Humans are constantly acquiring new information and skills. However, forgetting is also a common phenomenon in our lives. Understanding the lability of memories is critical to appreciate how they are ...formed as well as forgotten. Here we investigate the lability of chimpanzees' short-term memories and assess what factors cause forgetting in our closest relatives. In two experiments, chimpanzees were presented with a target task, which involved remembering a reward location, followed by the presentation of an interference task-requiring the recollection of a different reward location. The interference task could take place soon after the presentation of the target task or soon before the retrieval of the food locations. The results show that chimpanzees' memories for the location of a reward in a target task were compromised by the presentation of a different food location in an interference task. Critically, the temporal location of the interference task did not significantly affect chimpanzees' performance. These pattern of results were found for both Experiment 1-when the retention interval between the encoding and retrieval of the target task was 60 seconds- and Experiment 2-when the retention interval between the encoding and retrieval of the target task was 30 seconds. We argue that the temporal proximity of the to-be-remembered information and the interference item during encoding is the factor driving chimpanzees' performance in the present studies.
Crop-raiding is a major source of conflict between people and wildlife globally, impacting local livelihoods and impeding conservation. Conflict mitigation strategies that target problematic wildlife ...behaviours such as crop-raiding are notoriously difficult to develop for large-bodied, cognitively complex species. Many crop-raiders are generalist feeders. In more ecologically specialised species crop-type selection is not random and evidence-based management requires a good understanding of species' ecology and crop feeding habits. Comprehensive species-wide studies of crop consumption by endangered wildlife are lacking but are important for managing human-wildlife conflict. We conducted a comprehensive literature search of crop feeding records by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), a ripe-fruit specialist. We assessed quantitatively patterns of crop selection in relation to species-specific feeding behaviour, agricultural exposure, and crop availability. Crop consumption by chimpanzees is widespread in tropical Africa. Chimpanzees were recorded to eat a considerable range of cultivars (51 plant parts from 36 species). Crop part selection reflected a species-typical preference for fruit. Crops widely distributed in chimpanzee range countries were eaten at more sites than sparsely distributed crops. We identified 'high' and 'low' conflict crops according to their attractiveness to chimpanzees, taking account of their importance as cash crops and/or staple foods to people. Most (86%) high conflict crops were fruits, compared to 13% of low conflict crops. Some widely farmed cash or staple crops were seldom or never eaten by chimpanzees. Information about which crops are most frequently consumed and which are ignored has enormous potential for aiding on-the-ground stakeholders (i.e. farmers, wildlife managers, and conservation and agricultural extension practitioners) develop sustainable wildlife management schemes for ecologically specialised and protected species in anthropogenic habitats. However, the economic and subsistence needs of local people, and the crop-raiding behaviour of sympatric wildlife, must be considered when assessing suitability of particular crops for conflict prevention and mitigation.
In the following review, we will consider how Fowler faces birth, evolution, grief, literature, religion, and reflects these experiences back to the audience. We suggest that he is giving form to the ...space between his face and the audiences’ faces; he is revealing a series of vases. This is based in the ambiguous figure Rubin’s vase-face, which is an important part of gestalt psychology. Fowler brings the religious and zoological meanings of the word primate face to face in his performance. He identifies as a primate to insist that the great apes are a worthy subject for poetry; he is preaching to the audience seated in church pews. Fowler introduces the evolutionary theory into St Johns on Bethnal Green through literature. Bob Bright, Ailsa Holland, Chris Kerr aid in his performance by reading selections from his 10th poetry collection, The Great Apes published by Broken Sleep Books 2022. The primate performance itself comes full circle to ask poets who among them is worthy to read as opposed to sit in the audience. This rigid hierarchal thinking is utterly disrupted by the primate figure enacting birth and grief. Poetry about the sixth great extinction cannot let itself become taxidermy; it must be disturbing, exciting, and deeply visceral as Fowler’s performance.
The authors chose Bubango for this initial project, because this community had expressed interest over the years, and because of their proximity to important natural resources that would benefit from ...the community's conservation awareness. When people understand how to use their plants, the value of those particular species rises. ...when they value the plants, they also come to value the entire ecosystem, and place a greater emphasis on conservation. Follow up studies such as plant list checks, age of villagers in reference to plant knowledge, and looking at the number of people in the village with general and specific ethnobotanical knowledge, will determine whether this sort of undertaking will translate in the longer term into conservation drivers.
Semi-natural environments within cities can provide habitats for vulnerable reptile species. Better understanding of their habitat use and home range sizes is important for their conservation. We ...investigated the spatial ecology of Caspian whipsnakes (
) in a peri-urban habitat in Budapest, Hungary. We used radiotelemetry to track five adult snakes and analyzed their microhabitat preferences, home range sizes and daily movements. The Caspian whipsnakes intensively utilized areas covered with woody vegetation, with a high density of hibernacula. The tracked snakes used an area of 40.15 ha during the activity period from spring to autumn, but for the winter, they withdrew to a central area of 1.75 ha, abundant in hibernacula. During the activity period the individual home range sizes varied between 6.1 and 15.5 ha, estimated using the minimum convex polygon (MCP); however, for the entire datasets of the individuals, the adaptive kernel method gave the highest mean (13.8 ha), while the LoCoH-R yielded the smallest home ranges (5.19 ha). We found that the average daily displacement for the different individuals ranged between 12.6 and 36.6 m during their main activity season. In the study area, the whipsnakes currently have enough space for foraging, but the restricted spatial distribution of hibernacula, which is mainly available in the central dry rocky forest and partly in the shrubby areas, can limit the extent of the suitable habitat. Human activities and anthropogenic disturbances, especially around hibernacula, may exert pressure on this peri-urban snake population.
