The Online Reflector

By Kim O’Brien
STAFF WRITER

Many people struggle to discover what they really love to do, but primatologist Jill Pruetz found her love in chimpanzees.

“I had never really planned on that,” Pruetz said, “but when I volunteered with captive chimps, I fell in love.”

Pruetz visited the University of Indianapolis on March 28 to talk about her findings on chimpanzees in Senegal as part of the Blanche E. Pruitt Anthropology Lecture Series.

Those chimpanzees behave in a way that seems quite different from a lot of others previously studied.

“As you may remember from Jane Goodall’s studies, her chimps were notoriously skittish around water—not these ones,” Pruetz said.

At the lecture, Pruetz showed a video from the National Geographic Society, one of the organizations funding her research, that captured a group of males bathing in a pond. She said a lot of this different behavior has to do with the climate of the area.

“During the dry season, the lows are around 102 degrees, and it can typically get close to 115,” Pruetz said.

These chimps also exhibit another behavior viewed as especially unique; they use spears. Chris Schmidt, associate professor of anthropology and director of the lecture series, said it was exciting to hear about how the chips use the tools.

“Nothing quite beats spear-wielding chimpanzees,” Schmidt said.

In order to make the spears, a chimpanzee typically breaks off a branch from a tree, shapes it and then sticks it into a hole in that tree to kill a bush baby.

“I was talking with a fellow researcher after I published my study, and he said they’d found evidence of bush babies having been eaten,” she said with a laugh, “but he had no idea how they [the chimpanzees] could have gotten to them [the bush babies].”

This behavior hints at a debate going on between anthropologists. Any behavior that is invented, learned or taught is viewed as culture. Humans typically think of this to describe music and art, but it can be used to describe anything within those three guidelines.

According to Pruetz, culture is one of the things that had been thought to set humans apart from other primates, and scientists are wary of giving that designation to anything not human.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and be bold and say [that], since we have no evidence that they [chimpanzees] have taken this from anywhere else, it’s an invented thing,” she said.

Pruetz also said researchers have seen more chimpanzees using the “spears” to kill their prey. Even males and younger females have been observed using the tools.

This may mean they learn it from each other and therefore teach it to others.

As the debate rages on as to whether the chimpanzees exhibit a human characteristic, Pruetz pointed out a specific chimpanzee named Ross. He is hard of hearing, almost blind, and aging.

The researchers aren’t exactly sure how he has survived this long, but he is proof that all chimpanzees are different in their own right.

Pruetz admits that Ross is one of her favored subjects, which makes the scientist herself seem more human.

“As a scientist you’re not supposed to have favorites,” she said, “but I still do.”