Primatology.net

Anthropology.net blogger German Dziebel sent me this link about the dim future of orangutans in Indonesia, Brunei, and Malaysia. Afarensis has also covered this news. The results of a new survey of orangutan populations have been published in the journal Oryx. I don’t have access to the early advance view of the paper, but one of the authors of the paper, Serge Wich, discussed his results to the Associated Press,

“Orangutan population on Indonesia’s Sumatra island dropped almost 14 percent since 2004…. On Borneo island, which is shared by Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, have fallen by 10 percent…

The number of orangutans on Sumatra has fallen from 7,500 to 6,600 while the number on Borneo has fallen from 54,000 to around 49,600.”

Despite the active conservation initiatives to help save these apes, the numbers are dropping at alarming rates. Because of that, the orangutan maybe the first extant great ape to go extinct. Much of the problem is due to the aggressive deforestation efforts by palm oil producers, who tear down forests to plant palm trees and make biofuel. This illustration to the right documents the deforrestation of Borneo in the past and projects the impact in the future.

I’ve covered this topic before, and summarized the history Primatology.net’s blogging on orangutan conservation.

• Spread the word, “Choose the right biofuel or the Orang-utan gets it!”
• Palm Oil Industry and the displacement of Orangutans
• Rebuilding forests in an effort to save orangutans in Borneo
• UN Reports that Orangutan Habitat will be gone in 15 years

It has been far too long since I’ve updated this blog. I apologize, there certainly has not been a lack of material to share — just a lack of time and overemphasis on Anthropology.net, which is totally my bad, I don’t intend to neglect this site again.

Anyways, photographer Frans Lanting recently travelled to take photos of the Fongoli chimpanzees in Senegal. He was on NPR yesterday to share his experiences. The Fongoli chimps, if you don’t remember, are the ones that have been observed to hunt with spears. Jill Pruetz actually was the one to see this behavior and I covered this news last year. I was a bit skeptical, but it seems like Lanting and Pruetz were able to observe this behavior again. From the NPR article,

Lanting and Pruetz observed the primates fashioning spears from tree limbs to capture bush babies, small mammals that hide deep inside hollow trees.

“No one has ever seen that before in any other chimps elsewhere,” Lanting says.

The Fongoli chimps often displayed behaviors akin to those of early humans.

“There is very little fundamental difference in my opinion between how these chimps live and how our very earliest ancestors lived,” Lanting says. “It’s just like looking at human beings. I regard these chimpanzees as very shy, private people.”

Like humans, the male chimps also seem to have a bit of a rhythmic bent; Lanting observed them drumming on hollow baobab trees as a way of impressing potential mates and intimidating rivals.

It took several months for the Fongoli chimps to begin accepting Pruetz and Lanting, who says they wore the same clothes every day so that the animals could become accustomed to their presence.

On days that the chimps let their guard down, Lanting says, he and Pruetz were able to observe behaviors that “are all confirmation to the fact that the boundaries between humans and chimps are really quite fuzzy.”

Be sure to check out the 9 minute long audio interview with Lanting.

PNAS will soon publish a paper from Mike Bruford and colleagues who isolated DNA from gorilla hair and feces and ultimately came up with a conclusion that the modern genetic composition of gorilla populations varies across different parts of their current geographic range and that this variation may be tied to Ice Age climate change and river barriers.

If that doesn’t make much sense, let me explain how such a situation would create genetic differences. During climate change between ice ages, populations that were in higher latitudes, found themselves separated physically because ice barriers formed and then collapsed, ultimately this segregated populations from one another another. Likewise, in drier climates, the tropics expanded and contracted to create isolated pockets much like what is created ice barriers. Ultimately these physical entities separated populations from one another. Also the genetic differences between gorilla populations is explained, in part, by the distance gorillas need to travel around river barriers, since in common with other large primates, they cannot cross large rivers.

Bruford comments on how this current study of gorilla population genetics is a crucial consideration,

“given the current catastrophic decline of great apes throughout Central Africa, current climate change patterns and the need to develop strategies to protect remaining populations from extinction.”

