Cooperative hunting roles among taï chimpanzees

Abstract

All known chimpanzee populations have been observed to hunt small mammals for meat. Detailed observations have shown, however, that hunting strategies differ considerably between populations, with some merely collecting prey that happens to pass by while others hunt in coordinated groups to chase fast-moving prey. Of all known populations, Taï chimpanzees exhibit the highest level of cooperation when hunting. Some of the group hunting roles require elaborate coordination with other hunters as well as precise anticipation of the movements of the prey. The meat-sharing rules observed in this community guarantee the largest share of the meat to hunters who perform the most important roles leading to a capture. The learning time of such hunting roles is sometimes especially long. Taï chimpanzee males begin hunting monkeys at about age 10. The hunters' progress in learning the more sophisticated hunting roles is clearly correlated with age; only after 20 years of practice are they able to perform them reliably. This lengthy learning period has also been shown in some hunter-gatherer societies and confirms the special challenge that hunting represents.

The meat-scrap hypothesis: small quantities of meat may promote cooperative hunting in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

“…Boesch (1994b) and Gilby et al (2006) have argued that a major difference between Taï and Gombe is the ease with which monkeys can be captured. At Taï, the continuous canopy provides many escape routes for red colobus monkeys, and therefore a successful hunt may require complex behavioral coordination (Boesch 1994b(Boesch , 2002Boesch and Boesch-Achermann 2000). At Gombe, by contrast, where the habitat is a mosaic of evergreen forest and deciduous woodland with broken canopy (CluttonBrock and Gillett 1979), it appears to be easier to corner prey in trees without escape routes (Boesch 1994b;Gilby et al 2006), and therefore active collaboration is rare.…”

Social play as joint action: A framework to study the evolution of shared intentionality as an interactional achievement

“…For example, primates groom each other (Fedurek & Dunbar, 2009), chimpanzees hunt collectively (Boesch, 2002), and many species of animals engage in roughand-tumble play . These activities qualify as cooperative since they require that participants coordinate their behaviours both in time and space.…”

Evolutionary causes and consequences of consistent individual variation in cooperative behaviour

“…A number of studies have shown some degree of specialization and task sharing with regards to cooperative tasks in animals, for instance in eusocial insects ( Johnson 2005), shoaling fish (Dyer et al 2008), cooperatively breeding vertebrates (Arnold et al 2005;Bergmü ller & Taborsky 2007) and cooperative hunting species, such as lions (Stander 1992;Heinsohn & Packer 1995), dolphins (Gazda et al 2005) and chimpanzees (Boesch 2002). Task sharing has recently been found to increase reproductive output in a cooperatively breeding bird (Ridley & Raihani 2008).…”