| An excited whoop
erupts from deep in the forest, boosted
immediately by a dozen other voices,
rising in volume and tempo and pitch
to a frenzied shrieking crescendo. It
is the famous ‘pant-hoot’
call: a bonding ritual that allows the
participants to identify each other
through their individual vocal stylisations.
To the human listener, walking through
the ancient forests of Gombe Stream,
this spine-chilling outburst is also
an indicator of imminent visual contact
with man’s closest genetic relative:
the chimpanzee.
Gombe is the smallest of Tanzania's
national parks: a fragile strip of
chimpanzee habitat straddling the
steep slopes and river valleys that
hem in the sandy northern shore of
Lake Tanganyika. Its chimpanzees –
habituated to human visitors –
were made famous by the pioneering
work of Jane Goodall, who in 1960
founded a behavioural research program
that now stands as the longest-running
study of its kind in the world. The
matriarch Fifi, the last surviving
member of the original community,
only three-years old when Goodall
first set foot in Gombe, is still
regularly seen by visitors.
Chimpanzees share about 98% of their
genes with humans, and no scientific
expertise is required to distinguish
between the individual repertoires
of pants, hoots and screams that define
the celebrities, the powerbrokers,
and the supporting characters. Perhaps
you will see a flicker of understanding
when you look into a chimp's eyes,
assessing you in return - a look of
apparent recognition across the narrowest
of species barriers.
The most visible of Gombe’s
other mammals are also primates. A
troop of beachcomber olive baboons,
under study since the 1960s, is exceptionally
habituated, while red-tailed and red
colobus monkeys - the latter regularly
hunted by chimps – stick to
the forest canopy.
The park’s 200-odd bird species
range from the iconic fish eagle to
the jewel-like Peter’s twinspots
that hop tamely around the visitors’
centre.
After dusk, a dazzling night sky
is complemented by the lanterns of
hundreds of small wooden boats, bobbing
on the lake like a sprawling city. |
