Illegal chimpanzee trade has been a big problem. Pet and animal circus industry has been trafficking these endangered animals by using brutal ways. Many lost their lives caught in snares. Naive pet owners eventually learn that chimps become very strong and hard to maintain in a Human-scale habitation.
The organization HELP Congo has been combating the illegal chimpanzee trade and habitat loss through deforestation in Congo for many years and the film covers what happened after their first successful attempt to reintroduce chimpanzees raised in captivity back into the wild. The organization has developed a reintroduction program in the Conkuati-Douli National Park in Republic of Congo to investigate whether it is feasible to return chimpanzees to their natural environment.
The first group of chimpanzees that were brought up and released by the association have adapted to their new life in the wild and built relationships and social structure. The HELP Congo scientists have given each chimp a name to identify them and have attached transmitter collars to track and study their behavior. Having been separated from their family members these individuals face a tough challenge of starting a society from scratch.
Primate behavior is a hot research area. Yale University biologist David Watts and his collaborators have been documenting their complex cooperative behavior in the wild Kibale national park. These behavior include territoriality, militaristic troop formation, hunting, sharing and bodily maintenance in the form of grooming. Other researchers have also studied more complex behavior such as future planning such as nesting site choice in vicinity to fruiting fig trees. The fig-loving chimps would position their nests in the direction of the best breakfast bounty. Such flexible planning may have supported the evolution of our own calorie-hungry brains.
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Video “Nature Documentary – A Chimpanzee's Tale” was uploaded on 10/13/2024 to Youtube Channel Best Documentary