Chimp&See August 2026 Newsletter: Welcome to Appian Way!

 Dear Chimp&See-ers

🚨 (Another) New Site alert ! 🚨

We zipped right through Midnight Shell in about a month and some change and we have now opened a new site - Welcome to Appian Way (AW)!

With AW we are back to Gabon but now in the north west of the country and back to the central African rainforest. This is real ape territory where chimps (*P.t. troglodytes*) AND gorillas (*Gorilla gorilla*) abound! If you have been missing gorillas, now is the time to join us!

Plus some of other favourite charismatic species should be here, elephants, leopards, monkeys and more!  I’m excited for what we all will find! 

We also hit a milestone with our iNaturalist project headed by our amazing mod @Eweforia / Carol - 1000 observations have been added to date. Thank you Carol for your diligence and precision and commitment to getting our data out there for everyone to use!

This is a short newsletter - but a reminder nonetheless to come and join us at ChimpandSee.org today or tomorrow or every day ;) Every annotation you do with us gets us closer to our goal!

This month we leave you with an absolutely stunning leopard from our Cyrstal Gully site in Gabon. Thanks to our mod Karen / @Kikilee3 for selecting this one to share! https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/subjects/68748422

Cheers and thank you!

Mimi & the Chimp&See team

Chimp&See July 2026 Newsletter: New Site alert ! Welcome to Midnight Sun

🚨 New Site alert ! 🚨

On June 16th Crystal Gully  was completed and we have now opened Midnight Shell! 

We are back in the range of Eastern chimps (P.t. schweinfurthii) in the mountains of Nyungwe National Park. The habitat is dense, and higher altitude with some unique species, some of which we may have seen at our other Rwandan site Black Rock (Gishwati). This site is small but jam packed full of chimps, so get online now to ChimpandSee.org before it's gone!

Crystal Gully (CG) was an incredible site where we saw a lion, the webs of social funnel-web spiders,

and new suspected hybrid duikers . We also spotted incredibly rare Central African pottos — and not only that, they were chasing each other (normally super slow), in a pair (normally solitary), and on the ground (normally arboreal). 🤯 - check it out here: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/subjects/68782225

That meant, lots of new tags for this site, and lots of new discoveries! It was really a pleasure being in the unique mixed habitat of the Bateke plateau, eastern Gabon! 

In case you haven’t been around, the trotter videos from CG are still up in the trottersID workflow and the primate videos from CG will be up soon, so you still have a chance to see this beautiful site! …and if you love baboons, there are 1000s of algae eating, swimming and jumping baboon videos still up from Cascading Arches in the MonkeySee workflow ;) those are really easy to do !

We leave you this month, with our beautiful lion video from Bateke / Crystal Gully (this lion was the first one seen in Gabon in 20 years and has kicked off a big conservation effort to bring back the species to Gabon!):  https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/subjects/68714937

Cheers,

Mimi & the Chimp&See team 🐵

Chimp&See June 2026 Newsletter: Happy World Environment Day from Chimp&See!

 Dear Chimp&See-ers,

This month our mod Libby @burdock is guest writing about the project she initiated and has been leading - the OMAs: Other Matchable Animals. 

Chimp&See mainly focuses on chimpanzees, but chimps live in a rich and diverse environment, and so we identify all animals on our camera traps that make up their ecology and environment.  You might already know that we do gorilla, leopard and elephant matching, but we also sometimes capture animals that are rare and amazing with clear patterns. For example, the majestic okapis from the Democratic Republic of the Congo which can be identified as individuals by their unique stripes. Bushbucks also have unique patterns of stripes and dots, which are different on each side of the body. From this we have been able to identify and name individuals that have been seen more than once. For example, this is beautiful Coeur seen from both sides.

We have a bunch of tags for this project too:

#clear_pattern- for animals with clear markings

#health_issue

#injury

#atypical + a note as to why the animal is atypical - for example this aardvark with a floppy ear

#atypical_colouration - specifically for when its colour is something special!

#local_variant - for when we see something often at a site, so its unique for the whole data set but common at a given site

We also pick up animals behaving oddly. The guinea baboons at Cascading Arches try to fish for algae while keeping as dry as possible, by holding up an arm or a leg. They may look injured, but they move quite normally out of the water.

