Chris to be enthusiastic about field work, and wanting to get further education so that
he could do more to help study and protect the chimpanzees he had come to know.
Each night we talked about the Budongo chimpanzees, compared their behaviour with
those at Gombe and discussed the many dangers that beset them. Chris was full of
questions — so was I!
The original camp has now become a fine research station in the heart of the
Budongo, with accommodation for staff, students and visitors. Vernon realized from the
outset the importance of attracting good students, for he himself had a full-time job at
Oxford and could only spend a couple of months a year in the field. He encouraged
students to get grants to work with the chimpanzees, and this book describes, among
other things, the results of the many studies they have made of the Sonso community. As
well, some students researched forest ecology and others were encouraged to study the
impact on the habitat of the people who lived around and made use of the forest.
All these studies have added to our growing understanding of chimpanzees, their
ecology and behaviour. The structure of the DNA of chimpanzees and humans differs by
only about 1% and there are clear-cut biological similarities in blood composition,
immune responses and the anatomy of the brain. It has become increasingly clear that
we humans are not the only beings on this planet with distinct personalities, minds
capable of rational thought, and emotions such as happiness and sadness, fear and
despair, mental as well as physical suffering. Chimpanzees, like humans, are capable of
compassion and altruism. And like us they are capable of brutal behaviour, even a kind
of primitive warfare. There are long-term supportive and affectionate bonds between
family members and a long period of childhood during which learning, not only resulting
from trial and error and social facilitation, but also from observation and imitation, plays
an important role in the acquisition of adult behaviour. In all places where chimpanzees
have been studied there are different traditions, in tool-using and tool-making, feeding
and a whole variety of social behaviours. Many scientists (including myself) believe that
these are cultural differences. The tragedy is that these primitive cultures, along with the
chimpanzee communities that practise them, are disappearing before we have been able
to document the extent of behavioural flexibility across the chimpanzees’ range.
It became clear to Vernon, as it had to me in Tanzania, that the future of the chimpanzees
depends to a large extent on the attitude of the local people. It is very obvious that many
of their activities in the Budongo have a direct and negative impact on the forest and its
fauna. Most horrible is the setting of snares. These are designed to catch small antelopes
and wild pigs for food, but chimpanzees sometimes get the wire nooses around their
hands or feet. Typically they are able to break the wire but this pulls the noose tightly
around the hand or foot. They suffer excruciating pain as the blood supply is cut off:
some die of gangrene; many eventually lose the hand or foot. In the Sonso community
as many as one-third are maimed.
The problems are grim — and it is the same for chimpanzees across most of their
range in Africa. The mushrooming human population needs ever more land for growing
crops and grazing cattle and is gradually invading more of the chimpanzees’ forests. The
bushmeat trade, the commercialhunting of wild animals for their meat, is decimating
2 Introduction