A very large amount of trees bore fruit this season, ensuring an abundance of food for the chimps all over their territory. To such extend that even some of their favourites in camp often went untouched.
This has caused the chimps to move large distances almost daily, North to East to South and back again. But even though they made it quite challenging for us to keep up with them, we still managed to have some excellent sightings full of action and drama – mostly caused by the unpopular Alpha Male, Pimu, who rules his group with an Iron fist!
Pimu, now still at a young age of 22, for years have been known as an aggressive and hostile chimp. He is the only male in the group who, having reached sexual prime, did not even avoid his own mother Fatuma when she was in Oestrus, and often attacked her against her refusal.
He displayed and fought his way to the top and is very physical with females, and because of this he does not gain their support, but instead instils fear.
About 6 females have come into Oestrus, making Pimu all the more aggressive and hostile and charging in hot pursuit behind any male that might find themselves a bit too close to any of them!
Recently on a track we encountered Darwin, Alofu, Bonobo, Michio, Puffy, Vera and Pimu. They all seemed extremely tense - Pimu was trying to get Vera, who was sitting high up in a tree feeding, to come down. Vera - a migrant female who joined the group a few years ago and recently lost her first born baby within the ‘M’ Community – headstrong as she is, kept on feeding and ignored him.
This infuriated Pimu and he decided that if she’s not coming down, he is going up to get her! All of a sudden Pimu was after Vera and Alofu and Darwin was also up the tree after Pimu, there was screaming, leaves falling and branches breaking – we all lost sight for a minute of who’s where and what’s happening!
Minutes later Pimu is down the tree again, without Vera and extremely angry, chasing every chimp in his view. He then decided to get hold of Puffy instead, another young female in oestrus and finally calmed down.
Seems that Alofu, the previous Alpha Male and long time favourite of many, and young Darwin, slowly building on his confidence, would not allow any harm to Vera in their presence – Well done for teaching Pimu a lesson!
This has caused the chimps to move large distances almost daily, North to East to South and back again. But even though they made it quite challenging for us to keep up with them, we still managed to have some excellent sightings full of action and drama – mostly caused by the unpopular Alpha Male, Pimu, who rules his group with an Iron fist!
Pimu, now still at a young age of 22, for years have been known as an aggressive and hostile chimp. He is the only male in the group who, having reached sexual prime, did not even avoid his own mother Fatuma when she was in Oestrus, and often attacked her against her refusal.
He displayed and fought his way to the top and is very physical with females, and because of this he does not gain their support, but instead instils fear.
About 6 females have come into Oestrus, making Pimu all the more aggressive and hostile and charging in hot pursuit behind any male that might find themselves a bit too close to any of them!
Recently on a track we encountered Darwin, Alofu, Bonobo, Michio, Puffy, Vera and Pimu. They all seemed extremely tense - Pimu was trying to get Vera, who was sitting high up in a tree feeding, to come down. Vera - a migrant female who joined the group a few years ago and recently lost her first born baby within the ‘M’ Community – headstrong as she is, kept on feeding and ignored him.
This infuriated Pimu and he decided that if she’s not coming down, he is going up to get her! All of a sudden Pimu was after Vera and Alofu and Darwin was also up the tree after Pimu, there was screaming, leaves falling and branches breaking – we all lost sight for a minute of who’s where and what’s happening!
Minutes later Pimu is down the tree again, without Vera and extremely angry, chasing every chimp in his view. He then decided to get hold of Puffy instead, another young female in oestrus and finally calmed down.
Seems that Alofu, the previous Alpha Male and long time favourite of many, and young Darwin, slowly building on his confidence, would not allow any harm to Vera in their presence – Well done for teaching Pimu a lesson!
It is wonderful that treasures like this is not known to many Tanzanian, I have been in Gombe 3 times I know to some extent Gombe is similar to Mahale though different Direction but all along Lake Tanganyika, Whenever I talk to people on beauty of Gombe and Mahale, what goes to their mind, THEY THINK Gombe and Mahale is like a ZOO, most dont believe if Gombe and Mahale are National park. I think TANAPA has to inrease effort to advertise Gombe and Mahale, the only two Chimpazee National parks in Tanzania.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate for those who aired these photos, I was so excited to read thi story of PIMU because I saw live story like this in Gombe.