We keep track of anything odd and then decide as we collect the data whether it's a behavioural anomaly (like with the baboons) or if there is just a persistent injury or health issue. By recording these animals and also checking them out for health issues and injuries, we paint a broader picture of the ecosystem in which C&S operates.

Interested in getting involved with matching other animals, join us at the OMA board

And if you want to join the team where you will get daily notifications on all the different projects we do at C&S, check out the discussion “What is the team for?”!

This month we leave you with this very calm and peaceful video of bushbuck Coeur with her beautiful markings!

Cheers

Libby & the Chimp&See team

Chimp&See March 2026 Newsletter

 

Dear Chimp&See-ers

The Chimp&See team has been working hard these last two months and we are officially DONE chimp matching at the Eternal Victory site. A big thank you to Heidi and Tonnie with special support from Heike as mods and the @team for getting through that site. If you want to see the whopping [82 identified chimpanzees from this site check out @Eweforia’s / Carol’s great poster

We are also happy to announce that we have added a new moderator to the team - we are so happy that Jenny / @Samburu has accepted the role and for all her incredible work on the #need_id videos! Welcome Jenny!

The mod team is now made up of: @Boleyn, @burdock, @Eweforia, @HeikeW, @Kikilee3, @lauraklynn, @luca-chimp, @tgcummings, @yshish & @Samburu

Thank you dear mods for all you do, from the flashy jobs up front to the behind the scenes work no one sees, you are the foundation of Chimp&See - thank you!!! 😀

We also now have Sally @sp515507 working hard on leading the bird song identifications! Are you a birder, or do you know one?Join us at the bird board and join our birding group to get into all the avian action at Chimp&See!

Cascading Arches chimp matching is now open! Visit us there if you want to work on your chimpanzee identification skills and have the chance to name a chimp!

We have just under 19,000 CA MonkeySee videos to get through - it's mostly baboons, so the videos are pretty easy to annotate - why not give five a try today! Otherwise see you at Crystal Gully SpeciesID and TrottersID or catch you on Talk. 😄  

Still want more C&S animal excitement? Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, or follow us on  Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and/or Threads to get our best clip of the week featuring an interesting/amazing/oh-too-cute moment at C&S, like this chimp fishing for algae. Doesn’t he look like a pro?

Cheers,

Mimi & The Chimp&See team

Chimp&See February 2026 Newsletter

Dear Chimp&See-ers,

Time passes so quickly when you’re having fun! We hope you all have had a wonderful start to 2026!

Our last newsletter was in October, and since then a lot has happened:

• We finished the Eternal Victory site SpeciesID and TrottersID workflows (MonkeySee still needing classifications)

• We opened and closed the Cascasing Arches site SpeciesID (TrottersID for CA up now!)

• We opened a new site in January called Crystal Gully. This site is located in Gabon in a more savannah-y area, so lots of new things to see and discover - like the first lion seen in Gabon since the 90s! — so come join us at Crystal Gully SpeciesID next time you are online!

You may be wondering how we have been getting through sites so much faster than before, and that is thanks to the assistance of our AI platform Zamba!

Zamba is a machine learning algorithm the PanAf developed with DrivenData to automate species identification from camera trap videos, and it's all based on Chimp&See annotations!

Because even Zamba makes errors, we can’t use it by itself quite yet. But since it gets things right most of the time, we have been combining its answers with our Chimp&See community science annotations for the past few sites to reduce the number of viewers needed to retire a clip. You can read more about how we are doing that in Colleen’s post on Talk.

All this efficiency with SpeciesID has caused a bit of a backlog on MonkeySee, TrottersID, and chimp matching, and that is A-OK. We will take our time with those, BUT if you want to help, please join those side quests!

We also have noticed fewer tags since fewer people are viewing each video, so please feel free to tag as you classify when you are very sure of a species to try to bring the number up to past levels.

Wishing you all the very best for 2026, and see you at Chimp&See.org!

Cheers,

Mimi & the Chimp&See team🐵

 

Chimp&See August 2025 Newsletter

Hi Chimp&See-ers

In the last month we had some great accomplishments!

We finished the Prismatic Expanse site in record time! 79 days to classify 49,361 video clips!