One of our readers, Patty, sent me an email telling me of a 60 Minutes Broadcast with Anderson Cooper reporting on the plight of the Mountain Gorilla. The special is broadcasting on Sunday night, December 9th, 2007 on CBS.

I’ve been keeping track of this situation by reading the Gorilla Protection blog, run by ICCN Rangers at Virunga National Park who write about their daily fight to protect these Mountain Gorillas. It seems like Samatha, one of the bloggers at Gorilla Protection, wrote about Anderson’s visit back in late October. Check it out. It is nice to see the mainstream media is covering this news.

If you want to see a short little teaser of the 60 min clip on Mountain Gorillas with Anderson Cooper, click here.

It seems like the news hasn’t gobbled up this news as adamantly as it did the news of the bonobo reserve in the Congo, but it is nonetheless newsworthy and crucial to the study of bonobos. The Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at the Max Planck Institute put out a press release that they just acquired a second Genome Sequencer FLX (GS FLX) System from 454. Svante Pääbo, director of the department, plans to put this one to use in sequencing the bonobo genome.

I’ve seen two of these 454 devices in person, over at the JGI. These things are gnarly, and cost a lot of money. I was told that each time you wanna use one of the machines, the reagents alone cost thousands of dollars. I didn’t ask to see a purchase order or anything, but I believe them. These devices do big science, they sequence small fragments of DNA and help on constructing it and they do it well.

You maybe asking, “What good does a bonobo genome do for us? We got chimpanzee, macaque, human… and we’re getting Neandertal, gorilla, and gibbon!” Well exactly that, the more primate genomes we have the more information we can get when we compare the genomes to one another. For example, between the bonobo, chimp, Neandertal, and human genomes we can screen to see what genes are specific to modern humans and what genes are specific to chimpanzees. This is critical in understanding what makes us all different, since it is proposed we share so much together.

In related news, I’m happy to announce that the Sankuru Nature Reserve a 11,803 square miles will be created through a partnership involving American and Congolese conservation groups and government agencies to help preserve bonobos. Lots of press has covered this news, for example here’s the New York Times coverage. As you may know all great apes are severly threatened if not endangered.

Gorilla Protection links us up to an excellent report done by Al Jazeera on the threats to mountain gorillas. It’s a bit long, but it is really well done. Before you check out the video, another dead gorilla has been found.

A PLoS One study of chimpanzees at Bossou in Republic of Guinea, shows that the male chimpanzees raid farms and orchards for fruit that they steal and bring back to the females. In exchange, the males shared their fruity booty with the females in a food-for-sex trade.

The photo to your right shows one of the sneaky males climbing a cultivated papaya tree to harvest some fruit. The look on his face is priceless.

Of all the evolutionary psychological studies involving chimps I shared with you this past week, this one “Chimpanzees Share Forbidden Fruit,” is the most remarkable. Here’s the abstract, the full text of the article is openly accessible for anyone to enjoy reading in first hand,

“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.”

If you don’t believe what you’re reading the authors provided two video clips showing some sly and slick male chimp entering what is obviously and occupied by humans (because of the buildings) climbing a tree, stealing fruit, and making a mad dash as if he were a bandit. Then he shares an intimate moment with his lady friend, munching on some fruit.

I’ve edited the clips together and put them up on YouTube for all y’all who can’t play the file types they provided.

I don’t normally make out pleas to help out each and every conservation organization but my friend Allison, who worked for the following organization, told me about what’s happening to it and this one is really serious.

First some background, the conservation organization is speak of is the Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi, a wildlife refuge in Parque Machía, near Villa Tunari, Bolivia. They house many animals, such as capuchin, spider, and squirrel monkeys. Recently, Jane Goodall did a special for Animal Planet where she listed her 5 heroes and she chose the founder, Juan Carlos Antezana, as her final one in the show. They are a great organization and do much more than help save wildlife.

The bad news is that Inti Wara Yassi is in jeopardy and the animals need our help! Some of the land they use for facilities such as the veterinary clinic, monkey quarantine and small animals area will be sold off by the landlord if they don’t raise $30,000 USD within two weeks. Sounds like black mail to me… the loss of these facilities may mean the animals die. That’s a lot of monkeys that will lose their lives because of this petty situation.

