![]() ![]() Such information is critical for the establishment of effective land use management strategies in anthropogenic landscapes. Our study reveals chimpanzee reliance on different habitat types and the influence of human-induced pressures on their activities. Nevertheless, the chimpanzees did not actively avoid foraging close to roads and paths. They showed a significant preference for foraging at >200 m from cultivated fields compared to 0–100 m and 101–200 m, with no effect of habitat type or season, suggesting an influence of associated risk. Overall, chimpanzees preferred mature forest for all activities. Wild fruit and crop availability influenced seasonal habitat use for foraging. Chimpanzees preferentially used forest habitat types for traveling and resting and highly disturbed habitat types for socializing. We conducted 6-h morning or afternoon follows daily from April 2012 to March 2013. In this study, we aimed to examine their activity budget across habitat types and the influence of anthropogenic risks associated with cultivated fields, roads, and paths on their foraging behavior in noncultivated habitat. Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus) in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa, face such risks regularly. When crossing roads, primates also face the risk of encounters with people and collision with vehicles. Primates in forest–agricultural mosaics often consume cultivars to supplement their diet, leading to potentially negative encounters with farmers. Understanding their long-term ability to persist in such environments and associated real and perceived risks for both primates and people is essential for effective conservation planning. Proffitt continues, "by understanding what this simple stone tool technology looks like, and how it varies between groups, we can start to understand how to better identify this signature in the earliest hominin archaeological record.Many primate populations inhabit anthropogenic landscapes. It has been hypothesised that a simple technology, like nut cracking, was a precursor to more complex stone technologies during the early stages of our own evolution more than three million years ago. "The ability to identify regional differences in stone tool material culture in primates opens up a range of possibilities for future primate archaeological studies," says Tomos Proffitt from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, who led the research. Previous research has shown, that by using stone tools, some groups of chimpanzees develop their own archaeological record dating to at least 4,300 years ago. These differences are driven by a combination of stone choice, stone availability, and the nut species eaten. This study highlights the fact that, although several groups of chimpanzees practice nut cracking, the tools they use can differ significantly from one another, potentially leading to group specific material signatures. Stone tools used for nut cracking can differ between chimpanzee groups These durable stone tools are widespread across the landscape preserve different levels of damage related to their use and represent a lasting record of chimpanzee behaviours. The study shows that this particular group of chimpanzees in Guinea uses stone hammers varying in the type of stone and sizes, and very large stone anvils, sometimes greater than one meter in length. By comparing the 3D models of different stone tools used by chimpanzees in the Taï Forest to those from another group in Guinea, the researchers showed that there exist notable differences between the two groups in terms of their material culture. It has long been shown that various chimpanzee groups possess different tool use cultures involving wooden and stone tools, however, only some groups in West Africa use stone tools to crack open nuts. ![]()
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