Chimp & See Talk

Difference between chimps at MF-7 and CD-8

  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    A question for the scientists (or moderators):
    I wonder why the chimps in CD-8 are travelling so much? You can never hear them open nuts or fruits like the chimps in MF-7 do. Do they eat different food here which they find travelling?

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    Exactly. Good question. I am wondering the same. Plus the big party size. Is the community in general smaller - we encounter the same individuals again and again (ok, the ones with clearly visible traits)? Almost no feeding videos, some with fallback food. No tool use at all I think. (Besides the one scene where Dodge is picking up a stone - probably for tool use, but we do not see anything.)

    Concerning an earlier remark I made. Maybe the loud vocalization are not all just aggression, the other "greeting" and display form are quite prominent and do not - as I assumed earlier - represent a dysfunctional community.

    I also assumed earlier a protection factor, but I am not so sure about this anymore because in my opinion the strategies for this are different.

    Posted

  • Quia by Quia moderator

    @PauDG commented that the human activity nearby can change their behavior patterns.

    Sitting down for an hour to crack nuts, as we saw chimps do in sites 5-7, makes a lot of noise... so if there's any pressure from human hunters on the chimps, it makes sense that they wouldn't be doing this.

    Hoping for more comments from the science team about the differences in this site!

    Posted

  • ksigler by ksigler moderator

    Just brainstorming... One thing different about CD8 is that it appears to be in the mountains. Maybe different types of trees & food grow there that don't require cracking sessions. We did see the one chimp that appeared to be making a stick tool (in the lovely family scene). Or maybe they don't like sitting on the sloped ground to eat, and have other areas they go to that aren't on camera.

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  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    As you guys can tell CD8 chimps crack nuts less often. One of the goals of the PanAf is to try to fgure out what the drivers of these cultural differences may be. I think most of what you are observing is an effect of where the cameras are placed. It is easy to place a camera at a nut cracking site, you know then chimps will come there and you know they will spend time there and not be involved in as much social activity. At CD8 the cameras are not placed at nut cracking sites mostly so we are observing a different set of beahviours based on this camera placement bias. We do suspect the community to be smaller at CD8. Quia is also right, in areas where chimps are heavily hunted we expect less conspicuous behaviors and possible cultural losses. and ksigler is also right that the habitat is different too which will alsocause observed differences. Very observant guys!

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  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    Hi all,
    there are a lot of factors who can play in the differences between two different sites. The size of the population, the presence of food, the presence of water, the season of the year (rain season or dry season), the presence of poachers... and all this can make split or merge the groups depending of the conditions. And of course, on top of all this, it's where you placed of the cameras (to see all of this).
    It seems that in CD the group is small, but also we are able to ID very well some of the chimps because they have very particular features, so that can seems the group even smaller because otherwise probably we would have more prospective chimps.

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  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    thanks a lot @all for your replies. I thought that it is also due the fact that the cameras are in different places than in MF-7. However you can never hear any nut cracking off the scenes therefore I thought the food sources must be different. It's fascinating to see how the chimps adapt to their respective surroundings!

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