The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest

40 Years of Research

Christophe Boesch, Roman Wittig

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781108481557
• eBook ISBN: 9781108621816
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Physical Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The Taï Chimpanzee Project (Taï National Park, Cote D'Ivoire) has yielded unprecedented insights into the nature of cooperation, cognition, and culture in our closest living relatives. Founded in 1979 by Christophe and Hedwige Boesch, the project has entered its 40th year of continuous research. Alongside other famous long-term chimpanzee study sites at Gombe and Mahale in East Africa, the tireless work of the team at Taï has contributed to the fields of behavioural ecology and anthropology, as well as improving public awareness of the urgent need to protect this already endangered species. Encompassing important research topics including chimpanzee ecology, reproductive behaviour, tool use, culture, communication, cognition and conservation, this book provides an engaging account of how Taï chimpanzees are adapted to African jungle life and how they have developed unique forms of cooperation with less violence, regular adoptions and complex cultural differences between groups.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 War and peace in the Taï chimpanzee forest: running a long-term chimpanzee research project
• 2 Developments in statistical methods applied over four decades of research in the Taï Chimpanzee Project
• 3 Observation protocol and long-term data collection in Taï
• 4 The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) and the Taï Chimpanzee Project (TCP)
• 5 Insights from genetic analyses of the Taï chimpanzees
• 6 Endocrinological analyses at Taï
• 7 Chimpanzee behavioural diversity and the contribution of the Taï Chimpanzee Project
• 8 An energetic model of foraging optimization: wild chimpanzee hammer selection for nut-cracking
• 9 Demography and life history of five chimpanzee communities in Taï National Park
• 10 Adoption in the Taï chimpanzees: costs, benefits and strong social relationships
• 11 Spatial integration of unusually high numbers of immigrant females into the South Group: further support for the bisexually bonded model in Taï chimpanzees
• 12 Forty years striving to capture culture among the Taï chimpanzees
• 13 Cultural diversity of nut-cracking behaviour between two populations of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Côte d’Ivoire
• 14 Ecological and social influences on rates of social play in immature wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus)
• 15 Long-term diet of the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Taï National Park: interannual variations in consumption
• 16 Why Taï mangabeys do not use tools to crack nuts like sympatric-living chimpanzees: a cognitive limitation on monkey feeding ecology
• 17 Providing research for conservation from long-term field sites
• 18 Rank changes in female chimpanzees in Taï National Park
• 19 Effects of large-scale knockouts on chimpanzee association networks
• 20 Why do the chimpanzees of the Taï Forest share meat? The value of bartering, begging and hunting
• 21 Group-specific social dynamics affect urinary oxytocin levels in Taï male chimpanzees
• 22 The chimpanzees of the Taï Forest as models for hominine microorganism ecology and evolution
• 23 Acute infectious diseases occurring in the Taï chimpanzee population: a review
• 24 Why does the chimpanzee vocal repertoire remain poorly understood and what can be done about it?
• 25 Evidence for sexual dimorphism in chimpanzee vocalizations: a comparison of male and female call production and acoustic parameters
• 26 Gestural usage and development in two chimpanzee groups of different subspecies (Pan troglodytes verus/P.t. schweinfurthii)
• 27 Spatial cognitive abilities in foraging chimpanzees
• 28 Temporal cognition in Taï chimpanzees
• Index