78 Diet and culture at Sonso
up and moved out of his way, and Bwoya sat in his place. Nkojo arrived and Jambo was there too,
chewing a piece of meat. Janie entered the group with her daughter Janet, and took a piece of meat,
after which she begged for some more. Bwoya and Nkojo were now sharing meat, so that the three
males eating meat were Bwoya, Nkojo and Duane. Black now entered the group and presented
himself to Duane, at which there were vocalizations and all the meat-eaters got up with their meat,
walked past Black, and left the spot, conspicuously not sharing with Black who left in a different
direction. A short while after the spot was deserted, the subadult Gershom entered and took a small
piece of meat from the ground.
Duane was the main individual holding the colobus. In a huddle around the monkey were Nkojo,
Bwoya, Jambo, Nambi, Nora (Nambi’s daughter), Janie and Janet (Janie’s daughter). These were
feeding on the juvenile colobus. All these individuals were observed (and filmed) eating the meat.
The second group was hard to see but it was thought to consist of Black, Maani, Clea, Musa and
Tinka; they were feeding on the infant colobus that had been caught first.
Leaves of Alchonea floribundawere picked and eaten with the meat. Apart from food grunts,
there were very few vocalizations during the feeding. At 9.47 Duane moved off dragging the
colobus remains and all group members disappeared out of sight in the swampy undergrowth. Two
minutes later the subordinate subadult male, Gashom, arrived at the scene, found a small part of the
colobus and took it away with him.
Newton-Fisher et al. (2002) have compiled a list of all the individual, opportunistic
and co-ordinated hunts seen since the Sonso chimpanzees were first observed in 1990.
The total is 17 incidents, one in 1994, six in 1995, two in 1997, three in 1999, three
in 2000 and two in 2002. Twelve concerned arboreal monkeys of which Colobus
guereza(the black and white colobus) was the most frequent. Additional details to those
in the above paper are given in Table 4.6.
Table 4.6: Meat-eating incidents observed, 1991–2002 (from Newton-Fisher et al. unpublished
data).
Observation Date Type Prey No. Captor Consumers
no. of prey if known
1 21/8/94 C C. guereza 1 DN, MU
2 5/10/95 C C. ascanius 1MA
3 22/5/95 H C. ascanius
4 15/7/95 H C. guereza 1
5 18/8/95 H C. guereza
6 10/12/95 C Elephant shrew 1 DN
7 15/12/95 C C. guereza 1DN
8 9/3/97 C C. guereza 2? VN, DN
9 12/9/97 OC Blue duiker 1 NJ NJ
10 27/1/99 OC Blue duiker 1 BY BY
11 29/4/99 H C. guereza 1
12 19/7/99 C Blue duiker 1 BY, DN
13 16/2/00 OC,C C. guereza 1 BK BK, AY
14 2/3/00 C C. guereza 2 DN, BK Several
15 15/6/00 CA Rat 1 JM None
16 29/1/02 Blue duiker 1 DN, CL, KW
17 19/2/02 C. mitis 1NK
Key: CConsumption, HHunt, OCOpportunistic Capture, CACarrying