Skip to content

Interview with Dr. Jill Pruetz about chimpanzees in a savanna habitat

I speak with Dr. Pruetz about her fieldwork with chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal.

1 min read
Jill Pruetz with dark background and photo of chimpanzee in pool of water
Jill Pruetz

Dr. Jill Pruetz is a primatologist whose fieldwork at Fongoli, Senegal, has provided a window into the lives of chimpanzees. Fongoli is savanna habitat, with a mixture of trees and open grassy areas. It is very different from the forested habitats where some of the most famous studies of chimpanzees have been done in the past.

The Fongoli chimpanzees exhibit some remarkable behaviors. Females often hunt for small primates called galagos, also known as bushbabies. They use sticks to spear them in hollows of trees. The chimpanzees also seek out caves and water to relieve the heat. The observations by Pruetz and her team are providing valuable context that may help us understand the adaptability of chimpanzees.

And of course, from the perspective of human evolution, chimpanzee behaviors may give us clues about how our early hominin ancestors used similar habitats.

I spoke with Dr. Pruetz at the meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropology in 2013.

Human Evolution: Past and FuturechimpanzeesVideo by John Hawks
John Hawks

John Hawks Twitter

I'm a paleoanthropologist exploring the world of ancient humans and our fossil relatives.


Related Posts

Members Public

Lecture: Opening new frontiers in human origins

At a memorial for Richard Leakey, I shared some ideas about where technology and new discoveries will take paleoanthropology over the next decade.

Conference slide logo for Africa: The Human Cradle
Members Public

Tracing the genetic histories of ghost apes

The footprints of extinct lineages are the closest we have to a fossil record of the African apes.

Vivid brown eyes of a mountain gorilla
Members Public

Lecture: Finding ancient minds in the human evolutionary tree

Insights into the behavioral capabilities of ancient human relatives are beginning to show that some of the abilities we consider human go surprisingly deep in our ancestry.

Diagrams of eighteen hominin skulls against a black background