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kanyawara

Research at Kanyawara

October 22, 2013 by Debbie

Dr. Zarin Machanda is one of our guest bloggers who is doing a series on the chimpanzees of Kanyawara in the Kibale National Park. Read her introduction post here, to use as a little background for this post about the research they do in the wild. The Kibale chimpanzees were also mentioned in our latest guest blogger post from Maureen McCarthy, a heartbreaking story about a chimpanzee caught in a snare trap. In Kibale, they have snare removal projects and work to help save chimpanzees. Find out more about them here.

—

And now, for the second installment of Zarin’s series:

Hi everyone – I’m back to tell you a little bit more about the chimpanzees of Kanyawara. Today, I thought I would write about some of the different research projects that we have going on. But first, a quick update from the field – it seems that Eslom is prevailing against Lanjo in the quest for alpha male status. I know I shouldn’t be disappointed because alpha male transitions are rare (this will be the 4th in 26 years of observation at Kanyawara), so any new observations are bound to be interesting. But why did it have to be Eslom?! I mean, he’s scared of having his picture taken!

Eslom

The only photo I have ever managed to take of Eslom. As soon as I pulled out my camera, he went and hid behind a tree. I managed to get one shot of him peeking out before he got spooked. Alpha male material? I’ll let you decide.

I still have faith that Lanjo is just biding his time and waiting for Eslom to get tired of running around causing havoc. And who knows – there could always be a surprise candidate waiting in the wings: Big Brown, a former alpha wanting to relive his glory days or maybe even dark horse, Makoku. Don’t let that floppy lip fool you, this 30-year old was high-ranking before Kakama died.

big brown and makoku

Two more potential, although unlikely, candidates for alpha male. Big brown (left) was alpha in the mid-1990s but since he’s over 40, I’m not sure he has the fight left in him. Makoku (right) has an older brother Johnny in the community who might prove to be an ally if he decides to go for alpha status – but so far, he doesn’t seem that interested. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

As a research group, we are particularly interested in male dominance and male relationships, so this change in the hierarchy will yield incredibly valuable data for us. Among chimpanzees in the wild, adult males are socially dominant to all the other individuals and they are also much more gregarious – adult males like to be in parties together whereas adult females tend to spend more time alone with just their dependent offspring. Adult males also exhibit more cooperative behaviors like boundary patrols and hunting and we think that tend to have strong relationships with one another to facilitate this cooperation. One of my research interests revolves around understanding how and why individuals form strong long-term social relationships with one another. But to do that, we have to figure out how to identify relationships. Of course, it would be easy to just go with a gut feeling – sometimes you just have a sense watching individuals that they are great friends or that they don’t like each other. But as scientists, we need an objective measure that others can replicate. So how do we measure friendship?

chimps grooming

A pile of male chimpanzees grooming each other. Adult males form very strong bonds with one another and we often use grooming behavior as an indicator of a bond. The chimpanzees at Kanyawara also engage in a behavior called hand-clasp grooming where they raise their hands and clasp them above their heads while grooming each other. Not every chimpanzee community exhibits this kind of behavior and we think that this might be a cultural variant of grooming. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Well first, we have to collect systematic data on the behaviors and activities of the chimpanzees. At Kanyawara, we employ 6 full-time Ugandan field assistants who enter the forest almost every day to collect our long-term field data. We still prefer the old-fashioned method of pen and paper data collection – just like Darwin used to do! One type of data involves identifying all the individuals present in a party every 15 minutes and then writing down the time and description of any interesting behaviors (e.g. grooming, copulations, etc.) that occur. At the same time, another field assistant collects data on one specific individual in the party and records their activity every minute, and who they are sitting near every 15 minutes. From this data, we can figure out which individuals spend time with each other in parties, sit next to each other and groom each other most often. Combining these measures, we can identify individuals with strong bonds. I like to think of it this way – you wouldn’t spend a lot of time with someone you don’t like (let alone let them groom your private parts) and we don’t think that chimps do either.

data

An example of some of the data that we collect. Our field assistant, James, was following a large group of chimps that morning. Around 9:00am there was a lot of social activity including some adult males like Big Brown (BB) and Tofu (TU) playing with some young individuals. Then at 9:14am, the chimps heard something and appeared to be cautious but interested. As they moved south towards the sound – possibly the neighboring community of chimps – the males started grooming each other a lot while some of the females and their families left the party.

