Chimpanzee sponges | Dung-eating vultures | Tree for every takeoff | A fossil forest
First sighting of sponge use by chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park
For the first time a community of chimpanzees living in Uganda’s Kibale National Park has been documented using tools, in this case sponges.
Leaf sponges are used to mop up water from hard-to-reach places. The new record from Kibale, in the west of the country, suggests the practice has been transferred from another chimpanzee community where so-called “leaf-sponging” is more common, says a new study in the African Journal of Ecology.
A mother chimpanzee and her daughter were spotted sitting beneath a date palm in a swamp. Both were observed putting palm leaves into their mouths, removing the crumpled leaves, then using them to extract water from a hole beneath the palm.
The finding is significant because it documents a young chimpanzee learning directly from its mother’s actions, says the study.
“Tool use transmission has been attributed to the extended period of offspring dependency in chimpanzees,” the authors note.
Chimpanzees elsewhere in Africa have been documented using other kinds of tools: rocks to crush seeds, for instance, or long pieces of grass to extract termites and ants from holes in the ground.
The swamps around Kibale are known to be rich in sodium, iron, manganese and zinc, and it was thought the leaf-sponging was helping the two chimpanzees to obtain these vital minerals.
A chimpanzee in Kibale National Park, Uganda | Byekwaso Blasio | Wikimedia
What is it in lion dung that vultures are after?
Dung-eating, or coprophagy, by vultures is an under-reported phenomenon, which is why researcher Neil Stronach’s write-up of his observations of hooded vultures feeding on lion faeces in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park is interesting.
He’d been watching a pride of lions finishing off a kill beneath an acacia tree while a mixed flock of vultures, including 30 hooded vultures, gathered in the branches.
“Before departing, an adult male lion defecated, causing interest among the hooded vultures above, several of whom dropped to lower branches," he writes in the latest edition of Vulture News.
"The lion had not gone more than 10 metres from the faeces when several hooded vultures dropped to the ground and swallowed the faeces rapidly without dismembering them.”
Vultures have been recorded feeding on the faeces of African wild dogs and humans before, but this appears to be the most detailed account so far on lion coprophagy.
So what’s in it for the vultures? Well, lion dung actually contains up to 45% protein, as well as bone fragments, suggesting that it is for these residual nutrients that hooded vultures eat predator faeces, says Stronach.
The vultures do, however, face stiff competition for lion dung from hyenas, jackals and dung beetles. This dung-eating guild has an advantage over the vultures: they operate at night when the lions are active and the vultures are asleep.
A young hooded vulture in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park | Becky Matsubara | Wikimedia
Air Mauritius sponsors native tree planting for every takeoff
The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) is pursuing an innovative conservation project together with Air Mauritius known at the ‘One takeoff, One Tree’ programme.
For every Air Mauritius plane that takes off from the island, a native tree is planted on either Mauritius or Rodrigues Island, to the east.
One of the species targeted for planting is the critically-endangered mandrinette – a small hibiscus tree with dark orange flowers that is unique to Rodrigues.
Like so many other plant and animal species on Mauritius and its surrounding islands, the mandrinette came close to extinction due to habitat destruction: in 1983 there were only two of these trees left on the whole of Rodrigues.
These survivors were also old and diseased, but concerted conservation efforts have seen many offspring raised from them in nurseries, and replanted in the wild.
According to the MWF, more than 400 mandrinettes have been planted in Grande Montagne and Anse Quitor Nature Reserves since 2012, and around 50 have now reached maturity.
Restoration work in Grande Montagne Nature Reserve | B. Navez | Wikimedia
Nature Notes: In search of a fossil forest
On the final day of a recent expedition to central Zimbabwe, our party went in search of a fossil forest.
The site was marked on the map as somewhere near a school. We started out late, having spent the best part of the day exploring the Mafungautsi Forest Reserve and its vast expanse of living trees.
We had left that forest via its eastern boundary, using a little-used route of narrow overgrown tracks winding through patches of vegetables and maize.
Hours later we found ourselves at the turn-off to a road that allegedly led to the fossil forest. There was still a long drive ahead of us. The late afternoon sun poured in through the windscreen, and we passed donkey-drawn carts and farmers taking their cattle back to their kraals.
At times the road's surface was studded with rocks, at other times its verges were so deep in sand that we had to give way to overloaded minibus vans that did not have the four wheel drive needed to get out of the ruts they were in.
With daylight fast ebbing, we still hadn’t found the fossil forest, and we decided to give up the search. I found myself in a car at the back of the return convoy.
At the last minute we veered off down a track to our right. And then, after a short trek through stunted acacia trees we found the elusive school, a cluster of churches and beyond them lying on an ancient rock bed: the “trees of stone”.