Read the letter and the PanAf response here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/364/6445/1040.2.full.pdf
Friday, June 14, 2019
Inclusive chimpanzee conservation
"Thanks to a pair of great primatologists we had the chance to highlight chimpanzee conservation in a recent letter published today in Science. Check out the important discussion about culture, conservation and of course chimps!" - Ammie Kalan
Read the letter and the PanAf response here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/364/6445/1040.2.full.pdf
Read the letter and the PanAf response here: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/364/6445/1040.2.full.pdf
Friday, April 26, 2019
Chimp&See v2.0 update!
We are almost done incorporating all the comments from Beta Testing into the new Chimp&See!
For now, when you go to ChimpandSee.org, you will see our place holder page, but we will be back soon, better than ever!
In the mean time, you can still join us on Talk for chimp matching and other video discussions until we relaunch!
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Novelty Response of Wild African Apes to Camera Traps
Another new paper from Ammie Kalan and collaborators including data from the PanAf and Chimp& See's animal selfie's miniproject!! :) Thanks to all the citizen scientists who helped hashtag camera reaction videos !!!
Novelty Response of Wild African Apes to Camera Traps (Current Biology)
And watch some best of videos HERE
Highlights
• Bonobos and gorillas had stronger looking impulses compared to chimpanzees
• Young apes looked longest at camera traps compared to mature individuals
• Presence of a research site or conspecifics reduced the duration of looking
• Both social and environmental factors affect great ape curiosity in the wild
Abstract
Temperament and personality research in humans and nonhuman animals measures behavioral variation in individual, population, or species-specific traits with implications for survival and fitness, such as social status, foraging, and mating success. Curiosity and risk-taking tendencies have been studied extensively across taxa by measuring boldness and exploration responses to experimental novelty exposure. Here, we conduct a natural field experiment using wildlife monitoring technology to test variation in the reaction of wild great apes (43 groups of naive chimpanzees, bonobos, and western gorillas across 14 field sites in Africa) to a novel object, the camera trap. Bonobo and gorilla groups demonstrated a stronger looking impulse toward the camera trap device compared to chimpanzees, suggesting higher visual attention and curiosity. Bonobos were also more likely to show alarm and other fearful behaviors, although such neophobic (and conversely, neophilic) responses were generally rare. Among all three species, individuals looked at cameras longer when they were young, were associating with fewer individuals, and did not live near a long-term research site. Overall, these findings partially validate results from great ape novelty paradigms in captivity. We further suggest that species-typical leadership styles and social and environmental effects, including familiarity with humans, best explain novelty responses of wild great apes. In sum, this study illustrates the feasibility of large-scale field experiments and the importance of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in shaping animal curiosity.
Press release:
Wild African ape reactions to novel camera traps
Novelty Response of Wild African Apes to Camera Traps (Current Biology)
And watch some best of videos HERE
Highlights
• Bonobos and gorillas had stronger looking impulses compared to chimpanzees
• Young apes looked longest at camera traps compared to mature individuals
• Presence of a research site or conspecifics reduced the duration of looking
• Both social and environmental factors affect great ape curiosity in the wild
Abstract
Temperament and personality research in humans and nonhuman animals measures behavioral variation in individual, population, or species-specific traits with implications for survival and fitness, such as social status, foraging, and mating success. Curiosity and risk-taking tendencies have been studied extensively across taxa by measuring boldness and exploration responses to experimental novelty exposure. Here, we conduct a natural field experiment using wildlife monitoring technology to test variation in the reaction of wild great apes (43 groups of naive chimpanzees, bonobos, and western gorillas across 14 field sites in Africa) to a novel object, the camera trap. Bonobo and gorilla groups demonstrated a stronger looking impulse toward the camera trap device compared to chimpanzees, suggesting higher visual attention and curiosity. Bonobos were also more likely to show alarm and other fearful behaviors, although such neophobic (and conversely, neophilic) responses were generally rare. Among all three species, individuals looked at cameras longer when they were young, were associating with fewer individuals, and did not live near a long-term research site. Overall, these findings partially validate results from great ape novelty paradigms in captivity. We further suggest that species-typical leadership styles and social and environmental effects, including familiarity with humans, best explain novelty responses of wild great apes. In sum, this study illustrates the feasibility of large-scale field experiments and the importance of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors in shaping animal curiosity.
