Finally, ground-nesting behavior is common across the area," adds Hicks.ĭespite an overall similarity of behaviors across two sides of a major river (the Uele) and in two very different habitat types (savannah-tropical forest mosaic to the north and tropical moist forest to the south), the research team encountered some geographic variation in the chimpanzees' behaviour, including differing encounter rates for epigaeic driver ant tools, a lack of honey-digging tools to the south and long driver ant probes and fruit-pounding sites only to the north of the Uele River. "We have also documented tentative evidence of the pounding of African giant snails and tortoises against substrates, both novel food resources for chimpanzees. These chimpanzees, on the other hand, appear not to exploit the common termite Macrotermes muelleri, for which chimpanzees fish at a number of other long-term research sites. and Thoracotermes macrothorax, a resource that chimpanzees in most other regions ignore. In addition, the researchers document an expanded percussive technology associated with food processing: in addition to pounding hard-shelled fruits against substrates (which is seen in other chimpanzee populations), the Bili-Uéré apes also pound open two kinds of termite mounds, Cubitermes sp. kohli, and stout digging sticks used to access underground meliponine nests." "We describe a new chimpanzee tool kit: long probes used to harvest epigaeic driver ants ( Dorylus spp.), short probes used to extract ponerine ants and the arboreal nests of stingless bees, thin wands to dip for D. Hicks, guest researcher at the MPI-EVA and associate professor at the Faculty of 'Artes Liberales', The University of Warsaw. "Over a 12-year period, we documented chimpanzee tools and artefacts at 20 survey areas and gathered data on dung, feeding remains, and sleeping nests," says lead author Thurston C. This set of behaviors covers a minimum of 50,000 km² and possibly extends across an even larger area. A team of researchers from the MPI-EVA and the University of Warsaw now present a detailed description of a new 'behavioral realm' in Eastern chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) of the Bili-Uéré region, Northern DR Congo. Previously, several large-scale behavioral patterns in chimpanzees have been documented, including the use of clubs to pound open beehives in Central Africa and long tools to scoop up algae across multiple sites in West Africa.
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