Found: the giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest


James Randerson, science correspondent
Saturday July 14, 2007
The Guardian


Deep in the Congolese jungle is a band of apes that, according to local legend, kill lions, catch fish and even howl at the moon. Local hunters speak of massive creatures that seem to be some sort of hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla.

Their location at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet, the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has meant that the mystery apes have been little studied by western scientists. Reaching the region means negotiating the shifting fortunes of warring rebel factions, and the heart of the animals' range is deep in impenetrable forest.


But despite the difficulties, a handful of scientists have succeeded in studying the animals. Early speculation that the apes may be some yeti-like new species or a chimp/gorilla hybrid proved unfounded, but the truth has turned out to be in many ways even more fascinating. They are actually a population of super-sized chimps with a unique culture - and it seems, a taste for big cat flesh.
The most detailed and recent data comes from Cleve Hicks, at the University of Amsterdam, who has spent 18 months in the field watching the Bili apes - named after a local town - since 2004. His team's most striking find came after one of his trackers heard chimps calling for several days from the same spot.

When he investigated he came across a chimp feasting on the carcass of a leopard. Mr Hicks cannot be sure the animal was killed by the chimp, but the find lends credence to the apes' lion-eating reputation.

"What we have found is this completely new chimpanzee culture," said Mr Hicks. Previously, researchers had only managed to snatch glimpses of the animals or take photos of them using camera traps. But Mr Hicks used local knowledge to get closer to them and photograph them.

"We were told of this sort of fabled land out west by one of our trackers who goes out there to fish," said Mr Hicks whose project is supported by the Wasmoeth Wildlife Foundation. "I call it the magic forest. It is a very special place."

Getting there means a gruelling 40km (25-mile) trek through the jungle, from the nearest road, not to mention navigating croc-infested rivers. But when he arrived he found apes without their normal fear of humans. Chimps near the road flee immediately at the sight of people because they know the consequences of a hunter's rifle, but these animals were happy to approach him. "The further away from the road the more fearless the chimps got," he added.

Mr Hicks reports that he found a unique chimp culture. For example, unlike their cousins in other parts of Africa the chimps regularly bed down for the night in nests on the ground. Around a fifth of the nests he found were there rather than in the trees.

"How can they get away with sleeping on the ground when there are lions, leopards, golden cats around as well as other dangerous animals like elephants and buffalo?" said Mr Hicks.

"I don't like to paint them as being more aggressive, but maybe they prey on some of these predators and the predators kind of leave them alone." He is keen to point out though that they don't howl at the moon.

"The ground nests were very big and there was obviously something very unusual going on there. They are not unknown elsewhere but very unusual," said Colin Groves, an expert on primate morphology at the Australian National University in Canberra who has observed the nests in the field.

Prof Groves believes that the Bili apes should prompt a radical rethink of the family tree of chimp sub-species. He has proposed that primatologists should now recognise five different sub-divisions instead of the current four.

Mr Hicks said the animals also have what he calls a "smashing culture" - a blunt but effective way of solving problems. He has found hundreds of snails and hard-shelled fruits smashed for food, seen chimps carrying termite mounds to rocks to break them open and also found a turtle that was almost certainly smashed apart by chimps.

Like chimp populations in other parts of Africa, the Bili chimps use sticks to fish for ants, but here the tools are up to 2.5 metres long.

The most exciting thing about this population of chimps though is that it is much bigger than anyone realised and may be one of the largest remaining continuous populations of the species left in Africa. Mr Hicks and his colleague Jeroen Swinkels surveyed an area of 7,000 square kilometres and found chimps everywhere. Their unique culture was uniform throughout.

However, the future for the Bili apes is far from secure. "Things are not promising," said Karl Ammann, an independent wildlife photographer who began investigating the apes 1996. "The absence of a strong central government has resulted in most of the region becoming more independent and lawless. In conservation terms this is a disaster."

Link?

Wow, big jump from eating collobus monkeys to eating lions, I wonder if thats why lions don't like going into dense equatorial forests all that much?

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Wow, big jump from eating collobus monkeys to eating lions, I wonder if thats why lions don't like going into dense equatorial forests all that much?

I'm a bit skeptic about this lion eating chimp. Now, I'm not a primatologist, but I've been spending the past 6 weeks learning about primates from a professor with a Ph.D in Primatology from U.C. Berkeley. Protein makes up less than one percent of Pan Troglodytes' (Chimpanzees) annual diet. Similar is true with bonobos and gorillas. The collobus monkeys are typically a food of opportunity for chimps. It seems strange to me that a large chimp would all of a sudden switch to eating lots of protein and preying on lions and leopards when even the largest member of the Pongidae, the gorilla, is mainly folivorous. Anyway, that would be my college student opinion. I'll take the article in to class and see if my professor knows anything further about it. I'm not saying there isn't a large chimp out there, but dubious that it preys on lions. My guess is the chimp stumbled upon a dead leopard and the myths and legends tainted the way the scientist perceived their findings. Again, my college student evaluation.

Hi Al, I have to say that I agree with you on this one. Chimps from what I know are intelligent resourceful opportunists, but hunting lions would entail quite a bit of energy resources and would probably also be a deleterious form of natural selection. However, I would not be surprised to see a chimp feeding on a dead leopard (or lion), but I think that chimps (even a large group) would be somewhat tentative about killing one.

I have heard large male baboons in a troop will often try scare off leopard if they sight one and have heard of stories of leopard being killed by them, but I dont think leopard are part of their regular menu. The reverse of this is a bit different though.

