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| Sunday, 09 April 2006 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Chimps: Intelligent, complex beings Continued from last week The highly intelligent and expressive primates - the chimpanzees whom we featured last week, are social creatures, just like us, their relatives. However, their social structure is highly complex and not like ours at all. In fact, it is more variable than that of even the gorillas.
In general, they live in communities composed of family groups of three to six individuals, totalling upto 50 animals. In the rain- forests, the animals live in communities or troops of males, females with young, or adults without young males and females. The Savanna chimps live in more stable communities with one or more males, several females and their young. It has been revealed that chimpanzees exhibit diverse (various) cultural behaviour in different study populations showing that behaviour is learned and passed on in chimp societies. The researchers have identified 39 separate behaviours, including differences in courtship rituals, feeding techniques and domination displays. Male chimpanzees form a dominance hierarchy and often form coalitions of two or three males who co-rule the group. Eye contact is crucial among chimps when expressing dominance or submission. Female chimps are not as social with other chimps, like male chimps are with each other. Females are ready to become mothers when they are about 10 years old, and usually give birth to one baby after around eight months. Twinning does happen, but it is very rare. In fact, chimps depend on their mothers for milk and transportation upto the age of five. Older infants usually ride on their mothers' backs when travelling distances, but smaller ones have to be carried by the mother, especially when relocating.
Chimpanzees are mostly diurnal (daytime) creatures. They are active in the daytime and rise at dawn, to do what, you may wonder. To feed, of course. They spend almost 50 per cent of their waking time feeding, and about 13 per cent of the time, moving from one location to another. There are two peak times of day for feeding, one is in the morning and the other is in the afternoon/evening. Chimps are omnivores - meaning they eat a wide variety of food including meat. And what makes up a yummy menu for these chimps? Fruits (48 per cent), leaves and leaf buds (about 25 per cent) and another 25 per cent of seeds, blossoms, stems, bark and resin. They do not limit their diet to these. Chimps also enjoy eating insects, caterpillars, honey, bird eggs, birds and even small mammals! However, they hunt and eat meat only occasionally. They are really skilled at extracting termites or ants from their hiding places, using sticks stems or twigs as tools. Chimps don't fall down and sleep anywhere. They generally sleep in nests they build on trees, out of branches and leaves. These nests are usually located close to where they eat their evening meal. **** Fact file * Genus name Pan troglodytes comes from Greek mythology named for "god of pastures, forests and flocks". * The chimpanzee is listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. * The US uses more chimpanzees in research than any other country in the world. * Chimpanzees were first believed to be 'half-man, half-beast', with the hooves and tail of a horse, by non-Africans. * The first chimps were brought to Europe in 1640. * They are now accepted as complex, intelligent beings. * The book 'Mentality of Apes', authored by psychologist Wolfgang Kohler, remains an important contribution to the literature of chimpanzees. * In 1960, a young English woman named Dr. Jane Goodall began a life-long study of chimpanzees in the wild, and what is known today about chimps is due to her research. * Three chimps - Ham, Enos and Minnie, were used to test space travel. Ham was launched into space three months before Alan Shepherd. Ten months after Ham, Enos was sent to orbit the Earth, but Minnie was not actually launched into space. * In some instances, 'shock' is used as punishment during training. In entertainment and research ... Anyone would think that the fact that chimpanzees are our closest relatives, would give them the edge over other creatures of the wild, at least when it comes to the manner in which most animals are treated by man. But sadly, it is not so. In fact, their level of intelligence has become more a bane, than a boon to them.
The intelligent chimps are not only hot favourites in the world of entertainment, but also the ideal guinea pigs in research, mostly biomedical. They are also used in space programmes and for various tests such as checking the safety of seat belts, which could lead to a lot of pain and suffering. It is well and good if the research with these intelligent primates is conducted with the aim of studying their behaviour in order to understand them better, and to provide them greater protection in the wild - their natural habitat. But most often, the research work carried out on them is only for the benefit of humans, at great pain and discomfort to the chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have been used for research in the United States since the 1920s. The research conducted by a person named Yerkes proved critical to the study of primate behaviour in the US. Initially, his operation which was shifted to the Emory University in Atlanta and known as the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, focused only on the study of behaviour. However, in the 1940s, the study shifted from behaviour to the study of infectious diseases. Since then, the use of chimps in research, especially in the areas of hepatitis and HIV, has greatly increased. Other areas of research include malaria, gene therapy, respiratory viruses, and drug and vaccine testing. The up side of such research is that we humans get a new lease of life with the new medical and other discoveries made through research, but the down- side is, the animals suffer greatly. They are subjected to severe weight and appetite loss, infectious, pain and discomfort, sometimes leading to death. Life in laboratories, often confined to small cages, also leads to severe depression, increased aggression, psychological withdrawal and self-mutilation such as hair plucking, physical wounding and rocking. The Great Britain, New Zealand, Sweden and the Netherlands have banned the use of chimps in biomedical research. Most of you may have enjoyed the various antics performed by chimps in the entertainment world. But how many of these chimps are trained to perform these acts with love and tender care? Very few indeed. Research has revealed that unlike the cute and playful pranksters we see at such performances, chimpanzees do not willingly cooperate with their 'trainers' and are typically subjected to physical abuse, in order to make them perform. It has also been revealed that most chimps become dangerous after they
are five years old and are 'retired' from the entertainment world. |
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