Dr. Richard Wrangham started our research site in 1987, so we have over 25 years of this kind of data which means that we can look at relationships over very long periods of time. Our research has shown that not only are males strongly bonded to one another, but almost every male has at least one really close associate – kind of like a BFF, except we call them PSPs (preferred social partners) and these relationships on average last for years. For example, we know that Makoku and his older brother Johnny are PSPs and they have been since at least 1995. As maternal brothers, they share a lot of genes in common and it makes sense that they have a strong bond because from an evolutionary point of view, you should support individuals who share your genes. If they succeed, it’s like a part of you has succeeded as well. By the way, Johnny and Makoku (as well as their mother Lope and sister Rosa) have floppy bottom lips, so there are definitely some shared genes there! It’s a little surprising to me that Makoku isn’t actively trying to be alpha male right now – not only was he the second highest ranking male before Kakama died, but he also has Johnny to get his back if anyone fights him. And Johnny is our biggest male chimpanzee, just the kind of wingman you’d want in a fight. Of course, Makoku could be trying to emulate his older brother’s style since Johnny never cared that much for being high ranking either. This seemed to work for Johnny – although the general pattern is for the alpha male (or at least high-ranking males) to sire the majority of babies in a community, mid-ranking Johnny is one of our most reproductively successful males and has fathered numerous offspring including Lanjo and Eslom. Does anyone else get the feeling that this is a little bit like watching a soap opera? The Days of our Lives: Kanyawara edition!

Johnny

Johnny is Makoku’s older brother and has a floppy bottom lip just like the rest of the members of his family. Johnny has always been medium ranking, but surprisingly, he is also a real ladies man and has fathered a number of offspring. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Besides studying long-term relationships, another area of research that Kanyawara has pioneered is the study of behavioral endocrinology. Basically, this involves trying to understand the interaction between the behaviors that we observe and the physiological processes happening inside the body that involve hormones. For example, one interesting question to examine right now is how testosterone levels of our adult males may be fluctuating given the instability in the dominance hierarchy. With all the aggression that Eslom is displaying, I bet his testosterone levels are through the roof!

As I mentioned in my previous post, we don’t physically interact with our chimpanzees unless their lives are in danger, so we can’t collect blood samples to measure their hormone levels. Instead, we rely on the urine and feces that they leave behind and it is remarkable how much you can tell about the inner workings of the body from a single urine sample. In our lab at the University of New Mexico, Martin Muller, Melissa Emery Thompson and their students use and develop techniques which can determine the levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, cortisol (a measure of metabolic stress), and C-peptide (a measure of insulin). This means, of course, that we have to collect urine and fecal samples. This fun task most often falls on our field assistants, who have devised a very clever way to get the urine and not get too messy in the process. Basically, you have to find a long branch with a v-shaped end to it. Luckily, we work in a forest so these aren’t too hard to find. Then you take a clean plastic bag and tie it over the v-shaped end and voilà, you have made yourself a urine catcher! When a chimp is in a tree and starts peeing, you take your urine catcher and put the plastic bag end in the stream of urine. Once we have enough (only about 3ml), we can pipette the liquid off the plastic bag and into labeled tubes for storage.

urine collection

A chimps-eye view of John, one of our field assistants, collecting urine using the handy plastic bag on a stick technique. The longer the stick, the less chance of getting splashed. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Some of the hormone data that we have collected have changed the way that we think about the chimpanzees and their behavior. For example, the data from Kanyawara has shown that males who are higher ranking tend to have higher levels of testosterone. These guys are also generally more aggressive indicating that the testosterone may be mediating their aggressive behavior. These high ranking males also have higher levels of cortisol which means that they are experiencing increased metabolic costs – in other words, even though there is a benefit to being high ranking, there is also a significant energetic cost to it as well. This dataset has also given us a lot of information about females as well. Remember Outamba, the super mom chimp that I mentioned in my previous post? Well we know she is high ranking and we also have data to suggest that she, and the other high ranking females, have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. This might be why she is able to have babies more frequently than the other females.