I think if chimps moved more into the savannas, with the baboons, lions would still be at the upper end of the food-chain, and I am sure that they would sleep in the trees at night if they knew what was good for them!

There is barely any info on these chimps, just recently have they began studying them. chims obv like meat so im sure someone may have seen one feeding on a leopard or what have you, and they turned into "lion killing chimps" They never seen one kill a "lion" people love to exaggerate, like bigfoots and lock ness monsters.

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I have heard large male baboons in a troop will often try scare off leopard if they sight one and have heard of stories of leopard being killed by them, but I dont think leopard are part of their regular menu.

Nzou, that was something else we addressed. As you mentioned, it is true baboons have been known to kill a leopard as well as leopards are one of primates top predators (snakes is the other big one). The reason baboons (and many primates for that matter) scream and hoot at predators like leopards is that the leopard is an ambush predator; he relies on surprise to catch his prey. If you get a whole group of primates screaming at a leopard, the leopard has lost his element of surprise and might as well move on. Snakes, on the other hand, aren't discouraged by primates hooting and screaming at them.

The events of chimps hunting that we see on the Discovery Channel are designed, for the most part, to be entertaining. Chimps spend a large amount of the day searching for fruit and napping, far less exciting than watching them kill monkeys. (Another topic covered in class. The director/scientist for one of these flicks was my professor's roommate back in college.)

I saw a special on one of the animal planet type shows a few years back and the "scientist" hypothesized that chimps would eat a lot more meat if they could figure out how to kill animals.

They seem to be ill equipped for it.

If there IS a species or culture of them that has learned to use tools better than the rest of them it isn't too much of a leap to believe they they're hunting.

But lions? I can't think of many creatures I'd rather avoid unless I had a good rifle.

$bob$

This is my observation from reading the artcile.
If these apes were up to the task of killing leopard and lion. The there would be no way that I would observe these apes and feel safe unarmed. Sleeping on the ground however does express that they dont fear too much so maybe they are more violent than other chimps.

But a wild animal stays a wild animal observing them unarmed would be foolish.
This article is still very interesting though.

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If there IS a species or culture of them that has learned to use tools better than the rest of them it isn't too much of a leap to believe they they're hunting.

Not to keep reffering back to my class, but one of the interesting things about the tools that chimps use is that they vary from area to area. Tools are more commonly used amongst females and the knowledge of how to make/use them passed from mother to daughter. When the daughter chimp leaves her group and moves to another group she takes her method of tool making along with her to teach to her offspring in the new group. Male chimps don't change groups (or females with offspring) as they will be attacked and killed by the males from other troops. So, the male chimps have the aggressive tendency (at least towards foreign males), but not the intimate knowledge of tool making. It is a possibility though, think of what a club did for the cavemen.

As for sleeping on the ground. I would guess it is similar to the reason a gorilla sleeps on the ground. There really isn't any predator that will attack a 400 pound silver back gorilla or even the 200 pound females. Another thing is primates like chimpanzees and gorillas are social creatures. There is safety in numbers, the geometry of the selfish herd; if a group of animals encounters the perfect predator, each individual animal plays the odds they will be one of the many that escape instead of the single individual that was killed. Also, I don't think it makes much of a difference to a leopard if you are on the ground or in a tree.

Hmmm....just saw the link to this article, and am amazed that there are no pictures of this ellusive chimp; maybe because it is not all that different in form to the rest of the continuous species I would guess. That foot cast really does amaze me though, it is huge, but every time I look at it I think gorilla-hind foot print in my brain for some reason.

I would love an expert primatologist to comment on this, but is that really a chimp cast, or are we looking at say a young or female gorilla cast? It would not be impossible if their distributions overlap (which I am sure they do with the lowland gorilla) for confusion to occur and am sure their tracks would be quite similar (except in size). I know gorillas leave knuckle prints too, dont think chimps walk on their knuckles though. I wonder what other people think about this?

True or not... Still pretty interesting

More info here

Yeah I thinks its funny this guy has been studying them with this info and there are only a few pictures. The same ones everywhere a trail pic, and of one that was killed. Seems to me there would be alot more pictures.

never saw cheetah do it in any of the tarzan movies

Simba Slaying Simians?

It is possible that the observers mistook some of AR's PH members for the killer primates? After all, the hunting season is a long one, and a lot of time in the bush can alter one's proper appearance...

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It is possible that the observers mistook some of AR's PH members for the killer primates? After all, the hunting season is a long one, and a lot of time in the bush can alter one's proper appearance...

Hey!!! You talkin' to ME?!?





$bob$

These chimps may elevate the African Big Five to SIX!

It strikes me with all the talk of jungles etc. in the report that this doesn't sound like lion country. In fact it seems unlikely that these chimps have ever seen a lion. In view of the high density of these chimps, as claimed in the report, it also seems unlikely that they are spending their days attacking leopards. You and I are a fair sight more intelligent than a chimp (ever seen a chimp design and fly an airplane?) and how many of your friends would you need to gather together to be confident of pulling off an unarmed attack on a leopard? I'd say if these chimps spent their days attacking leopards then they would soon be pretty thin on the ground.

In terms of getting research funding however how good is the story that you may have found a group of chimps that eat lions? Also the actual quotes from the scientists were a bit thin in the lion eating department, so perhaps it was just a journalist looking for a story.

Cynical? Me?

Well, I asked my professor about this lion killing Chimp. Simply put, he says its just a legend like Bigfoot. As he said, and as Caorach pointed out, lions don't really inhabit the same area the chimps do. I asked him about the leopard, didn't shock him at all. He says chimps have killed leopards before.