We're out of data - for now! Panthoots and thanks to everyone who helped us finishing classifications on the most recent Green Snowflake site. Chimp matching is still ongoing for Green Snowflake and several other old sites like the memorable Restless Star site. The science team and the moderators will use the hiatus to clean up all finished Chimp&See sites. If you want to get involved shoot us a message.
A new site and many more along the way will start on a shiny new interface in early 2019.
If you want to get involved in the ongoing chimp matching or help us tag the classified monkey videos to the species level for our ongoing "Monkey See" project please visit our discussion pages on Talk. The mini-projects Animal Selfies and Leopard Identification will run in the background until the switch too. If you want to discuss something - the discussion boards are regularly checked and you will get a response!
Pictured here: our "drama queen" Petra from the Green Snowflake - a summary posting from the Green Snowflake site will follow soon!
Thank you so much and stay tuned for the next site on the new interface!
We have been revamping the chimp&see site to move to the new Zooniverse platform and make a lot of improvements along the way
We are working on making some of the workflows more fun, easier and more tailored to what people like to do :) and best of all, we'll be adding versions of the site in more languages!
While we go through this process we've decided to pause videos going up on chimpandsee.org [after this current set is done] but there will still be lots of discussions going on, on talk.chimpandsee.org to do chimp matching and chimp naming! Our amazing mods have been incredible in committing to finishing up all the pending chimpIDs so we can move forward with a clean slate and no more back log!
We will need your opinions on chimp matching and look forward to having you around Talk during the main platform pause!
Hey Chimp&See enthusiasts! We recently published a paper about estimating chimpanzee group characteristics using camera traps, and I would like to take the opportunity to share our findings with you and give a little information about what these results mean for the work we do on Chimp&See.
Our paper, entitled “An assessment of the efficacy of camera traps for studying demographic composition and variation in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)”, was recently published in the American Journal of Primatology.
Photo credit: MPI-EVA
Have you ever wished there were a way to know whether the camera traps actually record everything that’s going on when chimpanzees are present? Have you sometimes wondered whether more chimpanzees are just off camera nearby? Have you noticed how some individuals rarely seem to appear on camera, but others pop up in loads of different clips?
In this study, we were able to compare who appeared on camera to who was actually present, and to determine whether the camera traps were a good way to identify all chimpanzees and measure seasonal variation in party size. We looked at this by comparing two data sets from the same chimpanzees at Taї National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, recorded at the same time. One data set came from camera trap videos while the other came from direct observational data collected by researchers (which we know to be a good reflection of which chimpanzees were actually present and how big the parties actually were). By comparing the data we got from both sources, we found a few key things…
1)We missed a lot of individuals in the camera trap videos!
If we considered the sum of all individuals recorded together in a given camera trap event, we missed about half of the party on average. So when we view clips on Chimp&See (especially individual 15-second clips), it’s good to always be aware that we’re often glimpsing through a small window into a bigger, more complex scene that’s unfolding out of view. This is a good reminder not to assume too much as we watch chimpanzee clips.
2)Despite missing some information, we’re still getting really cool and useful data!
Chimpanzee party sizes tend to vary seasonally, based on factors like resource availability and the presence of estrous females. In this study, we found a similar pattern of seasonal variation in party size in both the camera trap and observational data, despite the fact that camera traps often missed some members of the parties. This highlights how useful the camera trap data can be despite incomplete information, and lets us know that the Chimp&See data also offer the potential to look at party size variation in all sorts of ways. So in case you’re wondering, all that chimpanzee counting you’ve done is still extremely useful!
3)Those chimpanzee IDs are so valuable!
We also looked at whether all individuals appeared on camera eventually, and whether events like immigrations, emigrations, births, and deaths could be detected in the camera trap data. We found that all chimpanzees except a newborn infant born near the end of the study appeared on camera, and that deaths and an emigration were detected via disappearance from the camera trap data. We could accurately figure out the chimpanzee community’s composition based on the camera trap data, too. This information all relied on the chimpanzee IDs assigned in the videos (in this case, by researchers who were directly familiar with the chimpanzees, having studied them). On Chimp&See, the only way to obtain this very valuable information is via the agreed-upon chimpanzee IDs that citizen scientists like you help provide. This information is extremely valuable to the project, and the only way we can answer some critical questions about the chimpanzees you see on video—a HUGE thanks to you!
Overall, this study gives us some insight into how valuable camera trap data are for understanding chimpanzee communities, as well as shedding light on the ways in which we should be careful when considering what we can get from the videos. We’re so grateful for all the ways you’ve contributed to Chimp&See and can’t wait to share more results with you in the future! Keep up the great work!
