Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. In fact, chimps are more closely related to you and I than they are to other apes, like gorillas. That means we can learn a lot about ourselves by studying chimpanzees. But to really learn the secrets of these amazing animals, you can’t just watch them in a zoo. You have to venture out to where they live.

Jane Goodall’s work with wild chimpanzees in Tanzania in the 1960s was groundbreaking in many ways. No one had ever gotten wild chimpanzees to trust them enough to allow close observation of what they do. And, although people had studied captive chimpanzees for decades, she saw chimps doing things that had never been seen before. Her work revealed that wild chimpanzees have much more complex and sophisticated behaviors than people previously thought. That was true of both their individual behaviors– like fishing for termites with a stick– but also their social interactions.

But Jane Goodall’s work also proved that it was possible for wild chimpanzees to become habituated to the presence of humans. And that paved the way for other researchers to do the same...

Researchers like Dr. Jill Pruetz, who has been studying wild chimpanzees in the West African nation of Senegal since 2001 when she began the processing of habituating chimpanzees at a savanna site called Fongoli. While several other groups of forest chimps had been habituated since Jane Goodall’s work in the 1960s, no one had successfully habituated savanna chimps. Until Jill Pruetz did-- and her work has revealed that savanna chimps are quite different from forest chimps.

Jill Pruetz is Regents Professor of Anthropology at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. In addition to publishing dozens of research papers about chimps and other primates, she is also the author of several books, including her latest, Apes on the Edge: Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna published by The University of Chicago Press. 

Learn more about Jill Pruetz’s work with savanna chimpanzees and how you can help:

Jill Pruetz's Faculty Profile at Texas State University: https://faculty.txst.edu/profile/2013121  

Jill Pruetz book, Apes on the Edge: Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo238989411.html   

Neighbor Ape, a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of chimpanzees in Senegal and to the well-being of humans that live alongside them: https://www.globalgiving.org/donate/10235/neighbor-ape/   

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative.

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You have to venture out to where they live.

Jill Pruetz: It's, it's just so hot. It seems like they'll never be rains again. And just to hear the thunder is just amazing. And in one case it was when David was Alpha male, we heard thunder, and I believe it was probably for the first time that year. And David started screaming, not just panting, but screaming and excitement, and the other individuals were screaming too.

Scott Solomon: This is Wild World. I'm Scott Solomon. In this episode, we're trekking out into the hot dry Savannah in the West African nation of Senegal to visit some of our distant family members. Studying animals in the wild gives us insights into their behaviors that we could never get from observing animals in captivity.

Her work revealed that wild chimpanzees have much more complex and sophisticated behaviors than [00:02:00] people had previously thought That was true of both their individual behaviors like chimpanzee fishing for termites with a stick, but also their social interactions. But Jane Goodall's work also proved that it was possible for wild chimpanzees to become habituated to the presence of humans.

While several other groups of forest chimps had been habituated since Jane Goodall's work in the 1960s, no one had successfully habituated Savannah chimps until Reets [00:03:00] did did, and her work would reveal that Savannah chimps are quite different from forest chimps. In addition to publishing dozens of research papers about chimps and other primates, Jill Pres is also the author of several books, including her latest, apes on the Edge, chimpanzee Life on the West African Savannah, published by the University of Chicago Press.

I visited her at her home in the Texas countryside where she has a small farm with a couple of cows and horses, as well as some dogs. She grew up nearby and went to Texas State University for her undergraduate degree. She then went to the University of Illinois where she got her PhD in anthropology.

I wanna start by jumping back in time to May, 2006. You were at your field site fungo in Senegal, and you were watching a chimpanzee named Timbo when it did something rather unusual. Can you walk me through what you saw?

Jill Pruetz: So Timbo at that time was an adolescent female and she started making a tool. And so what she did was she broke off a live tree branch.

She started taking all the leaves off the branch. She trimmed all the twigs off the, you know, the side branches and broke off the, the flimsy tip and timbo, when she makes this type of tool, she actually removes all the bark. So she's one of the few chimps that removes all the bark from the tool. And then she.

And I left my subject that I was following, and I followed Tobo. And she actually went and started hunting a bush baby, which is a, a type of primate with this tool that she had made. And that, that behavior is relatively unique among chimpanzees. It's, you don't see this type of behavior anywhere else, but fungo, at least like at the, the rate that we see it at.

But then these chimps at Folly do things like make tools to hunt other mammals with and use caves, soak in water, and dig wells for water. And so it's really caused me to shift my focus over the years according to what they do. And it's been so very much like a natural history study in many respects.

