Project History | taimonkey

Project

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The Taï Monkey project was founded in 1989 when Ronald Noë and Bettie Sluijter, then at the University of Zurich, undertook a pilot study on red colobus monkeys. The eminent primatologist Hans Hummer (University of Zurich) had suggested to Noë and Sluijter that they investigate whether some of the peculiarities of red colobus monkeys, especially their large group size, male philopatry and tendency to form polyspecific associations, could be explained as adaptive responses to chimpanzee predation. At the time, the Taï chimpanzees were already well-known monkey hunters and red colobus were their preferred prey (Boesch and Boesch 1989). Hummer envisioned a long-term cooperative endeavour in which one research group studied the predators while the other studied the prey.

A successful four-month pilot study led to additional funding and the project’s first students, Klaus Zuberbühler and Kathy Holenweg, arrived in January 1991. Klaus and Kathy were responsible for habituating the first group of red colobus and Diana monkeys as well as establishing the primary study grid. They selected an area with a high density of monkeys near the field station of the “Institute d’Ecologie Tropicale” (IET) on the western border of the park. The IET research station is approximately twenty kilometres from the nearest village and twenty-five kilometres from the Cavally River that forms the border with Liberia. The grid established in 1991 has since been enlarged but still forms the core of the project’s study site.

The following three years witnessed significant expansion in research activity as a growing number of students travelled to Taï, primarily to investigate the anti-predation adaptations of monkeys. In January 1992, Redouan Bshary (Max Planck Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie) started a three-year study on the relationship between red colobus - Diana monkey associations and chimpanzee hunting behaviour. In November 1992, Kauri Adachi (University of Kyoto) initiated a study of guenon socio-ecology and five months later, Scott McGraw (SUNY Stony Brook) started work on comparative positional behaviour and habitat use. As the number of students grew, so too did the number of field assistants. By the end of 1994, there were – on average – six students and six field assistants studying monkeys at any one time. The breadth of research has increased over the years, but the number of personnel in the forest has remained stable.

From: Monkeys of the Taï Forest: An African Primate Community: WS McGraw, K Zuberbühler and R Noë (Eds.).