Chimp & See Talk

Female chimp procession

  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    ACP000559t A juvenile chimps leads the procession. Then comes a female with a dorsal infant which looks right back at the camera. @AnLand already supposed this to be Gertrude and Cali, when I've understood her right. This might well be since this footage is about half a year after the first videos we have from Gertrude. Unfortunately allt the videos are bit on the dark side.

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    Another young female enters the scene. Does she carry a small ventral infant? I think I can see a glimps of a foot.

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    I'm saving here because this is my third attempt at putting this post up. Next video...

    Posted

  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    ACP000559u The smaller female stops at the fallen tree and sits down. It's still to dark to see if she actually is carrying an infant or to see her features. Another female enters with a larger ventral infant. The female is quite big and dark in color and probably quite a light muzzle.

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  • Boleyn by Boleyn moderator

    ACP000559v I just realized that she's turning around enough to see her face a bit better. The first impression was wrong. She has quite a dark face, with prominent, rounded brows. The right brow seems to be a bit on the whiter side than the left. Could be Yeesha. She had a prominent belly in April - now it's November 😃
    Is there any post where I can read something about the cicle, the growth of the infants, if and how the swelling changes etc.? That would be helpful.

    enter image description here

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  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    So, yes, we have three mothers with quite small infants. The youngest with the second female, I agree. I don't think that the last female might be Yeesha as the brows are straighter and (I am not an expert here, but ...) the infant seems to be already several months old. I am brave here and there is not much seen, but more in the direction of six months.

    About the rest and what it implies for the discussion about Gertrude (might be the first female), Ollie (might be the second female) and CDFem10 (or did me match her already to Gertrude???) and so on I have to think a bit more.

    Maybe @jwidness can take a look, but I do see not Pearl in any of them and River is too big to be the first infant, right?

    Posted

  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    I agree that Pearl isn't any of these chimps. I think the first one (the juvenile) might be Fry?

    The second one I actually think might be Amy with RIver. For size comparison, here they are from the front just a couple weeks later: ACP00058d1. Here's a good view of Amy from behind: ACP00058fk (but ~3.5 months later, and River isn't riding). Also for comparison, I believe these are all Amy/River from behind at various times (but just my opinion): ACP0004vb1, ACP0004zqc, ACP000589p.

    The next one I definitely think is Ollie, but I don't really have any evidence to prove it yet.

    The last one is the most curious to me. I thought the face (dark face, white beard) actually looked like Gertrude (compare: ACP0005e6i and ACP00052it), but the back doesn't look like her to me, and no sign of Jax. I wonder if the darkness and the rain could make her look that different? You can see how wet the first infant is...

    As for Yeesha having a newborn at some point, it's something I've also been considering, but I agree with @AnLand that I don't think she's here. Her beard isn't as white as the last female, and she seems to still be cycling as of July: ACP000537z.

    I've been thinking about doing a write up on infant development -- I have a bunch of tabs open with papers that I've been reading. Before CD it didn't seem necessary since we didn't have so many repeat videos of the same infants, but now it seems like it could be useful. 😃

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    I disagree concerning River. It is quite dark and not easy to see where the legs of the infants are, but I think your video from December shows an infant that is nearly double that size. The angle of its knees looks much smaller and the infant is nevertheless covering the whole back of the female (Amy, the December video). (Ok, all not easy to see, but my impression.)

    To the other points: I think, we have at the moment two other major discussion points for CD-8:

    Is there only one older juvenile / subadult (male)? @Boleyn's latest matching proposal goes also in this direction. I think, @jwidness and I also discussed it earlier at one point.

    The other point are the - I am not sure what the right term here is - the "single females": Maggie, Yeesha, and CDFem04. They are not seen with a dependent offspring, but they are clearly cycling and could/should at one point give birth and might be seen with a newborn. In the case of CDFem04, @PauDG described her as somehow young (what I cannot see). For the moment, we do not see them as resident mothers (which they might be, but we do not see them with an offspring), I think, and we agree that there are at least three of them. (Plus Esme, but I guess - menopause or not - we do not include her in this discussion.) I was thinking about writing an individual post about this "single females" question, but I am not sure whether that is really worth it.