And it's been super, it's been so interesting to just, you know, let them kind of guide our research. But that's probably been what most people think is the most exciting finding out of the Fung study site.

Scott Solomon: Well, I mean, it's incredible to think of a chimpanzee. Hunting with basically like a spear, right? I mean, they're, they're making a tool, like you said, and, and, and fashioning it to use it for a particular.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. I mean, the hunting with tools was something really, uh, until that time I, I think that was another characteristic we used to define our own species. We hunt with tools. Other animals don't hunt with tools. There might be, you know, one example in chimpanzees elsewhere, what have you. But that's something that, that humans do.

And it turns out that it's a, it's something you see often at fun. So we've got between five and 600 cases, probably close to 600 now. It's something you see every year. There's like a season for bush baby hunting. And we're still kind of trying to figure out why that is. But I think it has to do more with the Bush babies themselves and their behavior, these little primates than the, the chimpanzees.

And at Olli, the males in general hunt more than females as well. But when it comes to the spear hunting, the tool assisted hunting, it's a females that are doing it. And

Scott Solomon: because normally chimpanzees that have been observed hunting elsewhere, they just hunt with their hands, right? Yeah. Or their, or their teeth, I guess, right?

I mean, not with tools,

Jill Pruetz: right? Yeah. So it's this, it's basically you're running down your prey, grabbing it and Yeah, dispatching it. Oftentimes with their teeth. Sometimes, you know, monkeys have a handy tail, so they use that tail as a lever and they, they kill it by hitting its head on. Something hard. And I've seen that with Bush babies too, which I think is kinder to the, the prey.

I mean, your level of excitement, your state is very different from using a tool to basically distance yourself from the prey item. And even though bush babies sound, they're, you know, not very big.

Scott Solomon: It's a small primate. It's a

Jill Pruetz: very small primate. Yes. Like about how

Scott Solomon: big is it?

Jill Pruetz: So it's a bush baby. I think it's about the size of a Guinea pig, not maybe as heavy as a Guinea pig.

And it's only active at night. So during the day it's not very well equipped to be out in the sunlight. It has a very long tail. It. But it hops so it has really long legs and it has this amazing ability to hop like up to five feet, you know, off the ground or between trees and more, I'm sure between trees.

Isn't it like termite fishing? And it, it's really not. So there's different challenges. The Bush babies don't grab onto the, the tool and let themselves be pulled out. Even though the injury might be small compared to something like a monkey, the the chance for infection is always a real risk. And, and so this, this person that studied big cats talked about leopards for example, and said, you know, leopards are very risk aversive and a lot of animals are risk aversive.

So to me, the bush baby hunting is challenging. Not only do you have literally an extractive foraging technique because you have a hidden prey item

Scott Solomon: hidden in like a hole in the tree.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. So the, so the bush babies nest, they spend the day. Uh, when they're not active, they're active at night, they spend the day in these cavities.

It's either a hollow tree or a hollow branch. And oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes a chimp can't reach its hand into this cavity. Sometimes they can, but again, I've seen a chimp go to reach their hand in the cavity and jerk it back because they don't wanna get bitten, bitten by a bush baby. And in one case, there was three different chimps tried to get at this bush baby, and they abandoned the hunt.

sfx: Oh my gosh.

Jill Pruetz: And there was little, I have to say superficial, I'd like to think there were, there were little places, wounds on its head where the, the spear had, had caught it. But this cavity was configured so it could like hide underneath the shelf of wood. And so the chimps couldn't get to it without getting bitten.

So especially one of the last chimps to try was an adolescent male, and his hand would fit in there. My hand would've fit in there. His hand's bigger than mine, but, but his hand would've fit in there, but he, he wouldn't risk it. And so it's really interesting to me. Then, so you have this, this. Prey that's hidden, but then it's also a prey that's actively trying to bite you.

I think because it's that idea that we, we hunt with tools. Yeah. These guys can't hunt with tools.

Scott Solomon: Right. That's our thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Jill Pruetz: But you know, if you look at chimpanzee behavior, it's not that much more complex than many other behaviors. And there's more complex tool used that they exhibit at other sites when they're trying to get into a termite mound where they have to take different steps to at least access the termites and then make a tool to, you know, fish the termites out.