Press release:
Wild African ape reactions to novel camera traps
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Human impact erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity
 |
| photo: Liran Samuni |
Abstract:
Chimpanzees possess a large number of behavioral and cultural traits among non-human species. The ‘disturbance hypothesis’ predicts that human impact depletes resources and disrupts social learning processes necessary for behavioral and cultural transmission. We used an unprecedented data set of 144 chimpanzee communities, with information on 31 behaviors, to show that chimpanzees inhabiting areas with high human impact have a mean probability of occurrence reduced by 88%, across all behaviors, compared to low impact areas. This behavioral diversity loss was evident irrespective of the grouping or categorization of behaviors. Therefore, human impact may not only be associated with the loss of populations and genetic diversity, but also affects how animals behave. Our results support the view that ‘culturally significant units’ should be integrated into wildlife conservation.
Paper:
Kühl HS, Boesch C, Kulik L, Haas F, Arandjelovic M, Dieguez P, Bocksberger G, McElreath MB, Agbor A, Angedakin S, Ayimisin EA, Bailey E, Barubiyo D, Bessone M, Brazzola G, Chancellor R, Cohen H, Coupland C, Danquah E, Deschner T, Diotoh O, Dowd D, Dunn A, Egbe VE, Eshuis H, Fernandez Rumen, Ginath Y, Goedmakers A, Granjon AC, Head J, Hedwig D, Hermans V, Imong I, Jeffery KJ, Jones S, Junker J, Kadam P, Kambere M, Kambi M, Kienast I, Kujirakwinja D, Langergraber K, Lapuente J, Larson B, Lee K, Leinert V, Llana M, Maretti G, Marrocoli S, Mbi TJ, Meier AC, Morgan B, Morgan D, Mulindahabi F, Murai M, Neil E, Niyigaba P, Ormsby LJ, Pacheco L, Piel A, Preece J, Regnaut S, Rundus A, Sanz C, van Schijndel J, Sommer V, Stewart F, Tagg N, Vendras E, Vergnes V, Welsh A, Wessling EG, Willie J, Wittig RM, Yurkiw K, Zuberbuehler K, Kalan AK (2019) Human impact erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity. Science. doi: 10.1126/science.aau4532
Press:
- We Are Destroying Chimpanzee Cultures (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)
- Humans are wiping out chimpanzee cultures (Gretchen Vogel, Science magazine)
- Human encroachment threatens chimpanzee culture (Sujata Gupta, Science News)
- Dr. Ammie Kalan on the BBC live!
- Chimps varied ‘culture’ matters for conservation, study says (Christina Larson, Associated Press)
- MPI Press Release English
- MPI Press Release Deutsch
- ...and more
Video Abstract:
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Year of the pig – let’s talk about hogs!
According to the Chinese (Lunar) calendar and starting today, 2019 is the Year of the Pig. We will take this opportunity to have a look the hogs (pigs) at Chimp&See as we’ve just realized, we have never really talked about them before and don’t have a formal guide (yet!).
Chimp&See features four different hog species with some great video footage. They all have large body sizes, a wedge-shaped big head and the signature out-turned huge canine tusks in common. But a closer look at fur, adaptations, and also location of occurrence shows striking differences.
A short video guide from our camera trap footage - and more details below.
Giant forest hogs (Hylochoerus meinertzhageni) can be seen in all African forest habitats. As the name suggest, they are the biggest African hog, heavily build with a big, sturdy head and broad, naked face. They have often rather spare dark fur with the lighter orangey-brown skin shining through. Variation in coat length and density and in different lighting situations let them appear in a wide range from light-brown and hairless to almost black with a thick fur. Male giant forest hogs can have enormously swollen preorbital glands (shown in the screenshot below) that are considered as a type of scent glands, but could also have anti-pathogenic effects.
Red river hogs (Potamochoerus porcus) can be seen often and in big groups at almost every West and Central African site. Their shiny red coat is short and very well visible in the forest. A clear blonde dorsal crest is usually seen. The faces are dark with white cheek tufts; the ears have adorably looking light tassels.
Bushpigs (Potamochoerus larvatus) have the coolest and most diverse color morphs of all African wild pigs. Their coat color ranges from black / brown / gray to red and blondish and is accentuated by white applications at the face and towards the dorsal crest. They have also these cute ear tassels, usually in black. Although subspecies are identified, the color diversity is seen in single groups of these animals. The fur is quite long and looks shaggy, especially after a good rain. Bushpigs are the smallest of the four species and are found at our Eastern sites, like Restless Star and Green Snowflake. More towards central Africa – where they meet the red river hog home range – a zone of interbreeding between these two closely related species can occur.
The warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) lives predominantly in arid savannah habitat like at our West African site Dry Lake. It is most easily distinguishable from the other hogs because of its unique body build. The warthog body is more barrel-shaped due to the lack of subcutaneous adipose tissue and the legs are longer. In addition, warthogs fancy a mane that reaches from the head down to the spine. Because of their long legs and a rather short neck, we often see them kneeling down to feed or drink.