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  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    I just read some interesting things about chimpanzee females that I thought I'd report back on. First, pregnant females can exhibit sexual swellings. They're usually not as full, nor as frequent as nonpregnant females' swellings, and they decrease through the duration of the pregnancy (i.e. they are quite unlikely in the third trimester), but seeing a female with a swelling is not a reliable indicator that she is not pregnant.

    Second, although females in one study averaged about 5 cycles to conception, young females cycled for years from their first swelling to their first conception, so females that we see with no previous offspring could potentially be still in this period of adolescent infertility.

    Third, in many of the studies I looked at, there were one or two females in the dataset that either didn't cycle regularly, or cycled for many years without conceiving. It seems to be the case that it is not all that uncommon for females to have difficulty reproducing.

    I'm not really sure how useful this information is to the ID process, but I thought I'd share it anyway. 😃

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

    thanks a lot @jwidness, that's very interesting!

    Posted

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

    The juvenile in front might be the one we have been seeing always around Gertrude. This would underline the theory that the first female with the dorsal infant actually is Gertrude.

    I doubt that it is Fry because he's mostly seen in proximity to the males. At least when I think about CDMale02 and CDJuvenile02 which you both believe are also Fry.

    Posted

  • ksigler by ksigler moderator

    Pardon this side comment/reminder... Be careful about stacking theories on who hangs out with whom, who may or may not have been pregnant in other clips, etc. The social aspects are interesting supporting evidence, but a lot more happens off-camera (out of view, other times, other locations) that we don't see. For example, maybe the camera started late or cut off too soon, or maybe there was an illness, death, or pregnancy loss, or an emigration. For matching purposes of this sequence, I suspect we'll need more, hopefully unique, physical traits to compare.

    (Trying to not come across like a Debbie Downer.) :-\

    Posted

  • jwidness by jwidness moderator

    I agree -- the post about female information was more to say that we shouldn't use swelling information since it's not a reliable indicator, nor should we assume females will become pregnant or give birth within any particular amount of time. That's not to say that I think we should ignore coincidental information, just that it should be confirmatory rather than primary.

    As for this sequence of videos, I don't think we should rule out Fry just yet. Both because this juvenile is too big to be Jax, and because Fry seems to also spend a lot of time around others in addition to the males (for example, Pearl/Flocke: http://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/boards/BCP000000k/discussions/DCP0000abn).

    I still think the dorsal infant is River. Here's Cali just a couple days later for comparison: ACP00058a5. Looks much smaller to me, and being carried ventrally (which of course doesn't exclude the possibility that he/she is carried dorsally on previous days). I also said in the Gertrude thread that I thought this was the two of them: ACP000509i (Jan 2014, Cali carried dorsally, but much smaller than the infant here) and ACP0004xgv (Feb 2014, Cali carried ventrally).

    As discussed in this thread: http://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/boards/BCP000000k/discussions/DCP0000a2m, the female with dorsal infant in ACP0004zqc (Jan 2014) could be Amy, showing River of a comparable size to the dorsal infant in this set.

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    Hi all!

    well, here I am, maybe not very helpful, but probably because these videos are darker than the others....

    • about the second chimp (first female with baby): I can not see the back as white as Gertrude's back (but maybe is from the light) but also I think the baby is smaller than River...
    • about the third chimp (second female with baby): probably Ollie because of the size of the baby
    • about the fourth chimp (the third female with baby): I am pretty sure that is not Gertrude, because this one has the back darker, but who can be?? CDFem10? so we forget about the matching between CDFem10 and Gertrude??? But I think that even the back from CDFem10 is whiter than the back of the last female of this serie... don't you think?

    Posted

  • MimiA by MimiA scientist, moderator

    @jwidness and @ksigler - great summary of info and great caveat too! Its true that female conception is a really tricky thing to get a feeling for in chimps (i guess a lot like humans too!) 😃

    Posted

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

    Hi @ksigler,

    I absolutely agree on your first point (who hangs out with whom). We discussed this fission/fusion model already before and I generally make this assumption only with infants and juveniles as they stay quite long associated with their moms.