So it's. Not, and not as complex probably I would say as stone tool use at other sites where they have to crack open nuts and, and have specific hammer and anvils. But it's something we're looking at. Actually I have a graduate student now that's looking at developmental process associated with the tool use

They're still dependent on mom, but that's when we first start see them trying to hunt

Yet they're so earnest in trying to use this tool in a cavity and it takes them another three or four years to move away from that, that inadequate tool to start experimenting. Really, I think it's, it's trial and error at this point. Different links of tools, the average tool is about 70 centimeters in length.

Sometimes they'll have a tool that's over a meter and a half long and there you can't even get it into the cavity. It breaks and everything like that. And then finally when they're adolescents, they get to a point where they're making this kind of appropriate tool length.

I'm really excited about that to see. Yeah,

Scott Solomon: that's super interesting. Yeah. How they're learning how to Yeah. Do this behavior.

You are listening to Wild World. After a quick break, we'll hear about some other surprising behaviors. Jill Preet and her team have observed while studying wild chimpanzees in Senegal.

Welcome back. I'm Scott Solomon and I'm speaking with Primatologist Jill Preet about her work with Savannah Chimpanzees in West Africa.

Jill Pruetz: So I think, you know, when we first published the, the first paper about it, we had like 22 cases or something.

And it definitely is, you know, they're jabbing it in there as if you're spearing something, but. They're not skewering it. And there was one headline when we first reported that we, there were so many headlines. I was on the phone all day long. It was, it was interesting. A lot of pushback too. But there was one article and it was a great article.

But the title of it was Chimps Snack on Skewered Bush Babies, which is absolutely not, no one's ever said that. We've never seen it.

Scott Solomon: Not a Bush baby kebab or something like that. No, exactly. So,

Jill Pruetz: you know, clickbait or whatever.

Hmm. And that may have been the case where they've killed a bush baby before and can't get it out. It's very hard to see what happens once they get it. 'cause it's, it's fast. Mm-hmm. It's over usually fast. But I have to say that sometimes you can see that the bush baby is still alive because of the tail.

It's over very quickly because Yeah. Then there's a bite and that's it. But I don't think they're trying to kill it in the cavity because it's hard to extract it. I think on large part it's trying to rouse it out of that cavity so they can grab it, but also.

You know, wounding it to some degree is also beneficial because there are oftentimes that the bush baby escapes. And once a bush baby's out of there, it's hard to catch.

it's hard to run down a bush baby. Um, so they want it

Scott Solomon: to come out, but maybe injured or slower.

Yeah. And be able to

She's probably in her fifties, if not more, but at least in her fifties, she can't see really good right now. And she actually lagged behind the rest of the group.

So we were following Rafa and it's December, we hardly see any bush baby hunting in that time, but sure enough, Rafa goes up this tree and she starts making a tool. So I was able to film it. and the Bush baby ends up getting away. But what was interesting was, in this case, there was two exits or entries for the Bush baby.

Scott Solomon: exit hatch.

Jill Pruetz: The bush baby can't get out. But it did get out. So, you know, I like to think that fr you know, her, her vision and she is getting old, but she's still faster than me.

You know? But at any rate, it was, it was a real treat to see that.

Scott Solomon: so why do they mostly hunt the Bush babies that time of year?

Jill Pruetz: what it seems like, it seems pretty simple, but the, the fact that these bush babies are nesting in cavities indicates that they, they are trying to avoid chimpanzee predation because this PhD student that studied the Bush babies also studied them in Tanzania.

And in Tanzania you don't find as, as much cavity nesting. So they nest in, in vine tangles or acacia trees and things like that. Fungo, almost purely cavity nesters. But what happens during a rain is those cavities actually get inundated with water. And the butch babies I think are more accessible.

sfx: Mm-hmm.

So I think it's, it's basically, you know, access to bush babies. Kind of flooding

Scott Solomon: them out, basically. Yes. Like there's just, they can't go as deep. Mm-hmm.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah, exactly. That's interesting. So,

Scott Solomon: yeah.

Jill Pruetz: And then, you know, we have, so I had, you know, my, the Jacques Keta works for me in Fungo and. He is a tree climbing expert.

And so we did a bush baby study a few years ago where I put temperature loggers in the cavities as well and you know, measured water inundation. So that's something that we're still working up to look at, you know, basically what, what happens to these cavities? I use a borescope, which is a tool that a plumber uses to look into pipes and things.

Scott Solomon: Oh, it's like a, the camera?

