New paper on chimpanzee buttress drumming!
Chimpanzees at a drumming tree in the Nimba Mountains, Guinea. Photo credit: Dr. Kathelijne Koops
To drum or not to drum?
New paper published in the American Journal of Primatology led by APE Group collaborator Dr Maegan Fitzgerald titled ‘To drum or not to drum: Selectivity in tree buttress drumming by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Nimba Mountains, Guinea’
One proposed form of nonvocal communication in chimpanzees is buttress drumming, in which an individual hits a tree buttress with its hands and/or feet, thereby producing a low-frequency acoustic signal. It is often presumed that this behavior functions to communicate over long distances and is, therefore, goal-oriented. If so, we would expect chimpanzees to exhibit selectivity in the choice of trees and buttresses used in buttress drumming. Here, we investigated whether chimpanzees at the Seringbara study site in the Nimba Mountains, Guinea, West Africa, show selectivity in their buttress drumming behavior. Our results indicate that Seringbara chimpanzees are more likely to use larger trees and select buttresses that are thinner and have a greater surface area. These findings imply that tree buttress drumming is not a random act, but rather goal-oriented and requires knowledge of suitable trees and buttresses. Our results also point to long-distance communication as a probable function of buttress drumming based on selectivity for buttress characteristics likely to impact sound propagation.