    But I don't know what you mean with the second point. I mean - a pregnancy and the presence of a child is not only a social aspect. It is quite physical and I think that sorting the "single females" at CD-8 is a task we still have.

    It might be wrong that I made the point here in this thread where it might suggested a connection to the moms (I know, it's their thread, sorry), but I did not mean it necessarily like this. I just don't know where to put it as it is in my head for quite some days know - and yes, they actually might get pregnant. These things happens (although I doubt that we will see/recognize it here.) I am sorry if I did this wrong.

    Posted

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

    I don't think you did anything wrong 😃

    It's true that we still need to figure out the "single females", and it's definitely true that they may not all remain single through all of the videos.

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    Ok, I hope nobody is angry with me about the crazy matching proposal, but ... I think Maggie is Ollie. It is more a feeling and I am not sure whether the timeline really fits: Maggie video in April and June 2013 and Ollie with Chibi from October 2013 on. I see the same baldness, the small dent at the brow (best seen here: ACP00054ul) and the damage in her right ear. Body size and build, as well as no gray back fits.

    But: her belly does not look too big in June 2013 and I have not really an idea about pregnancy and birth in chimps. Yes, maybe someone wants to discuss this with me. 😉

    Posted

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

    no offence taken @ksigler - btw I had to google Debbie Downer 😃 Please just be patient with me - I still have so much to learn.

    My other impression (not therory, nono 😃) regarding this juvenile is this: I can hardly imagine that there's only one juvenile at all in CD-8. There are quite many females around so I just cannot believe that there should be no other chimps of this age group. Does this make sense? I hope.

    Posted

  • akalan by akalan scientist

    @AnLand just want to mention that it can be quite difficult to simply observe whether a female is pregnant unless it is at the late stage or you know her physique very well since their abdomens are a bit distended anyway. Even with habituated chimps we confirm our suspicions using urine pregnancy tests.

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    Hi guys,
    I just created this thread http://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/boards/BCP000000k/discussions/DCP0000bax to talk about this possible match between Ollie and Maggie. Could you please move there your comments about the match please? It will be easier to follow... Thanks a lot!

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    jwidness, I am going to out this three new videos found by @Eswiniarski ACP00055m1, ACP00055m2, ACP00055m3, in other thread, ok? Thanks a lot!
    http://talk.chimpandsee.org/#/boards/BCP000000k/discussions/DCP0000bay

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator in response to Boleyn's comment.

    @Boleyn, make sense that you say about juveniles... but we haven't seen a lot of juveniles in the videos...
    I am going to start a thread about juveniles, to try to clarify this.
    Thanks!

    Posted

  • AnLand by AnLand moderator

    As we are here discussing the three females with small infants and we are looking elsewhere about the Maggie/Ollie match, I re-found in the original Ollie thread this video also from November 2013 with exactly the same situation: two ventral infants, one considerably smaller than the other and one dorsal infant that - in my opinion is too small to be River. Due to the black and white footage the backs (grayness etc.) are better seen. ACP00057zx

    I also "re-found" this video from March 2013 (that excludes Ollie, I guess) with two ventral infants. I do not see Pearl here, but I am not sure whether River could at that time point still be a ventral infant. ACP0004zui

    (Maybe it helps somehow, I don't know. As I said, I don't know at this point whether we try to match them as far as possible or just let some things open. I would be fine with this.)

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    Sure, we don't need to close everything, because several times is impossible, but there must be another female with infant (or one of the Known females with a newborn) because if the first mom were Amy, then none of them could be Gertrude, because she has a very white back, and If the first one were Gertrude, then we only have Ollie with a small baby... or some of them is Pearl and we didn't realize...

    Anyway, we can leave this for now, maybe new videos will appear to help us!!

    Posted

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

    Yes, that is exactly, what I'm thinking. Thanks!

    Posted

  • PauDG by PauDG scientist, moderator

    Perfect!

    Posted