HRRBAA: Habituation Feasibility Assessment for Critically Endangered Primates

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

This high-risk research project will gauge the feasibility of habituating a savanna chimpanzee community at Niokolo-Koba National Park in Senegal in order to explore their foraging, hunting, and social behaviors. Habituation is a process where wild animals become tolerant of humans, enabling researchers to non-invasibely collect detailed, long-term behavioral observations. In the past, habituation has resulted in benchmark discoveries about our closest animal relatives, such as the findings that chimpanzees eat meat and distribute this prized food within their communities, and that females and males use spear-like tools to hunt small mammals. Savanna chimpanzees are of interest because they inhabit risky and biodiverse arid environments that may parallel environments in which hominins evolved. This project will encourage international collaborations among U.S. scientists and Senegalese scientists, local field assistants, park agents, and students, as well as support student training, science outreach, and primate conservation efforts. Researchers predict that the study of habituated savanna chimpanzees ranging in parkland alongside baboons - their main competitor - as well as abundant numbers of large mammals, such as antelopes, lions, and leopards, will yield important scientific discoveries about their behavior. Fieldwork objectives include: (1) Locating and following unhabituated savanna chimpanzees, (2) estimating the size and composition of the chimpanzee community, and (3) identifying individuals based on their physical characteristics. Given that habituation is difficult, the primary goal of this project is to evaluate its feasibility. The greatest challenges include persistently locating and maintaining neutral contact with savanna chimpanzees because they occur at low population densities and range over large areas. The researchers will make contact at water holes during the dry season and conduct patrols in the wet season when drinking water is abundant. Project personnel will follow international standard guidelines for chimpanzee health monitoring and disease transmission prevention. Habituation feasibility is determined by repeatedly contacting individuals, monitoring their responses to observers during 12 consecutive months, and testing for increasing tolerance towards researchers. Additional goals include improving estimates of chimpanzee community composition and home range. These tasks will be accomplished through supplementing direct observations of chimpanzees with genetic and camera trap methods. If the initial research phase is successful, then the next steps entail closely examining the behavioral strategies of these savanna chimps for surviving in a highly competitive and dangerous savanna landscape.