By Barbara Miller
Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates possess a range of cultural skills that enhance their lives. Depending on the species and location, these learned and shared capabilities include nest building, tool use to access choice food items such as ants and honey, greetings including the “raised hand clasp,” food preparation such as washing an item before eating it, and use of a leaf by males after sex for wiping off their penis.
Crickette Sanz, a professor of primatology at Washington University in Saint Louis, has devoted years to studying wild chimpanzee populations in the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo. She and her co-authors have recently published important new findings about a “tool set” that chimpanzees use to access and eat army ants. The chimpanzees in several different communities use a wooden tool made from a sapling to perforate the ant nest. Then they use the flexible stem of a particular herb as a “wand” for attracting the ants from their nest so that the chimpanzees can eat them.
The more primatologists study nonhuman primates in the wild, especially the great apes, the more evidence they produce about the richness of nonhuman primate culture. But theirs is a race against time. Or, more aptly, a race against us and the ravages of “civilization” and consumerism.
The authors note: “Further research is needed to determine the ecological and social factors shaping the diverse and complex tool technology of these apes. There is an immediate need to conduct this research, as the conservation status of Great Apes in the Congo Basin is jeopardized by mechanical logging, bushmeat hunting, and disease epidemics…” (p. 6). Destruction of the habitat is also having detrimental effects on the ant population, especially army ants.
Protecting the chimpanzees and ants for science is definitely important and rational from the point of view of science. But isn’t there a larger reason? Shouldn’t the habitats, chimpanzees, and even the ants be protected for their own sake? And what about the local people whose ancestors have long lived in the region? If science can provide some muscle for organizations that lobby for regional habitat protection, then that’s certainly a good thing. An image of David and Goliath comes to my mind, with science facing off against massive commercial interests and greedy governments. But, after all, the small guy won.
Sanz, and a co-author, David Morgan, provide some practical insight into the complicated and urgent questions of preservation in a report prepared for the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group, titled Best Practice Guidelines for Reducing the Impact of Commercial Logging on Wild Apes in West Equatorial Africa (2007).
What can we do? Change our consumption practices to rely more on pre-used items and to rely more on less stuff in general. Support organizations that work to protect the habitats where great apes and other primates live, as well as the indigenous/local populations:
Map of Goualougo Triangle by David Morgan. Photo by Crickette Sanz. Special thanks for permission to use their images.
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