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. So we use a couple of borescopes, actually we used to look at what a cavity, you know, looked like from the inside. Yeah. Because like I said, with the one bush baby, he, he was in this cavity that the chumps couldn't, you know, he could, he could sit under the shelf of wood.

And this summer I'm gonna go out with a graduate student to look at Bush Baby Density, because what's happened is the first tree that people came in and illegally logged is the main species that bush babies sleep in, in terms of these cavities. So the large individuals of that tree species are basically, are gone, except in certain places or where that tree is not straight enough.

You know, they're, they're making six foot planks out of this tree.

sfx: Mm-hmm.

So, of course, Jane Goodall famously studied chimpanzees and really sort of was the pioneer for studying chimpanzees in the wild, right? Mm-hmm. And so it seems like a lot of the keys to understanding the behavior of chimpanzees at fungo has to do with the fact that it's a Savannah ecosystem, and I know you've also documented the way that they react to water and use water.

As being unusual among chimpanzees or at least different from forests. Can you talk a little bit about how they use water and how important water is for them?

And since then we know that captive chimps can enjoy water captive chimps that live in Texas, other PO places. And that at other sites in the wild, they will, you know, even wade into water a little bit to get a water plant or something. But at Fungo, they are soaking in water. They're seeking water out for recreation, literally.

Hmm. And it's something that they compete over. So at the beginning of the rainy season. These rock pools that have formed over eons will fill up with water because you'll have a big storm and this water runoff comes from a plateau, fills up the pool and the chimps will compete over who gets to get in the water, sit for a few minutes, get back out, repeat dozens of times a day at this really hot and humid time of year.

the heat index, it is like 123 degrees. 124. Wow. Something like that. So it's pretty stifling.

Scott Solomon: Yeah.

Jill Pruetz: So you see a lot of soaking behavior then by the chimps, and then it's

Scott Solomon: cooling off in the water. A bath.

Yeah. Yeah,

Scott Solomon: Yeah.

That's really cool. And so, and you've written in, in your book about how excited the chimpanzees get sometimes when those rains begin at the beginning of the rainy season, right?

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. So one thing that happens is a lot of times you'll hear thunder before the storms ever come in and it's coming from the south.

you can hear these, these thunderstorms, you know, miles away that may not arrive for days. But when you hear that thunder at the end of the late dry season, chimpanzees will pant hoot. And when they pant hoot, it's this very loud call. If you ever heard chimp call, you've heard a pant hoot.

to me it's so exciting too because I am especially miserable in April. Hmm. it's, it's just so hot. And it's so hot at night, so hot during the day. It's so bleak. It seems like there'll never be rains again.

And just to hear the thunder is just amazing. And in one case it was when David was alpha male, we heard thunder. And I believe it was probably for the first time that year. And David started screaming, not just pan hooting, but screaming and excitement and the other individuals were screaming too. And it was just, oh yeah.

I mean, I, you literally felt like screaming along. It's hard not to join in sometimes because it's like, oh my gosh, the rain is coming. It's gonna cool off. It's, that's so

Scott Solomon: exciting.

This is Wild World. My guest is anthropologist and primatologist, Dr. Jill Pres. They sometimes use caves. It mainly just to go in there to, to cool off.

Jill Pruetz: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So one of the first things that I learned about the chimps when I started working in Senegal, and again before they were habituated, was that my, my head field guide and researcher and Bowie Comrad told me that they used caves.

You know, you, you weren't

Scott Solomon: sure you, were you correctly understanding him when said that, right? You thought, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Jill Pruetz: It's like, okay, Tims used caves. I'm sure he gets, you know, got annoyed at me asking to repeat it and you know, saying it so many different ways. He is like, oh yeah, because, you know, of course they use caves here.

You know, this is a cave they use. And as an anthropologist, that was just fantastic, you know, cave used. Oh my gosh. Um, because it

Scott Solomon: reminds you of like what we think about ancient humans using caves. Right? Right. I guess. Yeah.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it was very exciting. The chimps weren't habituated though, so we couldn't follow them into caves.

So we put up camera traps in the cave.

Well, the chimps avoided them and over time though, they, they got used to camera traps. So we've got quite a bit of footage of them in the caves. And then once they were habituated, we were able to follow them to the caves, observe them going in, and then observe them going out. So these are not very big caves.

So they use it during the dry season months. Once a wet season kicks in, they'll stop using the caves and it's kind of clammy in there, more snakes and, and things. And they'll take food in there. They'll groom in there. Again, there's a hierarchy, so the dominant males will have priority access to the the caves,

a lot of times you'll find the older females or females with infants. That are, are stressed by, you know, dehydration, things like that, they'll be in the cave.