We were then able to open a  new site: Eternal Victory! We are now in Sierra Leone in the Ouatmaba Kilimi National Park. We are 15% of the way through the site and we have already found some new-to-us bird species, a big common hippo:

and…a lion! WAYYYYY outside its known range!

Come and join us at Eternal Victory and identify wildlife species from West Africa!

Also, a special request: I (Mimi) will be giving a talk in September at the Max Planck Society Open Science Symposium and really want to show off from where all of our citizens come! If you haven’t done so yet, please add your pin to our padlet map so we know where you are helping us from!

To add your pin, follow these instructions:

1. Log into padlet (without logging in you won't be able to edit your pin later) : https://padlet.com/arandjel/chimp-see-map-remrx1p29h0w49ly

2. On the left side under Community Scientists - click the + sign

3. On the bottom right a window will pop up

4. You can put in your location, or choose “skip for now” (you will have a chance to change this in the next step, so don’t worry!)

5. Then fill in your information as follows 🙂

You can edit anything in your entry by clicking on your pin, then clicking on those 3 dots in the top right corner of your post and selecting “edit”. For example, you can move the pin location to where you feel is best and if it's to a place without an address (like a forest) you will get the pin's new geographic coordinates (in numbers). 

You can also use the map to explore where our field sites have been and see where our international team of collaborators are located!

Thanks so much and see you at ChimpandSee.org!

Cheers,

Mimi & The Chimp&See team!

Chimp&See July 2025 Newsletter

 Dear Chimp&See-ers,

A lot has happened in just 2 short months!

We had an amazing 10-year anniversary where people have since been posting their locations on our map. Add your name and location here if you haven’t done so yet! https://padlet.com/arandjel/chimp-see-map-remrx1p29h0w49ly.

That ended with a treasure hunt. If you missed it, you can still participate here https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/2279/3651975?comment=5993624&page=1

We also completed our Sunlit Ruins and Black Rock sites!

At Sunlit Ruins we identified 15 new chimps and we are just about wrapping up chimp matching at Black Rock and we will for sure hit 1000 identified chimps by the end of this year!

Also at Sunlit Ruins, we identified our first Black-bellied Pangolin ever at Chimp&See. (Well, it's just a tail, but that was enough to confirm the identity!) Can you spot it in the photo below? https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/2181/3585743

We also have published two new papers using Chimp&See data in the last months!

Kazaba et al (2025) Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Indicate Mammalian Abundance Across Broad Spatial Scales https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.71000 used Chimp&See species annotations to show that chimpanzees make great indicators of mammalian abundance in forest. 

Tuyisingizeet et al (2025) Complex Variation in Afrotropical Mammal Communities with Human Impact https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ece3.71331 used Chimp&See species identifications to show that human impact is really a big driver for species diversity and richness, even when an area is protected.

Both of these papers came out of modelling workshops held in Rwanda and Cote d’Ivoire for African scientists, and we are so pleased that we could contribute our data to the project! 

We are just about to wrap up the Prismatic Expanse site. We have already found Okapi (and have even been matching them thanks to our moderator Libby’s efforts!). And we found melanistic honey badgers that may or may not be the elusive black ratel! 😯

We know it's summer time, but come and help us finish up the last 2000 videos and then…on to the next new site!

With thanks,

Mimi & the Chimp&See team

We celebrate 10 years of Chimp&See!

Dear Chimp&See-ers

10 years! It’s been 10 years since we started Chimp&See on April 22nd, 2015! Time has flown…

…and we have accomplished A LOT!

We have annotated over 330,000 1- minute long videos! Identified more than 990 chimpanzee individuals from 26 field sites across 13 African countries. While also doing 3 mini projects identifying even more chimps at other sites to story research and conversation! We started all sorts of incredible spin off projects like identifying gorillas, elephants, leopards and other unique animals, as well as helping researchers better document camera reactions and disease prevalence at our sites too! We will post more on our accomplishments in an anniversary post on Talk.   

Just in time for our anniversary we have also opened a new site: Prismatic Expanse! It is a very remote site in the north central part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We can’t wait to see what we find there! Read more about it in the Welcome to Prismatic Expanse post!

To celebrate, we invite you all also to join our Chimp&See Map - leave us a pin and show us where you are from. It can be as precise as your street or as imprecise as your country), we’d love to know where you are all from and for you to tell us a bit about yourself!

