As a naturalist, I have a particularly wide range of interests across the natural history spectrum. Be the subject at hand fish or fern, tree or turtle, badger or bird, I’m keen to learn more about it. However there has long been one particular branch of the tree of life that has never previously – and quite surprisingly – caught hold of my attention, and from that branch hangs a primate. And to make the matter even more surprising to anyone I’ve previously disclosed this fact to, the member of this Order in which I have long held the least interest has been our closest relative Pan troglodytes – the Chimpanzee.
Some people have told me that my lack of interest in these great apes may be part of an aversion to them that is not uncommon among Homo sapiens who feel uncomfortable with the similarities between the two species as it raises questions regarding the supposed superiority of humans above all (other, being the word such an attitude too often omits) animals. However as I hold no religious belief that posits humans as the special creation of some ancient Hebrew (or other) deity – as a Gaian I hold quite the opposite belief, actually – I’ve never found this reasonable. If anything I have long been disinterested in them as they remind me too much of humans, a species for which I also hold a profound disinterest and prefer to avoid whenever possible.
Yet not long prior to the writing of this essay, sitting in the corner booth in McCarthy’s Restaurant & Pub in Port Clinton, Ohio, trying to pretend that the tears streaming down my face were being caused by hay fever rather than by the story I was reading in Dr. Jill Pruetz’s book Apes on the Edge; Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna of a baby Chimpanzee named Amie who had been taken from her mother by hunters and then put up for sale in a Senegalese marketplace, my long-standing disinterest in these remarkable hominids was suddenly and surprisingly up-ended.
Dr. Pruetz and her team have been studying the Chimpanzees at the Fongoli site in Senegal since 2001. Her’s being the first research project to habituate Chimpanzees to human presence in a savanna setting, it has been able to disclose a number of interesting behaviors, some quite rare or indeed entirely new to researchers, that have not previously been observed at the proximity or to the level of detail as she and her team have been able to document. Most significant of these – especially in the level of publicity it attained in the popular press – has been the use and re-use of tools in hunting by the Chimpanzees. While Dr. Pruetz of course presents her team’s observations into this ground-breaking discovery, it is the further observations about it that most interested me; that it was the female Chimpanzees that were the most skilled and most successful in hunting with tools.
In addition to hunting, Dr. Pruetz’ research has, which she of course explains in lively detail in this book, uncovered the practice of the Fongoli Chimpanzees not only not being afraid of water – as previously research into Chimpanzee behavior has widely interpreted them to be – but actively seeking, using, and hierarchically protecting pools of water in which they sit and cool off during the hottest parts of the year. And not just briefly splashing, but sitting and chilling (sorry for the slang but it is indeed what they are doing) for extended and repeated periods of time.
One of the things that makes her work possible is her long-standing practice of involving the local human community in the undertaking of her research, as well as learning about the local Senegalese attitudes toward their Chimpanzee neighbors. Indeed, while the bushmeat trade has put pressure on a number of research and conservation projects in Africa, the local Senegalese attitude toward Chimpanzees prevents them from being hunted or eaten due to the local folk belief of Chimpanzees being so closely related to humans but being made Chimpanzees because of their mischievous ways and failing to heed particular commands from the gods.
As would be expected, Dr. Pruetz also includes information about the ongoing challenges to Chimpanzee conservation across their entire range, including information one doesn’t frequently read or hear about the remarkable differences in behaviors found among Chimpanzee populations in different parts of their range- many of which affect how conservation efforts must be structures and how effective they have been. The very title of the book itself reflects the precarious status of the Fongoli Chimpanzees in their own geographic range but also that of Chimpanzees as a whole in the modern world.
Truly, while Apes on the Edge, being a first and foremost a “close-up” portrait of a particular Chimpanzee population in a particular location and type of habitat, is not properly an introductory primer on Chimpanzees as a species, it does extremely well in acting as an invitation to learn more about these remarkable great apes and is also a very compelling book to read. Far from the all-too-common “look how similar they are to us” approach taken by too many authors of previous books about Chimpanzees, Dr. Pruetz shows the Chimpanzees of Fongoli the respect they deserve in and of their own Chimpanzee selves. What’s more, she does this not out of the modern, cold sterility that preaches the doctrine of professional distance, and that prohibits any trace of anthropomorphism or empathy in anything written, but rather out of a clear, straight-forward, and honest acknowledgement of their own innate importance as fellow creatures on this planet we all share. For this alone I would recommend the book; that it is such a remarkably informative, interesting, and enjoyable book to read is the whipped cream and cherry on the top.
Title: Apes on the Edge; Chimpanzee Life on the West African Savanna
Author: Prof. Jill Pruetz
Series: Animal Lives
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Format: softcover
Pages: 168 pages, with 8 color plates, 25 halftones, and 1 line drawing
ISBN: 9780226837512 (softcover), 9780226837529 (cloth bound), electronic formats also available.
Published: January 2025
In accordance with Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR Part 255, it is disclosed that the copy of the book read in order to produce this review was provided gratis to the reviewer by the publisher.
Further related reading, listening, and viewing:
University of Chicago Press blog: Five Questions with Jill Pruetz, author of Apes on the Edge.
Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project blog
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