Abstract Demographic factors can strongly influence patterns of behavioral variation in animal societies. Traditionally, these factors are measured using longitudinal observation of habituated social groups, particularly in social animals like primates. Alternatively, noninvasive biomonitoring methods such as camera trapping can allow researchers to assess species occupancy, estimate population abundance, and study rare behaviors. However, measures of fine‐scale demographic variation, such as those related to age and sex structure or subgrouping patterns, pose a greater challenge. Here, we compare demographic data collected from a community of habituated chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Taï Forest using two methods: camera trap videos and observational data from long‐term records. By matching data on party size, seasonal variation in party size, measures of demographic composition, and changes over the study period from both sources, we compared the accuracy of camera trap records and long‐term data to assess whether camera trap data could be used to assess such variables in populations of unhabituated chimpanzees. When compared to observational data, camera trap data tended to underestimate measures of party size, but revealed similar patterns of seasonal variation as well as similar community demographic composition (age/sex proportions) and dynamics (particularly emigration and deaths) during the study period. Our findings highlight the potential and limitations of camera trap surveys for estimating fine‐scale demographic composition and variation in primates. Continuing development of field and statistical methods will further improve the usability of camera traps for demographic studies.
Don't forget to tag all your favourite videos with #dailyzoo and check out the chimp matching tutorial here if you need a refresher: https://youtu.be/PZHb3yPGKm0
As a moderator with Chimpansee, and back to my blog posts about elephants, here´s something that I would love to share with you and that I´m sure you are going to like:
as you already know, we see a lot of African forest elephants at Chimpandsee...such beautiful videos aroused your interest about elephants and we opened a special discussion board about these majestic animals. So elephants are not only part of my daily routine, but I also use some of my spare time to have my nose buried in elephant projects. And this took me to an amazing untiring international organization called “Vier Pfoten” (Four Paws), entirely devoted to animal welfare, and with offices in many countries all over the globe. I would love to take this Chimpandsee guest post to discuss some of the cool conservation work these guys are doing.
This story starts some years ago as a “wonderful dream” of some very brave animal welfare fighters from Vier Pfoten, and it goes like this:
as you all know, elephants have been used as working machines for ages in Asia, with all the suffering that this involves: calves separated from their moms, chained and brutally trained to obey human commands, exhausting working schedules, and elephants psychologically and physically marked for life. The use of hooks to make them obey has been (still is) very much appreciated by the oozies (oozie is the term for Mahout used in Myanmar) working in direct contact with elephants.
Photo: Ingo Schmidinger. Oozies with their elephants.
But fortunately, these days are over for the timber industry elephants in Myanmar.
Due to new regulations, the use of elephants for working purposes has been banned by law in Myanmar. This means that most of the timber logging elephants in Myanmar (sadly, still 10% of the working elephant population will still be working) that “belong” to the government are now “retired” and need a safe place to finally live in so much deserved peace.
Here´s where Vier Pfoten International comes into play, with the development of an ambitious project coordinated by Ingo Schmidinger ❤, and where I myself have had the tremendous honor to cooperate with; my passion for elephants is not a secret, and such a great news gave me hope again.
So, VP, this international animal welfare organization, has designed a long-term project called Elephants Lake, in order to provide elephants with the appropriate conditions to ensure their welfare…forever. This project consists of 17.000 hectares of land in the Bago Province of Myanmar. According to some research on habitat size and population, this area could house 276-300 elephants.
The start up of the project will also involve the employment to the local population, an increase of the tourism, and thus a rise of the local economy, by promoting ecotourism with eco-lodges, the commercialization of eco-paper products from elephant dung, honey production and selling from beehive fencing, training anti-poaching patrols, etc.
The first step of this project is the rescued elephant´s rehabilitation at the Elephants Lake. This place will include (in order of appearance) among others:
· An orphanage: where orphans will be taken and introduced to possible allomothers, that will hopefully form matriarch groups.
· A hospital
· And enclosures that provide permanent homes for those elephants that cannot be released, and temporary homes for those that can be released...
…what?? released???
YES, this is the second step and the most exciting part of the project: the possible release of the elephants into the adjacent North Zar Ma Yi Wildlife Sanctuary where they will no longer “belong” to anyone and will live free back in the wild…isn´t it great? The elephants will not only be released from their chains and taken care of, but also will be released from human´s hands (if possible)!
So, the aim of this project is actually to finally let the elephants be elephants.
The project is still toddling and we are in the most difficult part, but even in the most frustrating and tiring moments, we still keep our hearts focused on the vision of the elephants free from chains, hooks and humans…and that gives us the strength and the passion to keep going 😊
Photo: Ingo Schmidinger
References:
R. Sukumar, The Asian Elephant: Ecology and Management, Cambridge University Press, 1992
Chaiyarat et al, Wild Asian elephant Elephas maximus population in Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand, 2015.