Scott Solomon: So one of the other things that's unusual about being in a Savannah ecosystem is having fire be a more common thing that happens, right?

Compared to being in a, in a rainforest. So how do the chimpanzees react when there's a, when there's a fire?

So it's, you know, part of the ecosystem. The Chis are remarkably calm around fire, even what I call, you know, dangerous kind of fires. So fires start around December, that's when you have most fires, and that's the early dry season. If you get a fire in March or April, that's the late dry season. It is especially destructive so that it can destroy even these fire adapted trees, other types of vegetation.

So I've seen in one case, chimps wait until this fire kind of burns out before they continued on their way across the plateau rather than going around and. At the edges of the fire, you had flames that were pretty small, maybe a few feet tall, but they could jump up to three or four feet. And the chimps were grooming and they seemed like they weren't even watching the fire.

I'm sure they, they, somebody was watching it. Right. But there was, at one point a male was lying down and there was flames about three feet from his head. He seemed to not care whatsoever. Wow. And so I think they're really good at judging potential sources of the fire. Whereas I am in a panic almost always when there's a fire around and it's close to me.

Yeah,

Scott Solomon: it's scary.

So this fire was on the bottom of a dry creek bed where you have these really tall elephant grasses and they're incredibly dry. Hadn't been burned yet. So the flames were probably, maybe not 10 meters high, but I would say eight to 10 meters high. Oh gosh, that's a lot, that's a lot of fire. Yeah. So, and you, you can hear the fires coming from a long distance.

And when I hear a fire, immediately I start thinking about, you know, where I'm gonna go. A lot of times though, you, you hear this almost constantly during the dry season, certain days. And so the chimps just ignore it and they seem to also understand how far that is or, or they're able to detect how far a fire is and where it might come.

And this one case where they, there was this very dangerous fire. Some of the behaviors were really interesting to me. And so then we started looking at these encounters more closely and looking at their use of a burn landscape. In this case, it was the peak of the dry season. It was the hottest time of day, and they seemed very reluctant to move during that time of day.

And this is when they're just rusting for hours. And so they would wait until the fire got close and move a little bit, wait until the fire got close and move a little bit. And I couldn't stand it anymore because this wall of heat was just there. So I had to just walk through the chimps. So I was behind them, but I was closer to the fire, so I just had to like.

You know, I mean, that's how, if it was a person, it would've been like, I don't know, what are you doing Exactly. That's bizarre behavior on your part. And, and I was just like, I don't know how y'all can stay in it. This wall of heat is right here and

Scott Solomon: it's probably already hot outside. Yes. Because it's the dry season, right?

Yeah. And then you're next to this giant

Jill Pruetz: fire, right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's like, what can get, what, what can make things hotter? Well, let's sit by a fire. But yeah, I think usually in the dry season and the shade, it'll be about between 110 and 115. So that's in the shade. And, and shade is a hot commodity.

That's something that we haven't really published on, but there's, I. Yeah, there's strategic use of shade and there's competition over shade and things like this. And so you don't wanna move outta the shade even if there's a fire coming. But it was just remarkable at how good they were at predicting a fire's movement.

And that was not at all what I saw in this scenario. And again, it's, it's because they have fires. It's just part of their, their world. But you don't see that in forested habitats, or at least not, you know, like you do at, you do in at fungo. So we started. Trying to better understand how they deal with fires, what their concepts are.

And, and as an anthropologist it was really interesting because some people even say that our, that humans use of fire and making fire is the most unique thing about our species. So there's a lot of things that we use to define ourselves. We have a big old brain, you know, but other animals also have big brains.

But it is interesting because I've looked for things like, you know, keeping warm next to a fire. So during the dry season it gets, I would say, cold at night. So, you know, maybe down into the fifties, 59 or so. Not really cold. Yeah, it's chilly. Yeah, it's chilly. So if I am out waiting for the chimps to wake up.

And there's a burning log 'cause there's been a wildfire and it may burn for, you know, days. I'll go stand next to that burning log to keep warm. I've never seen the chimps do anything like that. There's been studies of monkeys that will, that are attracted to burned areas. So immediately following a fire, they'll seek out these burned areas and then find burned up insects.

And it was early dry season. So not, you know, too, too alarming of a burn, but. One female nickel stopped and started eating these, these fruits that had had been burned. So it basically cooked fruits and that's what

sfx: wow.

