Chimpanzee Behaviour Suggests Tree-to-Ground Transition Occurred Before Emergence of Ancient Humans
The first study into rarely documented ground-nest building by wild
chimpanzees offers new clues about the ancient transition of early
hominins from sleeping in trees to sleeping on the ground. While most
apes build nests in trees, this study, published in the American Journal
of Physical Anthropology, focused on a group of wild West African
chimpanzees that often shows ground-nesting behaviour.
An international team of primatologists from the University of Cambridge
and Kyoto University, led by Dr Kathelijne Koops, studied the chimpanzee
(Pan troglodytes verus) population in the Nimba Mountains in Guinea,
West Africa. All species of great ape build nests to sleep in each
night. Construction of these shelters takes minutes as the apes bend,
break and interweave branches into a circular frame, followed by tucking
in smaller branches to form a sturdy but comfortable sleeping platform.
“We believe that, like modern apes, the common ancestor of chimpanzees
and humans also slept in the trees 6 million years ago,” said Dr Koops.
“However, these nests are not preserved in the fossil or archaeological
record, so it is impossible to study directly the ancient transition
from sleeping in trees to building shelters on the ground. Recording
this rare behaviour in the chimpanzee, our closest relative, may provide
vital clues.”
As the Nimba chimpanzees do not yet tolerate human presence at close
range, the team used new molecular genetic techniques to analyse hairs
collected from the nests. This allowed the team to establish the sex of
chimpanzees displaying the behaviour and to identify individuals in the
group.
The team showed that as chimpanzees sleep both on the ground and in the
trees, the transition from trees to the ground did not require a special
evolutionary adaptation. This suggests that early hominins may have
slept on the ground before the emergence of Homo erectus (‘upright
man’), the first species which was fully adapted to living on the
ground. “This is intriguing as it has long been believed that coming
down from the trees was a crucial evolutionary shift,” said Koops.
“However, this chimpanzees’ behaviour suggests a more deep-seated,
gradual transition from tree-to-ground sleep.”
Other theories for the tree-to-ground transition have included the use
of fire and the scarcity of trees in open habitats. The team
demonstrated that neither is a prerequisite for ground sleeping, as the
chimpanzees live in a plentiful evergreen rainforest and do not create
fire.
“These chimpanzees offer a rare opportunity to investigate why a
population of wild apes chooses to sleep on the ground,” concluded
Koops. “We showed that ground-nesting was not caused by male
mate-guarding behaviour, a lack of trees in which to nest, or because of
fire. This suggests that our direct ancestors were neither the only, nor
the first, species to come down from the trees.”
