Wild Chimps Give Human Hunters The Slip
No matter where you look in an African jungle, professional hunters are laying snare traps in an attempt to catch wild chimps for the meat value.
Researchers have found that these wise chimps in the rainforests of Guinea are beginning to understand what the traps look like, giving them the slip.
What is more interesting is that the chimps are now actively searching for the deactivated traps, and are managing to set them off without being harmed.
Primatologists Mr Gaku Ohashi and Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa who study the chimps and their social behaviour, have found that very few chimps activate snares near human settlements, and the only time they were being caught were from the wire noose which is normally hidden under growth or leaves.
Mr Ohashi and Prof Matsuzawa who are both from a team of researchers from the Primate Research Institute in Tokyo, have witnessed on multiple occassions the primates hitting the snares with sticks in a bid to activate them.
Whilst being interviewed by the BBC, Mr Ohashi said; “They seemed to know which parts of the snares are dangerous and which are not.”
Most of the time, the chimp would grasp the snare stick which holds the wire loop, and shake it until the sapling came away, setting the trap off. But in all cases, the chimp would avoid touching the dangerous part of the trap, which is the wire loop.
One strange part to this is that chimps have a habit of learning based on trial or error. This also answers another question about the primates memory – where by they obviously watch other primates in great detail setting off traps and remember exactly to the last detail how it is done.
In one case, Mr Ohashi said that he had winessed a juvenile observing an adult male deactivating a snare trap, and only moving in to handle it once the snare was safe.
Understandably, trial and error would not play a major part to this style of learning, because if they ever got it wrong, they would be snared and trapped with extremely slim hopes of breaking free, thus meeting their final moments within the snare.