Jill Pruetz: This scientist was interested in was, you know, origins of cooking and fire. You know, was fire for warmth, was it for cooking light, you know, or all the above.

Was it a burned area? Not burned at area. And so they take advantage of these burned areas, which are easier to walk in, but they also provide these clear areas where your vision, your, your. Your, um, line of sight is much, much better than in these grassy areas where you literally cannot see for a few feet.

Scott Solomon: in our final segment, I'll ask Jill Pret what studying chimpanzees has taught her about humans.

Welcome back. I'm speaking with Jill Preet about her decades of work studying wild Savannah chimpanzees in Senegal.

So I wanted to talk about what some of the challenges are for doing field research at at Fungo. Yes. Tell me about the bees.

Scott Solomon: doesn't love honey?

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. And chimps will, will raid beehives throughout the year, but it seems like it might be more frequent during the dry season.

During the dry season. Bees are especially. Aggressive so that I didn't realize this when I started the project. I know a little bit more about meat bees now, but bees are more aggressive when it's hotter. It's always hot in Senegal compared to a lot of other chimpanzee study sites. But during the dry season, again, it's really hot and chimpanzees raid beehives a lot and they're, most of them are really good at it.

Or whatever is around. So if you see the chimps running, basically you need to run because not just the one chimp that's grabbed the honeycomb, but any chimps around and will run as well or her. And so it took me a while to, not to figure it out, but in my mind, so you know, when you're habituating the chimps, you're getting them used to you.

But I was still really conservative and didn't wanna, you know, disturb the chimps. When I would see them running, I would think, oh no, are they scared of me? Did I do something? And then bam, I'd get hit by a bee. 'cause it was a running from bees. And so it took me a couple years. To be able to think bees instead of uhoh.

You know, somebody scared the, somebody scared the chimps. And so once you get stung, then the other bees are gonna be attracted to that, you know, at least as

Scott Solomon: a pheromone to, to attract the other bees. Yeah, sure.

Huh? So there was a, a, a chimp that ready to beehive at the bottom of a ravine. And I don't know why I went up, but the chimps were going up and I didn't wanna lose them, so I followed them up. And about halfway up the ravine, we hit another site where chimps had had ready to bee hive. Oh no. So, so there's already a bunch of angry bees there.

Yes. Yeah. So I'm basically cr kind of, you know, climbing, crawling up. And I got stung. I think I counted, I thought it was like 30 or 40 times. Oh gosh. And I did feel my throat start to swell up. And when I got to the top of the plateau. I just had to take off running. What was interesting is there's adult male chimp, their bandit, and I always have used Bandit as a model.

So if you're within a certain distance, you need to run. But if you get, say, 50 meters or so, you can just kind of stop or slowly walk. And the bees will continue chasing the running chimps, or in my case. Person. Right. And so Bandit is very good at judging when is it's best to, to to be slow and when is it best to, to speed up.

And I'm not so good at it, but I'm better at it than I used to be. And so there's been so many funny scenarios of me getting stung by bees, but I am better at it. And it's definitely, 'cause I watch Bandit a lot to see what he does.

Jill Pruetz: Yes. I, and you know what's funny is there's been a, so we, you know, we, we purposefully don't interact with the chimps. It doesn't mean I say they don't read my protocol. So they'll come closer. You know, they'll try to interact with you, you know, ignore them. It's usually a kid wanting to play or something.

You ignore that as much as you might like to do that. That's a no-no. You know, we don't play with the kids. But a couple of times there have been chimps that have. Take in consideration of me before they raid a beehive. And so in one case I was following this adult male bilbo and he literally traplined beehive sites and I can't remember how many, but it was, you know, between five and 10 beehive sites.

Scott Solomon: Like he knows where each of these beehives Yes. Is. And he's going from one to the next.

They're kinda warming up to stick their hand in this, this hollow right. And grab honey. And it's almost like a, someone like warming up to run. Like you're going back and forth, you know, your body's moving back and forth. They do this with their arm, they swing it back and forth, back and forth, and then they grab the honey.

Not all of them do it, but Bilbo did it. Bandit does it. He's doing this. And then he is looking at me and they usually don't look pointedly at the human observer. If anything, they act like they, they're not looking at you. If you catch 'em, looking at you. And I finally realized that it seems like he wants me to move away.

And so I moved away and right after I moved away, then he grabs a honey and then we both run.

Scott Solomon: He was waiting for you to move?

