The first book-length study in a newly emerging genre of primate field study, Chimpanzee and Red Colobus expands our understanding of not just these two primate societies, but also the evolutionary ecology of predators and prey in general. As chimpanzees are habituated to human observers, but the red colo- bus monkeys are not, the observers may have a double predator effect in frightening away the. On December 16, 1991, they observed a 12-year-old female, Tula, use a. Because chimpanzees are often used as models of how early humans may have lived, Stanford’s findings offer insight into the possible role of early hominids as predators, a little understood aspect of human evolution. Huffman and Kalunde (1993) reported the first case of tool-assisted hunting of mammalian prey by a chimpanzee at Mahale. Taking us to Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a place made famous by Jane Goodall’s studies, the book offers a close look at how predation by wild chimpanzees-observable in the park as nowhere else-has influenced the behavior, ecology, and demography of a population of red colobus monkeys.Īs he explores the effects of chimpanzees’ hunting, Craig Stanford also asks why these creatures prey on the red colobus. This book, the first long-term field study of a predator–prey relationship involving two wild primate species, documents a six-year investigation into how the risk of predation molds primate society. But they also kill and eat their kin, in this case the red colobus monkey, which may say something about primate-even hominid-evolution. This type of monkey is widespread throughout North and Northeast India, in addition to Nepal, northern Southeast Asia and eastern and southern China, 17 and has been increasingly found in human settlements, resulting in greater numbers of humanmonkey conflicts. The association rates go up as soon as the hunting starts.Our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, are familiar enough-bright and ornery and promiscuous. We saw that in the middle of the year, from June to August, when there is no hunting by the chimpanzees, there was a low association rate between the two groups, Noë says. To find out if chimps were indeed bringing the monkeys together, Ronald Noë and Redouan Bshary of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Starnberg, Germany, have been watching two mixed groups since 1991. Adult red colobus monkey leaping across a gap in the canopy to escape from a female chimpanzee, Samwise, who is grabbing a juvenile colobus. A typical red colobus group suffers almost monthly chimp attacks during hunting season. The Gombe chimpanzee study has continued for 60 years. Red colobus monkeys-which are about twice as large as the smaller, swifter Dianas, with males weighing up to 25 pounds and females about 18-are a favorite prey because they’re easier to catch. Watts D and Amsler S (2013) Chimpanzee-red colobus encounter rates show a red colobus population decline associated with predation by chimpanzees at Ngogo, American Journal of Primatology, 10.1002/ajp.22157, 75:9, (927-937), Online publication date. Lions are also capable of killing chimpanzees, and predation by lions has. Now two behavioral ecologists have found evidence that while predation has indeed forged the alliance, the predators driving the monkeys together are not leopards but chimpanzees.Ĭhimpanzees hunt for meat late in the rainy season earlier in the season, when their staple plant foods are less abundant, the chimps must break up into smaller groups and forage over wider areas. Their most common mammalian prey is the red colobus monkey (Procolobus badius). And if that leopard does catch lunch, lunch is much less likely to be you if you’re in a larger group. A larger group has more eyes to spot a lurking leopard. We report 2 cases of predation on an adult and a subadult spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) by a puma (Puma concolor) and an unidentified terrestrial. Some biologists have theorized that the alliance protects against predators. They live peaceably together because they have different diets Dianas eat ripe fruits and insects, while red colobus prefer young leaves, flowers, and unripe fruit. As with humans, it may thus be that the Ta monkeys did not have the time to evolve specialised antipredator behaviour to cope with chimpanzee predation in. Red colobus and Diana monkeys often share forest territory in the Ivory Coast’s Taï National Park.
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