170 The problem of snares
wire is multi-stranded, then each strand has to be individually bitten through. Once
escaped from the snare site, the commonest situation is for the animal to trail the
remaining wire, still tightly attached to the fingers or wrist, so that the first thing
we notice is the loss of use of the affected hand and the strand of wire itself. At this stage
the animal is usually paying attention to the wire, licking the affected wounds and occa-
sionally using its teeth to try to remove the snare. This may go on for days or weeks.
In due course, either because the skin falls off or for other reasons, the snare disappears
and is not seen any more. Several of our younger animals have succeeded in removing
snares and their hands have healed up completely. In the case of adults this is less likely
and the damage is permanent. Evidently, once the snare is off, the power of regeneration
is greater in young individuals than in older ones.
On 26 March 2004 at 2.28 p.m. two of our field assistants, Monday and Zephyr, found
the infant male Zig (ZG) caught in a snare in block GC:
He screamed loudly and eventually all the chimps present, especially the females, joined him and
also started screaming and calling in a strange sound. Females present were KW, KL, ZM (ZG’s
mother), NB, KU, CL and JL. The senior males DN, MA, ZF, BK, together with the males GS, TK,
BO and MS all approached while displaying all round the area. DN came nearer to ZG perhaps to
assist but ZG did not allow him to come close. ZM also became very aggressive to any individual
who came near ZG. ZG kept on struggling, biting and pulling the wire snare, to the extent that his
mouth started bleeding. He struggled on until 3.02 p.m. at which time he managed to pull the wire
from the sapling it was tied to. The wire remained on his right hand (from the Events Book,
observers Monday Gideon and Zephyr Kiwede).We have not encountered a case where one chimpanzee has removed the snare from
another. However, Boesch and Boesch-Achermann (2000) describe such a case: a young
female, Vera, in the Taï community had her left wrist caught in a snare. She managed to
break the cable but the snare remained deeply embedded in her wrist. ‘Rapidly,
Schubert, the beta male, approached, and while she held her arm towards him, he
removed the cable with his canine’ (p. 251).
Deaths
Since the Budongo Forest Project began in 1990, two individuals have been found
dead in the forest near camp as a direct result of getting caught in snares. This proves
that, despite the many cases where chimpanzees have extricated themselves from
snare situations, suffering serious injuries in the process, it is not always possible
to escape and death may result. It is impossible, given the small sample size, to
obtain an accurate estimate of how many chimpanzees lose their lives to snares in the
whole forest each year, but on the assumption of a 5% fatality rate over 10 years
(0.5%/yr) there would be 2–3 chimpanzees dying from snare injuries each year in
Budongo.