<Note>Savanna Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Consume and Share Blue Duiker (Philantomba monticola) Meat in the Issa Valley, Ugalla, Western Tanzania

Abstract

Meat eating is pervasive across chimpanzee populations in Africa, with red colobus monkey (Piliocolobus spp.) being the most common prey (Boesch & Boesch 1989; Stanford et al. 1994a; Watts et al. 2012, Hosaka 2015) if sympatric in the same habitat. Besides colobus monkeys, chimpanzees consume a variety of other primates, including olive and yellow baboons (Papio spp.) and bushbabies (Galago spp.). In the forest habitats of western Tanzania chimpanzees have been reported to consume numerous different mammalian species: 18 at Mahale Mountains National Park (Uehara 1997; Hosaka 2015) and eight at Gombe National Park, whilst in the miombo woodland dominated Ugalla Region no direct observations have been recorded to date (Table 1). In West Africa, chimpanzees from Tai Forest, Ivory Coast consume eight different mammal species, all primates (Boesch & Boesch 1989). Wherever chimpanzees consume meat, it is almost always via hunting, as they rarely scavenge (Watts 2008).