To add your pin, follow these instructions:

1. Log into padlet (without logging in you won't be able to edit your pin later)
2. On the left side under Community Scientists - click the + signs
3. On the bottom right a window will pop up.
4. You can put in your location, or choose “skip for now” (you will have a chance to change this in the next step, so don’t worry!)
5. Then fill in your information as follows 🙂
6. You can edit anything in your pin by clicking on your pin, then clicking on those 3 dots in the top right corner of your post and selecting “edit”. For example, you can move the pin location to where you feel is best and if it's to a place without an address (like a forest) you will get the pin's new geographic coordinates (in numbers).

You can also use the map to explore where our field sites have been and see where our international team of collaborators are located!

I also want to take this chance to give a HUGE MASSIVE THANK YOU FILLED WITH PANT HOOTS to the current moderator team! Chimp&See would be nothing with them and their hard work: @Boleyn - Heidi, @burdock - Libby, @Eweforia - Carol, @HeikeW - Heike, @Kikilee3 - Karen, @lauraklynn - Laura, @luca-chimp - Lucia, @tgcummings - Tonnie & @yshish – Zuzi 
And last but not least, our incredible tech support and data manager Colleen, the original @SassyDumbledore ❤

I couldn't do it without you, thank you for all these amazing years of support!

And of course the biggest thank you and the most pant hoots to YOU! our Chimp&See community scientists, if you started with us and left or just recently joined us, and anyone in between, thank you for being part of the Chimp&See family and contributing to science and conservation with your time and your joy. Thank you, Merci, Asante Sana, Daalụ, Obrigado, Gracias, Danke, Děkuji, Mauruuru koe, Grazie, Hvala, Xièxiè, Tack, Arigatō…and many many more!

Mimi and the Chimp&See team

PS: If you want to see more of our Anniversary Activities and Celebrations check out our post on Talk!

More Good News about Chimp Matching

Hi Chimp&See-ers,

We have had an exciting few months since our last newsletter in August of 2024.

The August Chimp&See challenge was a huge success - thank you to everyone who participated and accomplished a total of 27,291 classifications in the challenge alone and helped us wrap up the Mathematical Treefort (MT) site!

We also managed to wrap up the MT Chimp matching naming 49 chimps (seen in multiple videos) and identifying an additional 6 unique chimps (only seen once) for a whopping total of 55 chimps at that site!

We also are just about done chimp matching at the Sunlit Ruins site - where we have named 12 chimps, and identified 3 unique chimps for a total of 15 chimps so far!

The PanAf (the umbrella project of Chimp&See) also published a new paper in the journal Science in January on detecting local adaptation in chimpanzee populations across their range. We found that chimps have different adaptations depending on if they live in more forested or more woodland-type habitats. You can read our press release about it here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/jan/chimpanzees-are-genetically-adapted-local-habitats-and-infections-such-malaria

In late February, we opened a new small site - we call it Black Rock, but you can find out more about under the name our collaborators use: The Gishwati Research Station in Rwanda (LINK: https://gishwatiresearchstation.org/) - this site is full of chimps but we have very few videos overall so it ran in parallel with the Sunlit Ruins site (which has very few chimps, in fact we think we have identified them all already, but a lot of videos still remain). By the time this newsletter reaches you, the speciesID at Black Rock will be done and the monkeySee may be too, but there are still LOTS of chimps to match from there, so join us!

April 22nd 2025 will be Chimp&See’s 10th Anniversary and we are starting to plan something special for that, so stay tuned and we hope to see you at ChimpandSee.org soon! 🙂

Mimi & the Chimp&See team

Take the Chimp&See Challenge!

It’s August, and we invite you to take the Chimp&See Challenge!

We are 70% through the Mathematical Treefort site, that’s 53,000 video clips processed so far!

As a (hopefully) final push for this site, we invite you to do 5 classifications each day, every day for all of August! 

If you are already a regular annotator, and that goal seems too easy: set your own target! You could go for 10, 20…50 classifications per day! Pick a number and stay consistent! If you miss a day, double up on the next day. 😀

If you want to participate – sign up here: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/2279/3401975 so we know to track your classifications for the month. 

Complete the challenge and win Chimp&See swag! (as long as supplies last 😏)

See you at chimpandsee.org!

Mimi & the Chimp&See team