So that’s a little bit about some of the research we do on adult individuals. Next post I’ll tell you what it’s like to be a baby chimpanzee and some of the research that we do on our infants. Chimpanzees are so interesting and complex that I don’t think we’ll ever run out of research questions. Let’s just hope that we can also protect the chimps in the wild so that we can keep learning from these amazing individuals.

Filed Under: Advocacy, Free-living chimps Tagged With: advocacy, animal protection, animal rescue, animal rights, Animal Welfare, chimpanzee, chimpanzee rescue, chimpanzee retirement, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, free-living chimps, kanyawara, kibale national park, ronan donavan, Sanctuary, wild chimps, zarin machanda

Meet the Chimpanzees of Kanyawara

August 15, 2013 by Debbie

Most of our advocacy work focuses on issues close to home, like the entertainment industry, apes as pets, and biomedical research. As caregivers for the Cle Elum Seven, our expertise at CSNW lies in the plight of captive chimpanzees. We see the Cle Elum Seven as ambassadors for other chimpanzees that still are used in research or entertainment and deserve better.

We also see them as ambassadors for wild chimpanzees. They never got to experience the love from their mother, learning how to forage and use tools, and living in a large group of other wild chimpanzees. Though sadly, chimpanzees in the wild have problems of their own. Some are being hunted for their meat to be sold on the black market, some are losing their homes to human encroachment, and some are fighting for their lives after being caught—but not killed, by a snare trap.

Our guest blogger project aims at raising more awareness about these issues from the perspective of those that work in that environment, analogous to the CSNW staff’s expertise with chimpanzees in captivity. Dr. Zarin Machanda works in the Kibale National Park in Uganda, and we are thrilled to have her stories of her experience working with chimpanzees in the wild, just as we tell stories about the Cle Elum Seven. Here’s her introduction to the chimpanzees of Kanyawara.

—

Hi everyone! My name is Zarin Machanda and I’m going to do a few guest blog posts over here this summer. I know JB and Diana from when I volunteered at the Fauna Foundation. I have a very distinct memory of JB with a torn up t-shirt after an encounter with a grumpy ostrich! I’m still not sure what happened, but I think the ostrich won.

I left Montreal for Harvard where I have been studying wild chimpanzees in Uganda for the last 10 years. I’ll describe my research in another post but my main interest is understanding how and why social relationships develop. Today, I want to tell you about our field site and introduce you to some of our amazing chimpanzees. Many of the photos here were taken by Ronan Donavan, a friend and photographer who worked in Uganda for many months.

map

Satellite image of Kibale National Park with the Kanyawara chimpanzee community range in the northwest sector. Image courtesy of Google Maps.

I work for the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, a long-term research project studying the Kanyawara community of chimpanzees. They live in Kibale National Park in Uganda, a beautiful equatorial rainforest that is home to over 250 species of trees, over 325 species of birds and over 60 species of mammals, including 13 species of primates. This is one of the densest and most diverse populations of primates anywhere in the world and includes approximately 1500 wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

kanyawara

The canopy of Kibale National Park with the Rwenzori Mountains in the background. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Every day, our field assistants and researchers enter the forest to follow the chimps and collect data on their behavior. We don’t have any physical contact with them—we just observe them, take notes about what they do, and collect samples of their urine and feces for later analysis. How do you collect urine from a chimp? Well you’ll have to come back later to find out!

All of our chimpanzees are given names and we can recognize them just as easily as we can tell each other apart. Every chimp research site has a different philosophy for naming chimps—some pick philosophers, others like jazz musicians but we like to name our individuals after important world figures and world events. For example, in the year 2000, we named a chimp Tuke (pronounced Two-kay)—get it?

canopy

The Kanyawara chimpanzees feeding on figs. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

I wish I could tell you about all 53 of our chimps because each one is special in their own way, but I’ve chosen just a few for you to meet: Lanjo, Outamba, Max, Tsunami, and Tembo.

