees, not from walls like this."

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Hmm. I think I've seen them chewing before. I'll have to see if I can find a video of it.

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  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    I found one of those videos in one of my collections where the adult definitely is eating. I just didn't know whether it's wood or anything else.
    From the scientist's answer I think it must be clay because they dug in deep in the whole where the roots are?

    ACP000dq6g

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  • Felpa by Felpa

    About eating wood, it reminds me of a recent article. It coould be a form of complementary nutrition or care, such as has been proposed in certain remains of ancient humans in whose teeth high concentrations of salicin and tannins have been found.

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  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    Hi @Felpa that's very much possible! Have you seen the article @lauraklynn posted on page 1 of this thread? They assume the chimps and also the guerezas eat it for sodium.

    Anyway I'm still not sure if they do not eat the clay at this place?
    The female in ACP000dq6g IS chewing and she dugs very deep under the upturned tree.

    About the tannins: nowadays human prefer to drink them - or why has redwine been invented? 😮

    Posted

  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Here is one where you can see the guereza's mouth. Perhaps it is drinking, but it could be chewing at the clay/dirt or perhaps small roots? In any case, they definitely stop and chew something.

    ACP000dpew

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator in response to Boleyn's comment.

    The fact the many of these clips have a lot of butterflies is also evidence for the sodium content of the trees; butterflies are often attracted to salt.

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  • akalan by akalan scientist

    Hi everyone! We are definitely convinced that they are eating the soil/clay here, as many of you have already pointed out the multiple lines of evidence. We've started the hashtag #clay_eating now to track this behaviour so feel free to use 😃

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  • lauraklynn by lauraklynn moderator

    Great @akalan! Will do 😃

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