A detailed field guide for hogs and other ungulates will be part of the new Chimp&See interface to be launched soon.
For everyone celebrating the Chinese New Year, all fans of hogs, and just everyone – we wish you a happy and successful 2019. Come over to Chimp&See to check out camera trap video footage from Africa’s wildlife!
Chimp&See features four different hog species with some great video footage. They all have large body sizes, a wedge-shaped big head and the signature out-turned huge canine tusks in common. But a closer look at fur, adaptations, and also location of occurrence shows striking differences.
A short video guide from our camera trap footage - and more details below.
Giant forest hogs (Hylochoerus meinertzhageni) can be seen in all African forest habitats. As the name suggest, they are the biggest African hog, heavily build with a big, sturdy head and broad, naked face. They have often rather spare dark fur with the lighter orangey-brown skin shining through. Variation in coat length and density and in different lighting situations let them appear in a wide range from light-brown and hairless to almost black with a thick fur. Male giant forest hogs can have enormously swollen preorbital glands (shown in the screenshot below) that are considered as a type of scent glands, but could also have anti-pathogenic effects.
 |
| A giant forest hog with enormously swollen preorbital glands. |
Red river hogs (Potamochoerus porcus) can be seen often and in big groups at almost every West and Central African site. Their shiny red coat is short and very well visible in the forest. A clear blonde dorsal crest is usually seen. The faces are dark with white cheek tufts; the ears have adorably looking light tassels.
 |
| Red river hog |
Bushpigs (Potamochoerus larvatus) have the coolest and most diverse color morphs of all African wild pigs. Their coat color ranges from black / brown / gray to red and blondish and is accentuated by white applications at the face and towards the dorsal crest. They have also these cute ear tassels, usually in black. Although subspecies are identified, the color diversity is seen in single groups of these animals. The fur is quite long and looks shaggy, especially after a good rain. Bushpigs are the smallest of the four species and are found at our Eastern sites, like Restless Star and Green Snowflake. More towards central Africa – where they meet the red river hog home range – a zone of interbreeding between these two closely related species can occur.
 |
| The multi-colored bushpig |
The warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) lives predominantly in arid savannah habitat like at our West African site Dry Lake. It is most easily distinguishable from the other hogs because of its unique body build. The warthog body is more barrel-shaped due to the lack of subcutaneous adipose tissue and the legs are longer. In addition, warthogs fancy a mane that reaches from the head down to the spine. Because of their long legs and a rather short neck, we often see them kneeling down to feed or drink.
 |
| A warthog dropped to its knees to feed. |
For everyone celebrating the Chinese New Year, all fans of hogs, and just everyone – we wish you a happy and successful 2019. Come over to Chimp&See to check out camera trap video footage from Africa’s wildlife!
Forget me not 🌼
I´m afraid this one is not going to be the
most didactic text I will write. It´s not even going to be about elephants,
chimps or animal welfare actions. In fact, this is about passion, friendship,
fellowship, self-confidence and finding my own way.
It was only five years ago when I received
a link telling: “hey, this might be something for you 😉 “. It was Ingo from Africa sending me a link from the PanAf team
asking for help to code videos recorded by camera traps located all over the chimpanzee
natural range in Africa - sounds familiar?
Right at that time I was experiencing quite
a frustrating professional moment in Germany, you know, when you feel like “I
love being a mother, I love my kids, I know I do a great job…but I need to feel
professionally complete”. So this was the right moment…the big moment! I still
remember when I got the videos to be coded and a short letter from Mimi saying:
“Dear Nuria, thank you so much for your
help coding videos for our project! Welcome to the PanAf team!”.
Welcome! PanAf team!!!! YAY!!!! Can you believe it? I had no idea what I had to do or even if I was qualified to do it, but I knew that I wanted to do it and that I was going to do all my best, about that I was absolutely sure!!
I´m going to tell you a secret: ever since
I was a child I wanted to be like Dian Fossey. Remember the film “Gorillas in
the mist” when she introduces herself to the professor who searches for
volunteers to do gorilla censuses in Africa? after he asks her what she knew
about Gorillas she replies: nothing, but I can count”. Isn´t it great? That´s
exactly what I believe it´s all about: it´s about wanting to, about having
passion for what you do…and if you work with all your heart and put all your
dedication and trust in what you do, the knowledge will come easy.
I´m not going to lie, this wasn´t always an
easy pathway. In fact, I felt very unsure, overwhelmed and scared at times,
which I think made me a stronger woman now. But you know what? When you have
the best working team of the entire world, what can go wrong? Even though I have
been working remotely, my team/friends have always made me feel that I belonged
to the group, and that they considered me as a part of the project. Now I´ve
grown as a person and as a professional, and they incredibly helped me with this.
