Publications

As natural habitats continue to shrink in Kenya's Amboseli Ecosystem, livestock depredation by lions Panthera leo threatens both the livelihoods of pastoralist communities and the lion populations affected by retaliatory killings. Finding ways for people and carnivores to coexist at the landscape scale is crucial to the long-term persistence of many threatened animal populations. The fortification of existing traditional bomas to make them ...

Simple Summary We report the first world case of SARS-CoV-2 in captive hippos. Two adult animals were naturally infected in November 2021. Both had snot for a few days but did not need treatment. The virus was found in their noses, faeces and pool water. Antibodies were also found in the bloodstream. Two adult female hippos in Zoo Antwerp who were naturally infected with SARS-CoV-2 showed nasal discharge for a few days. Virus was detected by ...

Ecosystem functioning and integrity are affected by the loss of large-bodied animals, and comprehending when and how ecosystems are affected is an important goal of defaunation ecology. Despite considerable investigation, our understanding is incomplete. Previous research is biased towards the study of seed dispersal in the Neotropics. This study examined whether and how defaunation affects stem density, species diversity, species composition, ...

Primate ranging behavior is associated with numerous social and ecological correlates. Interspecific comparisons of ranging behavior can therefore provide insight into the socio-ecological conditions that characterize a species' niche within its community. We provide the first description of ranging behavior in golden-bellied mangabeys (Cercocebus chrysogaster), using sympatric bonobos (Pan paniscus) as a comparison. Over 6 months, we recorded ...

Sleep is an important aspect of great ape life; these animals build sleeping platforms every night. In a community of chimpanzees, each subgroup selects a sleeping site where each individual builds a sleeping platform, mostly on a tree. Previous studies have measured the heights of sleeping platforms and sleeping trees to test the predation avoidance and thermoregulation hypotheses of sleeping site selection. However, it remains unclear how ...

Joint attention (JA) is an important milestone in human infant development and is predictive of the onset of language later in life. Clinically, it has been reported that children at risk for or with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) perform more poorly on measures of JA compared to neurotypical controls. JA is not unique to humans but has also been reported in great apes and to a lesser extent in more distantly related monkeys. ...

Chimpanzees feed on driver ants (Dorylus sp.) using different tools and predation techniques that vary among populations and can be affected by availability of ant species as well as ecological and sociallearning factors. At the Kom-Wum Forest Reserve (KWFR) in Cameroon, we investigated tool use behavior in Nigerian-Cameroon chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti), examining the characteristics of tools used in driver ant predation, looking for ...