76 Diet and culture at Sonso
and chewed) meat and leaves; on this occasion he held Duane under the chin as he
removed the food from his mouth. Duane, in keeping with his role as a good alpha male,
shared willingly. All the meat and skin of this duiker had been eaten by 13.11 p.m.
Eating and sharing a blue duiker was seen again on 19 October 2003, when Geresomu
Muhumuza, Nick Newton-Fisher and James Kakura came upon a small party of chim-
panzees feeding on the remains of a (possibly young) blue duiker. The meat had already
been divided between the alpha male Duane, who had the majority, and another high
ranking male, Maani. Mukwano, an adult female in full oestrus, successfully tore a strip
of flesh from Duane’s share of the kill. Bwoba, a junior adult male, ended up with the
head after Duane had discarded it. The meat was eaten with leaves.
Most interestingly from a comparative perspective, the Taï chimpanzees studied by
Boesch and Boesch-Achermann, which have the most highly co-ordinated hunting tech-
niques of any community so far studied, do not eat duiker meat or appear to consider
duikers as prey. These authors write
chimpanzees encounter them [blue duikers] at least three or four times daily. Adult Taï
chimpanzees were never seen to make any intentional movement to capture one, even when a duiker
happened to be running towards them and they had to step aside to avoid it (N20). At most they
made a soft bark and it fled (Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000: 169–70).They go on to describe how on a three occasions young chimpanzees engaged in rough
play with young duikers, in all cases the duikers were released ‘Taï chimpanzees never
seemed to consider duikers as prey’ (p. 170).
Co-ordinated hunting
The redtail and colobus monkey meat-eating described above may have been the result
of co-ordinated hunting, but if so we had not seen it. The killing of a duiker by Bwoya
was opportunistic. The killing of a duiker by Bwoya and Duane (assuming they were
both involved) was a case of minimal co-ordinated hunting. The first truly co-ordinated
hunt was seen by Zephyr Kiwede on 18 August 1996. Zephyr was with a group of 8
adult males, all moving quietly and slowly, looking up in the trees. Duane was leading.
A group of black and white colobus monkeys was sighted in a Cynometratree and the
chimpanzees stopped, all looking up at them.
After a short time Duane moved towards the tree and immediately everybody followed in different
directions quietly while looking up. Duane climbed up a different tree from which he could easily
reach the tree where the colobus monkeys were. When the monkeys saw Duane climbing towards
them they started jumping towards a different tree, taking the same direction as each other. Vernon
had followed Duane up from a different direction, as had Maani. The rest stayed on the ground
looking up, seeing where the colobus would move. When the monkeys started running the chim-
panzees on the ground started making the ‘Waa’ noise and Duane almost got an adult but it jumped
away. When Duane missed he climbed down followed by Vernon, Maani and Kikunku who had