Death of an old male 49Notes on his death and skeletal remains were made by Melissa Emery Thompson,
Zephyr Kiwede and Juliet Craig as follows:
On 24 December 2001 three men from the Forest Department found a dead chimpanzee in block
I19, just off the Royal Mile and near to the border with Nyakafunjo. The corpse was very smelly
but not greatly decomposed so death probably occurred 20–22 December. We were informed on
7 January 2002 and the skeleton was retrieved on 8 January 2002 and brought to camp. At this time
the corpse was reduced to bones and hair. All long bones and the skull were recovered along with
more than half of the smaller bones — some animal activity had taken place as the skull was found
approx. 4 m away from the rest of the body. The right ankle was found, but the right foot appears
to have been carried off by scavengers.
We saw BY once in November 2001 looking very near death — completely emaciated and
moving very slowly. Geresomu saw him briefly in early December. Since that time BY has not
been seen. All other chimpanzees in the community have been seen since 8 January except BY
and Zana.
Skeletal characteristics also indicate that this was BY. The cranium and canine teeth
were quite large in comparison with two existing adult male skeletons at Sonso, MG and ZT.
However, the long bones were slightly shorter than either of these two skeletons. Thus the
individual was an adult male of short stature, consistent with BY. Pathologies of the skeleton
were noted: both femoral heads show extreme bone loss, only small nubs remain; the aceta-
bula of the pelvis show compensatory bony growth — the sockets are filled with lumpy bone;
the epiphyses of all long bones, as well as the proximal epiphyses of the metacarpals and
metatarsals, have loss of bone fusion — so much that the distal end of the right tibia was
completely separate.Takahata (1990b) mentions that at Mahale old chimpanzees become increasingly
solitary; this certainly fits with our observations at Sonso, of Matoke, Magosi
and Bwoya. Huffman (1990) discusses the question of old age in Mahale in detail;
he points out that there is a decrease in activities such as travelling, and in social activi-
ties such as grooming. The reasons are partly related to a loss of fitness and partly to
sickness. I felt sorry for each of our old individuals at Sonso as they got less active. I
recall seeing Magosi (who had once been the alpha male) in his latter years, sitting on
the trail and looking up into the trees where there was an oestrous female with a number
of males (Fig. 3.7): the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.
Jambo (JM), an adult male, was speared by a sugar cane guard on 4 May 2003. This
happened during the writing of this book. The case is described in Chapter 9.
Comparison with other sites (Goodall 1986; Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000;
Nishida 1990) shows that Sonso has so far been spared the fatal epidemics that have
ravaged some other sites such as Gombe (polio), Mitumba, near Gombe (influenza) and
Taï (first ebola, more latterly anthrax^14 ).
(^14) For details, see Leendertz et al. (2004).