Please help out Inti Wara Yassi! Some money has been donated but it ain’t $30k yet! Any little bit helps…You can donate money directly to the organization by visiting the site and you can also help spread the word and bring attention to this situation by digging up this on Digg.com. That way thousands more people will read about it and potentially help.

There’s a new and unique behavior of chimpanzees being documented in the journal Biology Letters that I think the primatologist in you will appreciate. 

Chimps that have a hard time acquiring lots of food purposely busy themselves in order to avoid the temptation of gorging themselves straight away. The study shows that, these chimps welcome a distraction that takes the mind off the impulsive urge to splash out.

Nature has a news article summarizing this behavior,

“Researchers at Georgia State University in Atlanta presented four chimps with a plastic container attached to a tube that gradually filled the container with candy. Opening it, however, would cut off the flow of food. Chimps were kept away from the candy machine but were allowed to observe it, so learning that the longer they waited, the bigger the treat they would get.

But as many of us know, self-control doesn’t come easily. Studies of human children have shown that the average five-year-old is rarely able to resist eating sweets, even if promised that abstinence will be rewarded with even more sweets later on.

The Georgia researchers, Theodore Evans and Michael Beran, guessed that chimps would have a good chance at resisting the candies if given a range of toys and other distractions to play with. “We chose a set of items they are known to have an interest in,” explains Evans. “They enjoy brushing their teeth, for example; we gave them magazines so they could look at the pictures; and they enjoy different types of fasteners, zips and clips that they can take apart.”

The chimps resisted going for the accumulating candies for longer when given access to the toys, showing that play did indeed take their minds off food.

And they were more likely to play with the toys when the candies were accessible than when they were visible but behind a barrier. This suggests that they actively chose to use the toys as a distraction, rather than simply playing for the fun of it.”

The implications of this behavior is summarized by one of the authors, Theodore Evans,

“Controlling their impulses could benefit chimps in the wild when deciding where and when to look for the best food… “Self-control may relate back to their feeding ecology — should they eat this food here now, or should they travel down the road and potentially find some nice fruit?”

Chimps low down in the troop social hierarchy often have to wait their turn for the best fruit… Perhaps self-distraction helps them pass the time…”

The DOI link to the article is currently not active, but that’s because the journal probably hasn’t gotten around to publish it. Check the link in a couple days time, and I bet it’ll work.

According news bite of a long term study of Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) in the Mount Huangshan Scenic Area of China’s Anhui Province, ecotourism is doing more harm than good. In the October edition of the International Journal of Primatology, the results of a 19 year long study will show that skyrocketing infant mortality coincided with an influx of ecotourism.

From National Geographic News,

“[Tibetan macaques] regularly compete for corn in a small open area within view of spectators. [Which] likely triggered adult aggression toward each other and toward their young… As a result, less than half of the infants survive into adulthood.

The results suggest that ecotourism can be deadly when not managed properly, said study co-author Carol Berman…

Berman’s team studied the Tibetan macaques for six years before ecotourism began in 1991.

They also collected data while tourists visited the animals between 1992 and 2004, including a span in 2003 when tourism was suspended.

Infant mortality had been low prior to ecotourism and was primarily caused by disease, the team found.

But exposing the monkeys to tourism was linked to high death rates caused by aggressive behavior among adults and toward infants. Although they didn’t witness all the attacks, many of the infant corpses Berman’s team found had bite wounds indicative of adult macaques.”

The National Geographic news piece on this publication goes on to interview Frans De Waal on his thoughts about ecotourism. He agrees with Berman that ecotourism works when it is managed properly.

The article goes on to cites that ecotourism for gorillas in Rwanda has helped out their case, but I beg to differ. We are seeing an influx of gorillas die from human acquired diseases. Many of these diseases like E. coli are not directly due to ecotourism, but other diseases… specifically communicable ones, take the common flu, can do serious damage to primate populations without acquired immunity to these pathogens.

In both of these cases, we see ecotourism not panning out to be what it was intended for — to spread awareness and help the conservation of primates. On the contrary ecotourism has serious side effects that we have no way of really calculating nor controlling.