Jill Pruetz: I, yes. I, he was waiting for me to move. 'cause I am so dumb. I'm just standing there. You know this human. And we know she can't run that fast. You know? I just felt like, so that really endeared him to me.

But it was just interesting that they, you know, seemed to care that we didn't get stung by bees. Because to me, I'm not sure what they think of us. So I always wonder what they think about me. It's like there's that old one. She trips and gets stung by bees, but she's always there. And after Covid, I came back after 18 months.

It was the longest I had not been there. And two of the males were just sitting and looking at me where it's a little unnerving 'cause that's what I do to them all the time. But they don't do that to us. And I, it was like, are they thinking? Is that her? I thought she was dead. You know, I don't know. It was just funny the, to the way they, they looked at me because usually when chimps recognize you, there's kind of no reaction.

Scott Solomon: Can you talk a little bit about what it took to first habituate the chimpanzees to human presence? So when you first went to fungo, these chimps were not accustomed to having. People follow them around. Right. So what, what was it like to, to get them used to that process? How long did it take?

Jill Pruetz: So Primatologists usually habituate our subjects.

So basically it means kinda wearing 'em down to where it's like, okay, that's a non-threatening thing. It won't go away, but you know, we'll let it follow us. One of the things that you need to do in order to habituate a primate group is to encounter them frequently and encounter the same individuals over and over again.

Every chimp in the group is gonna be together at one time, which means that you might encounter mama do one day, but then you'll encounter, you know, bilbo another day and you wanna encounter individuals that get used to you and see you and then, you know, realize you're non-threatening. So that was a big challenge and I knew it was gonna be because no one had successfully habituated Savannah chimpanzees yet.

When I started the project, key to our habitation process was water sources. Booi Kamra, who was my head researcher at the time, took me around to areas, 'cause he grew up there where, you know, chimps used caves. This is where the chimps nest oftentimes, and this is where the chumps come drink during the dry season.

But we had this one old individual that was almost always there, Ross, we named him a funny name to give to the first chimp we identified. But Ross and Ross, if he was 50, I'd be, I mean that if he was 60, I wouldn't be surprised. Wow. He was an old chimp, so his body was just, you know, you get old and you kind of shrink, so he was kind of shrunken, a little stooped.

And so we identified Ross, I, you know, identify individuals, but then moving from just sitting there in the open and not moving and watching them come down, going from that to be able to follow them, that was a big leap. And so that took a lot longer, but it only took four years to get them to the point where we started doing what we call all day follows from.

So from when they get up in the morning to when they go to sleep at night is when we follow 'em.

Scott Solomon: So can you talk a little bit about the ways in which your, your work involves the local people? Local communities?

Jill Pruetz: So when I started in Senegal, I really had had the idea that I work in a national park. But one of my goals I was a postdoc, was also to do, to do a survey of.

And what struck me was that the chimps outside the national park were less afraid of people and they were afraid they would leave. But if you saw chimps in the national park, and I think we only saw chimps like four times that year. So the chimps just, you know, when they saw humans, it was like, oh, they're out of there.

They're just, they were gone. And the fear was palpable. If when we saw chimps outside the park, they would detect us and then leave. But it was such a different response. I wanna say it was almost calm, at least compared to what I saw in the national park. And so I thought that if I studied chimps outside the park, I'd have a better.

I needed the Forestry Department's permission research permit, which I always do, but couldn't have done work without the local people in the area. And my team has always consisted of, so I had bui who was from the Maki Village we live in. And then I had met up my very first year with Don Do Conte, who's my project manager.

But I mean, the, they're, yeah, they're incredible. I can't say enough good things about them. And really the local [00:52:00] communities, I try to go visit the local elders at the, the various villages when I'm there. I mean, they've been very welcoming. I couldn't do it without 'em. But one of the things they say when we have these visits is we're always glad to hear the chimps around the village because we know that the baboons won't be there.

Oh, because ba baboons are notorious crop breed there, and chimpanzees are not. And so, at least around folly. And so when the chimps are there. The chimps eat baboons, uhhuh. And even if they're not trying to eat them, there's usually some sort of conflict and the baboons might win, but a lot of times the chimps are gonna win.

And so when the chimps there, it means the baboons have to leave. And so that's what they tell me.

sfx: Yeah.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. But it, it's, it's instrumental to have that support. And we live in a village. We also depend on them for meals. You know, we pay them to prepare more when they're cooking their own meals and they set it aside for us.