Chimpanzees are rarely active at night after building their nests. So, it was a surprise for me and other volunteers at Chimp&See to see them on our camera trap videos at almost all sites at least occasionally walking in the darkness. We decided to tag and collect those videos. While only a tiny fraction of videos at Chimp&See show what we call the “nightchimps”, it is an interesting phenomenon and leads to questions about what general or site-specific environmental circumstances might cause more or less nocturnal activities.
After starting and curating the Chimp&See “nightchimps” collection, we got the chance to join the project to get a different perspective on the science part and support the science team beyond our regular Chimp&See moderators’ tasks.
Using the nighttime video clips identified and tagged by our volunteers and video material from other PanAf research sites, as well as associated data from environmental surveys of these sites, this study provides a first comprehensive analysis of nocturnal chimpanzee activity in the wild spanning their range and all four subspecies. The study shows that chimpanzees indeed are active at night on the terrestrial camera trap videos at almost all sites (18 out of 22 in the study), but only infrequently, making it a rare behavior still. From all observed chimpanzee activity in the videos only 1.8% occurred at night, but this amount differed from site to site considerably, from 0 videos to more than 8% of all observed chimpanzee activity at one site. The video material shows chimpanzees mostly traveling during these times, but also some social activities and feeding.
The researchers then tested whether different environmental factors like percentage of mature forest at a given site, the abundance of predators (lions, leopards, and hyenas), the abundance of other large mammals (buffalos and elephants), average daily temperature, rainfall, observed human activity, and the percentage of moon illumination on a given night affect the probability of observing chimpanzee nocturnal activity. Only three of these factors showed an effect on increased night activity: lower levels of human activity, more forest coverage of the site, and higher day temperatures – as we’ve seen at the Chimp&See site “Dry Lake” during the dry season.
As data was collected exclusively via camera trap videos, the authors speculate that these initial data might underestimate the amount of nocturnal activity. When more camera trap videos become available in the future – including at Chimp&See – they hope to find more evidence for nocturnal behaviors and its relevance for conservation and also human evolution.
This study demonstrates the unique advantage of using camera traps to find and investigate new and rare behaviors in chimpanzees and other animals, here especially those occurring at night. While it is possible to watch chimpanzees by staying at the nesting site all night, this can only be done at one of the few sites with habituated chimpanzees and a dedicated nocturnal field team. Moreover, the huge collaborative effort of the PanAf program provides the first opportunity to compare sites, environmental factors, and different populations to learn more about the evolutionary drivers of chimpanzee behavior.
If you want to join Chimp&See helping us to find more exciting chimpanzee videos and, for instance, contribute to the leopard mini-project please visit www.chimpandsee.org!
To celebrate Chimp&See's 3rd Anniversary our sci mod and PanAf scientist Dr. Maureen McCarthy compiled some of the best chimp clips from Chimp&See so far!
If you want to discover more amazing videos from equatorial Africa visit chimpandsee.org !
Chimp&See started three years ago on Earth Day, April 22nd, 2015. It’s our anniversary and like every year, we want to celebrate with some background information and a big THANK YOU to now almost 10,000 volunteers!
In the last three years, the project featured camera trap footage from 13 different research sites in three regions of the entire chimpanzee distribution, namely in Western, Central, and Eastern Africa. Missing until now is only Region B that is home of the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee subspecies (Pan troglodytes ellioti) and will be up on Chimp&See very soon! All temporary research sites are set up to study chimp communities that no researcher has studied (not even seen!) before or in collaboration with established long-term research sites. In the first case, an initial search for chimpanzee signs (e.g., nests, tools, vocalizations) is performed and when chimps are present, the cameras are set up and run for at least 12 months. In the case of a collaborative site, the infrastructure and local knowledge of the long-term project is used, but the field team aims for an unhabituated chimp community nearby.
At Chimp&See the research sites are then getting pseudonames, e.g., “Dry Lake”, to protect the animals, but also current and future researchers, from a potential interest of poachers and other dangers. The sites usually can only be identified to the region in the maps that display after each classification.
For this anniversary, we want for once break the rules and tell you exactly where we are. “Green Snowflake” is a collaborative research site in Kibale National Park in southwestern Uganda. Here the Pan-African program worked together with the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project Inc. to study a neighboring community to their main study group that is with more than 200 individual members the biggest known wild chimpanzee community.
The cameras had been installed in what was thought clearly outside their territory, but as it happened, the Ngogo chimps used a part of the study site, too. In addition, chimps routinely patrol the borders of their territory and venture outside when circumstances (that means here foremost: strength in numbers) allow. So unexpectedly, but luckily, we could get a glimpse at some Ngogo chimps when a big group of males, followed by field assistants, crossed in front of the cameras. Those, who are familiar with the Ngogo chimps, might even be able to identify some of them. This territorial aspect, the boundary patrols, and a partly violent path to enlarge their own territory – as well as several memorable individual Ngogo chimps – are also highlighted in last year’s documentary “Rise of the Warrior Apes” (Discovery Channel). If you get the opportunity, you should check it out!
