Chimpanzee
From Primatome
Calls
Chimpanzees communicate with a wide range of calls, postures and gestures. The food calls -- a mixture of food grunts, barks, and pant hoots -- alert other chimpanzees to the whereabouts of food sources. A special intensity of excited calls of this type indicates that there has been a successful kill after a hunt. Each individual has his or her own distinctive pant-hoot, so that the caller can be identified with precision. A loud, long, savage-sounding wraaaa call is made when a chimpanzee comes across something unusual or dangerous. When young chimpanzees play, they emit breathy laughter. And soft grunts uttered by foraging or resting chimpanzees probably serve to maintain communication within the group.
Posture and Gestures
Posture, gesture, and facial expression communicate many messages and emotions within a group. When greeting a dominant individual after an absence or in response to an aggressive gesture, nervous subordinates may approach with submissive signals - crouching, presenting the rump, hold the hand out - accompanied by pant-grunts or squeaks. In response, the dominant individual is likely to make gestures of reassurance, such as touching, kissing, or embracing the subordinate.
Friendly physical contact is crucial in maintaining good relationships among chimpanzees. For this reason, social grooming is probably the most important social behavior, serving to sustain or improve friendships within the community and to calm nervous or tense individuals. The grin of fear seen in frightened chimpanzees may be similar to the nervous smiles given by humans when tense or in stressful situations. When angry, chimpanzees may stand upright, swagger, wave their arms, throw branches or rocks - all with bristling hair and often while screaming or with lips bunched in ferocious scowls. Male chimpanzees proclaim their dominance with spectacular charging displays during which they slap their hands, stamp with their feet, drag branches as they run, or hurl rocks. In doing so, they make themselves look as big and dangerous as they possibly can, and indeed may eventually intimidate a higher-ranking individual without having to fight.
hunting
One of the first and most significant discoveries made by Jane Goodall was that chimpanzees hunt for and eat meat. During her first year she observed a male chimp, David Greybeard, an adult female, and a juvenile eating what Jane realized was a young bushpig. Before this, it had been assumed that chimpanzees ate only fruit and leaves.
On that first occasion it was not clear whether the chimpanzees had caught and killed the prey, or merely come upon a carcass. But a short time later Jane actually observed the hunting process when a group of chimpanzees attacked, killed, and ate a red colobus monkey that had climbed high into a tree. The hunters covered all available escape routes while one adolescent male crept up after the prey and captured it, whereupon the other males instantly rushed up and seized parts of the carcass.
Successful hunters typically share some portion of their kill with other group members in response to a variety of begging behaviors. Most of the captured animal is eaten, including the brain. Meat is a favored food item among chimpanzees, but does not make up more than two percent of their overall diet.
social structure
Chimpanzees live in social groups called communities or unit groups. At Gombe, the number of individuals in the main study community (Kasakela) has ranged between 40 and 60 since 1960. Communities may be larger in other areas, or may be reduced to very small remnant groups.
Chimpanzees' social structure can be categorized as "fusion-fission." This means they travel around in small groups of up to six, the membership of which is always changing as individuals wander off on their own for period of time, or join other groups. At times many of a community's members come together in large excited gatherings, usually when fruit is available in one part of the range, or when a sexually popular female come into estrus. Mothers and dependent young up to age seven or so are always together. And some individuals travel together more often than others - such as siblings and pairs of male friends. Contact is maintained between members of the scattered groups by means of the distance call: the pant hoot.
Within the community a male hierarchy, ordered more or less in linear fashion, establishes social standing, with one male as the alpha. Females have their own, somewhat confused, hierarchy. All adult males dominate all females. Most disputes within a community can, therefore, be solved by threats rather than actual attacks. However, the males of a community regularly patrol their boundaries, and if they encounter individuals of a neighboring community they may attack with extreme brutality. The only individuals who can move freely between communities are adolescent females who have not yet given birth. They may transfer to a new community permanently or, having become pregnant, move back to their own natal group.
When a female is in estrus and sexually attractive and receptive to the males, the skin around her rump swells considerably and is clear pink. Females show their first very small sexual swellings at age eight or nine, but are not sexually attractive to the older males until they reach age 10 or 11. There is usually a two-year period of adolescent sterility before the female finally conceives. Spacing between births, provided the previous infant lives, is about five years.
Some females in estrus are more attractive to the males than others. A popular female may be accompanied by many or all the adult males of her community, with adolescents and juveniles tagging along. Or, the dominant male of the group may show possessive behavior toward her, trying to prevent other males from mating with her. A third observed mating pattern is the consortship, during which a male persuades a female to accompany him to some peripheral part of the community range. If he can keep her there, away from other males, until the time of ovulation, he has a good chance of siring her child. Even low-ranking males can become fathers if they have the skill to lead a female away at a time in her reproductive cycle when she is not interesting to the high-ranking males, and keep her there until her fertile period. At Gombe, chimpanzee males may be capable of reproduction at age 12 or 13, but are not socially mature until a few years later.