Lanjo was born in 1995. He is quite large for his age and he’s recognizable because his hair is light brown compared to the more typical black hair of the other chimps. He is not only handsome, but he is also loved by all the researchers and field assistants. Our alpha male, Kakama, recently passed away and we have been taking bets on who is going to take over. My money is on Lanjo although some other folks favor Eslom. Interestingly, these two couldn’t be more different—while Eslom is likely to display, chase everyone and generally cause chaos wherever he goes, Lanjo is as cool as a cucumber and just watches it all happen. That’s the kind of alpha that I would want and I have a feeling most of chimps would prefer cool over crazy! It’s going to be an interesting couple of months in our community since we know that changes in the hierarchy really shake up relationships among the males. Individuals jockey for position and need to figure out which of their friends will be most useful to them as they vie for dominance. Fingers and toes crossed for Lanjo, although Kakama will be greatly missed.

lanjo

Lanjo showing off his muscles for the camera. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Outamba is a high ranking female and is recognizable because of her narrow mouth and prominent brow. We think she is about 34 although it’s hard to know her exact age because females transfer into new communities during adolescence and we make educated guesses about their age. Outamba is Kanyawara’s baby-making machine! She has had 5 infants in 15 years—that’s one baby every 3 years compared to the average female who generally has one baby every 5-6 years. It’s even more impressive that all of Outamba’s babies have survived, so she’s not just making babies quickly but she’s doing a great job of taking care of them too. We think she is such a successful mother because as a high-ranking female, she has access to the areas of the highest quality food. For mammals, more food means more babies and higher infant survival rates—so Outamba must be eating well.

outamba

Outamba carrying her youngest daughter Gola on her back. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Max is one of our shy individuals and we don’t see him very often because he prefers to stay near his mother in a remote part of the Kanyawara range. This is unusual for an adolescent male because as he grows up he should spend more time with the adult trying to integrate into the male dominance hierarchy. Max’s odd behavior most likely stems from the fact that he lost both of his feet to wire snares set by poachers when he was younger. I’ll write more about these snares and our conservation efforts in another post, but they affect our young chimps more often than adults because these guys barrel through the forest without looking where they are going. Another reminder that baby chimpanzees and baby humans are very similar. Despite these injuries, Max is a trooper! He can still climb trees like a champ and has survived for a number of years without his feet.

max

Max sitting in a tree. He lost both his feet to wire snares. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

Tsunami was born in January of 2005. Her mother is Tongo and she is Lanjo’s younger sister. Right now, her face is still pink with a few dark freckles but this will change as she gets older and her face darkens. Like our other young chimps, Tsunami likes playing with objects such as rocks and sticks and she will even carry these things around for days. She is often seen playing with and trying to carry her siblings. In 2011, tragedy struck when Tsunami’s baby sister, Teddy, died after accidentally falling out of a tree. Tongo couldn’t carry the body and had to leave it on the ground but Tsunami stayed with Teddy and even tried carrying her—it was heartbreaking. I think Tsunami is going to make a great mom when she grows up—she certainly has a good role model in Tongo and she is one amazing big sister.

tsunami

Tsunami, one of our juvenile females. Photo courtesy of Ronan Donavan.

At 1.5 years, Tembo is one of our youngest chimpanzees. We gave him the Swahili word for elephant as a name, because he was born the same day that elephants came to camp and knocked over a tree. Tembo is a special guy because he is not only the son of Tenkere but also the grandson of Outamba. Since female chimpanzees are supposed to transfer to new communities at adolescence, it’s unusual to have maternal grandmothers in a group. We’re not sure why Tenkere decided to stay but it is likely that it’s because she also has access to high quality food like her mom, which she may not have as a new immigrant to another community. Not leaving may end up being a poor choice because Tenkere is genetically related to many of the males in the group. We’ll have to keep an eye on Tembo and get DNA samples from him to do a paternity test. But, so far he seems healthy and playful and he has quite a family looking out for him. I’m hoping he lives up to his name—big and strong and able to knock over trees.

tembo

(Left) Newborn Tembo lying with his mother Tenkere. Even as a newborn he had sideburns just like his mother. (Right) Tembo at 1.5 years of age. Photos courtesy of Andrew Bernard and Melissa Emery Thompson, respectively.

Well that’s all for now. Next time, I’ll describe a little bit more about my research and some of the other projects that we are working on. In the meantime, please check out our website for more news from the field.

Filed Under: Advocacy, Free-living chimps Tagged With: advocacy, animal protection, animal rescue, animal rights, Animal Welfare, chimpanzee, chimpanzee rescue, chimpanzee retirement, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, free-living chimps, kanyawara, kibale chimpanzee project, kibale national park, wild chimpanzees, wild chimps, zarin machanda

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