But the majority of the Green Snowflake chimp videos show an unhabituated neighbor community of Ngogo – and it doesn’t mean that they are at the lower end of this territorial struggle! In fact, most chimp videos here show rather idyllic groupings for feeding, travelling, or play. What “our” community shares with the Ngogo chimps is a rather favorable environment of old and new forest mostly undisturbed by human activity (like logging). Although, we’ve seen them largely feeding on wood or clay as the cameras are terrestrial, the area has many mature fruiting trees and the chimps here also have an appetite for meat and hunt monkeys, with a preference for the cute red colobus monkeys. They also share, unfortunately, the dangers of snare injuries as we’ve seen in several individuals here.
If you’ve already seen Green Snowflake videos, you probably encountered the field team maintaining the cameras. Samuel Angedakin, was the PanAf field site manager responsible for setting up the “data collection zone” according to their field protocol. This included not only installing the camera traps for taking video footage (as seen now at Chimp&See), but also collecting other data and samples (plants and other environmental organic materials) to inform about ecological factors, as well as feces and hair samples for genetic analyses of chimp demographics. Sam is currently the field manager at the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project Inc. and will start his PhD at Makerere University in Uganda in fall this year.
Sam Angedakin, the PanAf field site manager for "Green Snowflake"
So, if you want to watch “Ngogo’s Neighbors” at Green Snowflake and help us classify camtrap videos, come over to Chimp&See and check out the great chimp videos, already identified individuals, and all the other animals in the North of Kibale National Park, Uganda.
Many thanks to Carolyn Rowney and Kevin Langergraber, as well as Sam Angedakin, from the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project Inc. for their great collaboration. And as always, a million thanks to all volunteers for getting involved in video annotation and chimp matching as well as always asking great questions!
Bohr, Cassini, and Titan from Green Snowflake wish you a happy Earth Day 2018!
Chimp&See reached yet another milestone: together, we made 3.5 million classifications and annotated with this more than 500,000 video clips! This huge effort helped the science team to get to date through 2,200 hours of footage – annotate all animals and behaviors seen in a video clip, tag to the species level, and identify almost 300 unique chimpanzees (and some leopards) across all sites.
We already completed 13 research sites and are more than halfway through the current one “Green Snowflake” that already by now topped all other sites in the number of chimpanzee videos found. Matching the chimps is an ongoing challenge, but we already identified several members of this community and could watch it grow as there are at least three newborn infants clinging to their mothers’ belly virtually from one month to the other.
At this beautiful Eastern African site, we could see two new (to us) behaviors as the chimps and other species spend extended periods eating decaying mineral-rich wood and also clay or soil. You can have lots of fun watching bigger groups of monkeys and chimps interacting with each other and competing for the best place to feed. Their huge enthusiasm for “wood eating” can be seen in watching the “feeding tree” practically disappear in just months.
The same tree getting dismantled on camera in just months.
Thank you for the continuous support of the project and your enthusiasm about chimps and African wildlife in general. Come over to Chimp&See and help us classify even more videos!
Thank you to everyone for a fun and successful "Best of 2017" event! There were some really entertaining clips nominated this year, and we hope you enjoyed the chance to revisit them. We loved all your suggestions and findings! Here are the results from the voting!
Currently a new East African site Green Snowflake is running with many great chimp footage and we will open new sites in the near future. Check it out and get involved at Chimp&See!
In December, we asked you to nominate your favorite videos on Chimp&See in 2017 in the categories of Favorite Chimp, Funniest Video, Best Camera Reaction, Creepiest Video, and Biggest Surprise.
It was challenging, but fun, and now it's time to vote for the overall favorites!
We set up a survey so you can view all the clips and send us your votes. It's a great chance to look back over the fascinating and entertaining clips from the last year and share your thoughts on the best of the best.
As you view each video, you have the opportunity to give it a score of 1 (don't like it that much) to 5 (awesome!).
Voting ends on Sunday, January 14th, after which we'll tally the scores to find the winners for each category.
The survey is open to anyone (one entry per computer), so feel free to share this with your family and friends so they can join in the fun and add their votes, as well!
If you have any problems or questions, please let us know. Enjoy, have fun, and may the best clips win!
(You are free to enter scores for as many or as few videos as you'd like, but only one voting form can be submitted per computer. Votes are anonymous. Be sure to submit your votes before January 14, 2018, at 11:00 p.m. CET.)
