Washington, Dec 24 (Inditop.com) Chimpanzees in the African savannah respond to wildfires with a near-human intelligence, a new study says.
Previously it was believed that use and control of fire are characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals.
Anthropologists Jill Pruetz, ISU associate professor and Thomas LaDuke, her biological sciences counterpart in East Stroudsburg University, co-authored the paper.
Data on the chimps’ behaviour with seasonal fires was collected by Pruetz during two specific encounters in March and April 2006.
Wildfires are set yearly by humans for land clearing and hunting, and most areas within the chimpanzees’ home range experience burning to some degree, says Pruetz.
The researchers interpret the chimpanzees’ behaviour to the wildfires as being predictive, rather than responsive, in that they showed no signals of stress or fear — other than avoiding the fire as it approached them.
“It was the end of the dry season, so the fires burn so hot and burn up trees really fast, and they were so calm about it. They were a lot better than I was, that’s for sure,” said Pruetz.
She was selected a 2008 National Geographic Emerging Explorer for her previous research on the savannah chimpanzees at the Fongoli research site in Senegal.
“They (chimps) were experts at predicting where it was going to go,” she continued. “I could predict it, sort of, but if it were just me, I would have left.”
“At one time, I actually had to push through them because I could feel the heat from the fire that was on the side of me and I just wasn’t that comfortable with it,” she adds.
Pruetz says it was hard to find previous research on how other animals interacted with fire, says an ISU release.
But the few examples that she and LaDuke found — such as elephants’ encounters with similar wildfires — reported that those animals were highly stressed and experienced high mortality rates.
These findings are slated for online Christmas release and publication in the 2010 edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