I already had had my experience as an ecologist, but never in my whole years of University and later jobs had I learnt so much about wildlife, ecology, conservation…and of course working remotely helped
me catch up on computer things, from writing to reading formal emails properly (oh God, I didn´t even know what ASAP in an
email meant!!)…and have a look at me now, I am a blogger!💪
Then came C&S. C&S…I owe you guys
soooo much! You won´t believe it. From each and every of you I have learnt how
to coordinate a team, how to work tidily, how to be patient and rigorous. And
how to be humble and always bear in mind that it´s absolutely fine if I make
mistakes. And this specially I owe to Mimi, who has been so empathic and encouraging
even when I did crap. These last five years have been the greatest, most
rewarding professional years in my life, and at that point of my life I wasn´t
expecting that; what a beautiful surprise, my job, my love, my passion…my life.
Although I think of all the possibilities
that will for sure come now for me and that I´m ready for a new and exciting phase in
my life, I feel tremendously sad for leaving and can´t help my tears from
falling while I write this. I´m going to
miss you guys, all of you! I and the PanAf team have so much to thank you all volunteers! You have been doing an awesome job. We can never thank you guys enough
in the name of conservation. In this crazy world with so many ecological challenges
in sight, what we did for species protection has no price, really, and I am f…
proud of us!
I hope our paths will cross again, at some
point, at some place…
Hey, we did a great job together 😊
 |
| Germany, 2016 |
 |
| Spain, 2019 |
Friday, January 18, 2019
“MonkeySee” – primate mini-project: A big thank you and a little sneak preview
Although Chimp&See has its main focus on chimpanzees, other species, especially other primates, play an important ecological role in the African rainforest and their presence can be an indicator of biodiversity and potential disturbances at a site. The current Chimp&See annotation interface only supports the classification of monkeys in the broad category “other primates”. From site to site many different species of monkeys and even other primates like galagos and pottos are summarized here. These classification data do not allow differentiating species or giving any indication about the occurence of rarely seen species, like the endangered Western red colobus.
Early on in Chimp&See, we asked all volunteers to tag all species they can identify to the species level to improve the information that we get from the classification stage. We thank all volunteers who took this time over the years and engaged in ID discussions with the moderators and the science team for some rather difficult cases!
In addition, we used the current hiatus on Chimp&See to gather some very (very!) dedicated volunteers to finish tagging all primate videos and check hashtags and comments. As approximately 50% of our clips have been tagged during the site classifications, this adds to several thousand video clips! A very special thanks to @Batfan, @Corcaroli, @HeikeW, @midnightsun and @Snorticus, as well as the moderators coordinating this mini-project.
These data can now be used to study single species of interest, their behaviors like reactions of baboon to our camera traps in our “Animal Selfies” mini-project and even potential interactions with chimpanzees like scavenging of leftover nuts from chimpanzees nutcracking sites by sooty mangabeys.
And we have good news for all the primate fans among you! The science team decided to use the current relaunch of Chimp&See (in progress) on the Zooniverse Panoptes Project Builder to integrate a new workflow dedicated solely to monkeys and prosimians (galagos and pottos) into Chimp&See. This new workflow that aims to identify all primates to the species level already during classification, leaving room for tagging exemplary videos and interesting behaviors and thus saving time. Stay tuned for the new Chimp&See interface!
Again pant hoots and thanks to everybody engaged in this mini-project “MonkeySee”!
Early on in Chimp&See, we asked all volunteers to tag all species they can identify to the species level to improve the information that we get from the classification stage. We thank all volunteers who took this time over the years and engaged in ID discussions with the moderators and the science team for some rather difficult cases!
In addition, we used the current hiatus on Chimp&See to gather some very (very!) dedicated volunteers to finish tagging all primate videos and check hashtags and comments. As approximately 50% of our clips have been tagged during the site classifications, this adds to several thousand video clips! A very special thanks to @Batfan, @Corcaroli, @HeikeW, @midnightsun and @Snorticus, as well as the moderators coordinating this mini-project.
 |
| From left to right: Western red colobus, sooty mangabey, blue monkey, and olive baboon |
And we have good news for all the primate fans among you! The science team decided to use the current relaunch of Chimp&See (in progress) on the Zooniverse Panoptes Project Builder to integrate a new workflow dedicated solely to monkeys and prosimians (galagos and pottos) into Chimp&See. This new workflow that aims to identify all primates to the species level already during classification, leaving room for tagging exemplary videos and interesting behaviors and thus saving time. Stay tuned for the new Chimp&See interface!
Again pant hoots and thanks to everybody engaged in this mini-project “MonkeySee”!
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