While visiting the pet shop a day or two earlier, Carr had witnessed the monkey being bullied by her fellow primates and, as the Victoria artist later wrote in The Heart of a Peacock (176), "Suddenly ...I wanted her - I wanted her tremendously." ...began a fourteen-year-long relationship between fifty-one-year-old Emily Carr and two-year-old Woo, as Carr called her new pet. Grant Hayter-Menzies's Woo, the Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr begins with Carr's long interest in primates - as a student she observed monkeys at the London Zoo in Regent's Park. Coming back down to earth, Grant Hayter-Menzies then attempts to understand why Carr gave Woo to the Stanley Park Zoo in 1937 and what the animal might have encountered during her year there: "It is hard to deny that of all the places where Woo could have been, the Monkey House at Stanley Park Zoo was the worst possible choice" (121).
Guinea‐Bissau, an important regional biodiversity hotspot in West Africa, faces the challenge of raising awareness among the general public about the significance of natural resources for rural ...communities' survival and the need for biodiversity conservation. This knowledge gap hinders conservation efforts as initiatives are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary. A climate of political vulnerability, financial uncertainty and threats to media freedom are further obstacles to conservation biology. Researchers lack established communication platforms for academic dissemination. In this paper, we introduce the initiative News for Nature/PRIMACTION (2020–2022), which aimed to establish a communication channel between researchers and media agents. The project had two primary objectives: firstly, to raise awareness among the Guinea‐Bissau society about the importance of national biodiversity and conservation challenges; and secondly, to enhance the capacity of specific communicators and opinion makers. The project had several important outputs, including: i) a bi‐monthly newspaper section focused on “biodiversity conservation in Guinea‐Bissau”, ii) three radio‐theatre episodes performed by a well‐known group and broadcasted nationally, iii) one song composed and sung by famous musicians, with an introduction by Jane Goodall, and iv) a website providing technical resources for journalists covering biodiversity and conservation news. Collaborators mentioned the lack of logistical conditions for traveling in the country as a major impediment in reporting conservation‐related news. We emphasize the significance of establishing direct contact and articulation between researchers and local media to promote conservation research in West African countries. In countries where science communication and environmental education outreach are not well‐established, it is crucial to bridge the challenges faced by the communities in different regions of the same country. This is especially urgent in cases where such challenges are significant.
In this manuscript, we describe our practical experience implementing the conservation project News For Nature/PRIMACTION in Guinea‐Bissau, West Africa. The project had two main goals: (1) to increase awareness in Guinea‐Bissau about the country's natural heritage and the challenges it faces in conservation and, (2) to enhance the communication abilities of key individuals such as media professionals, journalism students, well‐known conservationists, and musicians from Guinea‐Bissau. The project is one of the first attempts to establish a communication channel between researchers and media agents in a West African country. Between 2019 and 2022, we carried out four multidisciplinary activities that resulted in various outputs, including the production of a song and newspieces published in a national newspaper. This work emphasizes the importance of direct articulation between conservation biology researchers and local media in disseminating scientific information on conservation biology and challenges in West African countries.
This article draws attention to the structural inequalities that characterize the position of Africans within the global symbolic and political economies of African wildlife conservation, and ...theorizes these inequalities in ways that move beyond the critique of conservation as simply a colonial or neocolonial imposition. Conceptualizing wildlife conservation in Africa as a mode of global capitalist production, the article argues both for broadening the analytic lens through which the effects of conservation on Africa are assessed, and for redressing the global power dynamics that currently surround the protection of African wild animals.
Sixty years of research on chimpanzees (
) at Gombe National Park, Tanzania have revealed many similarities with human behaviour, including hunting, tool use, and coalitionary killing. The close ...phylogenetic relationship between chimpanzees and humans suggests that these traits were present in the last common ancestor of
and
(LCA
). However, findings emerging from studies of our other closest living relative, the bonobo (
), indicate that either bonobos are derived in these respects, or the many similarities between chimpanzees and humans evolved convergently. In either case, field studies provide opportunities to test hypotheses for how and why our lineage has followed its peculiar path through the adaptive landscape. Evidence from primate field studies suggests that the hominin path depends on our heritage as apes: inefficient quadrupeds with grasping hands, orthograde posture, and digestive systems that require high quality foods. Key steps along this path include: (1) changes in diet; (2) increased use of tools; (3) bipedal gait; (4) multilevel societies; (5) collective foraging, including a sexual division of labor and extensive food transfers; and (6) language. Here I consider some possible explanations for these transitions, with an emphasis on contributions from Gombe.
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