![]() ![]() What they learned shows us that no ape is an island. Researchers investigated several possible benefits of these interspecies rendezvous, including protection from predation, improved foraging options, and other social benefits from information sharing. In a review of published reports combined with a synthesis of previously unpublished data about daily follows of chimpanzees and gorillas from 1999 to 2020 in the Goualougo Triangle, scientists documented ape species engaging in a wide range of social interactions, ranging from play to aggression. The government of the Republic of Congo and the Wildlife Conservation Society have worked together for nearly three decades to save wild places that sustain the local people, protect natural resources, and buffer global climate change. The large tracts of forest in the Congo Basin are a conservation stronghold not only for these two kinds of endangered great apes but also forest elephants, leopards, and many other species. Western lowland gorillas (left) and chimpanzees (right) are the focus of this study, but they are only two of the many species that live in the Congo Basin and require conservation action. Most people do not realize that the majority of remaining gorillas and chimpanzees reside together. “We were also able to document such interactions over time and in different contexts in this study.” “An example of what we found might be one individual traveling through a group of the other species to seek out another particular individual,” she says. “It has long been known that these apes can recognize individual members of their own species and form long-term relationships, but we had not known that this extended to other species. “There are few (if any) studies of interactions between primate species that have been able to take the identity of individuals into account,” says primatologist Crickette Sanz, a professor of biological anthropology at Washington University in St. LouisĪ long-term study reveals the first evidence of lasting social relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild.ĭrawn from more than 20 years of observations at Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, researchers documented social ties between individual chimpanzees and gorillas that persisted over years and across different contexts.
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