Deaths from snares 171Deaths from snares
On 26 May 1997 I was informed that the Project’s trail cutters had found a rather
decomposed chimpanzee in the forest which they thought had been caught in a snare.
It was some distance from camp, in Block HH, but nevertheless in the range of the
Sonso chimpanzees. The men returned to the place with a container and brought all the
remains they could find back to camp. I put together as much of the carcass as remained.
Mostly it was skeletal, but some skin and hair remained, no muscle or internal organs.
The skeleton was intact with the exception of the right humerus and the left leg below
the femur. We assumed that the body had been partly eaten by predators which had
removed the missing bones. The teeth indicated it was an adult and the size of the
skeleton indicated it might be a female.
One large mass of hairs contained the remains of the snare: a circular loop of
multi-strand wire, with a maximum diameter of just 3.9 cm. The additional length of
wire which had been attached to a sapling at the site was missing and had possibly been
Fig. 9.4: Willis, killed by a snare (photo: V.R.).