Scott Solomon: Your nonprofit is Neighbor Ape, is that the one? Yes.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah. So Neighbor Ape with a nod to, you know, chimps and, and humans living along alongside one another. Medical. Care has in, has improved tremendously. And for us, like someone living in the US it would, it doesn't seem costly, but to someone living there, it is costly.

And you know, it's, it's relatively easy for us to pay for medical care. Sometimes it's malaria, curatives, or healthcare For a woman that's about to have a baby, we paid for someone's surgery. But the costs compared to US medical costs are like minuscule. And so that's something that I can easily do with our nonprofit.

Jill Pruetz: Oh, definitely. Definitely.

Scott Solomon: So you've spent all this time, you know, being around wild chimpanzees and observing them and studying them.

Has any of that changed the way you think about people? I.

Jill Pruetz: Yeah, I mean they've definitely taught me about humans, but I have to say what they've taught me about humans, the chimps doesn't surprise me because you can't really appreciate chimps. I think until you spend time with them. You can't appreciate how similar they are to humans no matter what you read.

A lot of what hits me about chimpanzees is that similar emotion and just looking, communicating with chimps, sometimes not even communicating with them, but just being around them. That is something that's so hard to describe 'cause most people don't have that opportunity. So you're around animals like dogs, domestic animals.

Scott Solomon: So what do you think Fungos, chimps can teach us about ourselves, about, about humans?

Jill Pruetz: I think that right off the bat, you know, once the chimps were habituated.

They already had us redefining ourselves. You know,

Scott Solomon: we're no longer the only species that uses tools to hunt and things like that. Right. Yeah,

Jill Pruetz: exactly. I am always cautious about like using chimps as a direct analogy to say something about ourselves, you know, living humans, but chimpanzees don't have a really large brain.

And the earliest hominins also didn't have a very large brain, relatively bigger than chimps, but not much. So I feel like if, you know, if chimps are capable of using tools to hunt, navigating a fire, things like this, you know, provide some sort of context.

Is that right?

Jill Pruetz: Right. Yeah. So for example, with the hunting, I mean, it's. Uh, you know, several million years before we find evidence of stone tool use for early hominin. So we've got bipedal apes, so hominins on the landscape, but you're not gonna find a, a stick tool. It's not gonna fossilize, it's not gonna preserve in the fossil records.

So it's really not until we have evidence of stone tool used it, we can say much about early hominins and, you know, tool behavior. But if you see chimpanzees who have a relatively smaller brain than these early hominins using stick tools to hunt, I mean, I think it's plausible to say, okay, they were capable.

And that's always, you know, we've always kind of been stuck on. Stuck on our brain and brain size and understandably, you know, we have an impressive brain. But I think it just, it, it helps lend support to some of these hypotheses that, that, that are, are less, you know, human-centric than, than others.

Scott Solomon: So, we're here at your home in the country and you've got cows and, and horses and dogs.

You're surrounded by animals. Do you feel like being around animals all the time helps you to better understand chimpanzees?

Jill Pruetz: It's funny 'cause it's almost the opposite is that I think chimpanzees help me out understand some of these other animals.

Scott Solomon: Oh, interesting.

Jill Pruetz: Only because I've always had dogs. I've always loved animals.

Always wanted horses growing up. So all I wanted was a horse. Couldn't get a horse. I lived in a small town, is what my mom told me. I could get one later when I was an adult, but then I traveled too much. I'm always off. I, I spent on average the first probably 15 years of the project, at least five months, five to six months in Senegal.

So almost half the year I was in Senegal. I don't get to spend as much time, but still I travel. So I was like, I can never get a horse. And then Covid rolls around and my cousin asked if I want a free horse. And I'm like, sure, I want a free horse. So that didn't last long. And so now I have four different, you know, horses.

The other cow for reassurance, which was so chimp like, and I just didn't expect cows to exhibit that particular behavior. And then she rallied and came after the dog. But I was like, that was so chimpy. And I do that with the horses as well. So it's funny that my, my frame of thought here is, is very chimp biased.

It's funny how I started learning about these two new animals that I have and from the point of view of chimpanzees.

Scott Solomon: Well, Jill Preet, thank you so much for sharing all of your amazing experiences with chimpanzees and for being here on, on Wild World.

Jill Pruetz: Oh, well thank you. I appreciate it. I'll, I'll talk chimps all day long.

Why?

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I'm Scott Solomon. Join me next time as we explore another part of our wild world.