June 2010

If you're a frequent visitor to our website or belong to our online community*, you may have heard us explain that entertainment chimpanzees generally can't be retired to zoos, because they haven't learned chimpanzee social skills and therefore don't fit in easily with established chimpanzee groups.

A new study shows that male chimpanzee groups move into the territory of other chimpanzee groups to attack them and ultimately take over the territory or mates. But the scientists who conducted the study say they are reluctant to draw comparisons to human warfare. Instead, they are emphasizing the individual cooperation involved.

The Guardian quotes scientist John Mitani, a primate behavioral ecologist at the University of Michigan:

Scientists have identified more than 40 gestures used by orangutans to communicate.

To initiate play, for example, the apes used gestures including back rolls and blowing rasberries, while, quite familiarly "nudge and 'shoo' movements meant an ape wanted to be left alone."

Two scientists from the University of St Andrews in Scotland observed 28 orangutans at Twycross Zoo in the UK, Apenheul Primate Park in the Netherlands, and Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey.

National Geographic posted this video of a chimp baby in Tanzania doing what "kids" do best -- playing!

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

While Jane was in Washington, DC in April she not only received the AAG Atlas Award, she also spent the day at Sidwell Friends School. Sidwell Friends is a PK-12, co-educational Quaker day school with campuses in Washington, DC and Bethesda, MD.

What was known about chimpanzees when Jane Goodall stepped off that boat to begin her study of the wild chimp communities living in Tanzanian forest around one of the world's longest, largest and deepest freshwater lakes, (Lake Tanganyika)?

You may have read about the "mark test" or "mirror test." It's a way scientists study self-awareness or self-recognition. They surreptitiously put a colored dot or other mark on a subject -- often somewhere on the face. If, while looking in a mirror, subjects touch their marks or adjust their position to see them better, it's clear they understand they're looking at an image of themselves, rather than at other beings. Species that have passed the mark test include all great apes, bottlenose dolphins and magpies.

On July 14, 2010, it will be 50 years to the day that Jane Goodall first stepped out of a game warden’s boat onto the pebbly beach at the Gombe Chimpanzee Reserve in what is today Tanzania. At the time, she expected to be in the forest observing wild chimpanzees for 3 or 4 months.

Jane's second stop in her Spring 2010 USA lecture tour was Washington, DC, where she received the Atlas Award from the Association of American Geographers (AAG). Jane was the first recipient of the award, which is "designed to recognize and celebrate outstanding accomplishments that advance world understanding in exceptional ways." On April 16 at the Marriot Wardman Hotel in downtown Washington, Jane gave the keynote address to nearly 3,000 geographers and other guests.