We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Seed Reingestion in Savannah Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal.
- Authors
Bertolani, Paco; Pruetz, Jill
- Abstract
Coprophagy is common in captive primates but has also been reported in the wild. For example, wild apes extract and reingest items from faeces. We term this behavior seed reingestion because the dung matrix is not consumed. We assessed the importance of seed reingestion in a population of savannah chimpanzees at Fongoli, southeastern Senegal, one of the hottest and driest areas of the species' range, where chimpanzees have a relatively narrow dietary repertoire. We observed habituated chimpanzees on 122 d during 8 mo in 2005 and 2006, employing both focal subject and scan sampling of identified individuals for 1278 h of data collection. Chimpanzees reingested seeds of 2 species: Parkia biglobosa and Adansonia digitata. Both seed species have a hard protective shell, and the embryos are rich in proteins and lipids. Chimpanzees initially ate the fruit matrix pulp and swallowed intact seeds before reingesting and chewing/destroying seeds. Seed reingestion accounted for almost 2% of feeding time. We suggest that at Fongoli this behavior may be an adaptive strategy to maximize food intake, by softening the seed's shell and making the seed's content more accessible.
- Subjects
SENEGAL; REGULATION of ingestion; CHIMPANZEE behavior; SAMPLING (Process); ACQUISITION of data; SEED ecology
- Publication
International Journal of Primatology, 2011, Vol 32, Issue 5, p1123
- ISSN
0164-0291
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10764-011-9528-5