Dry Habitat Chimpanzee Ecology and Behavior: Implications for Human Bipedalism

干燥栖息地黑猩猩的生态和行为：对人类两足行走的影响

• 批准号: 9815991
• 负责人: Kevin Hunt
• 金额: $ 13.5万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-03-01 至 2004-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9815991&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dry; Habitat; Chimpanzee; Ecology; Behavior

Most human paleontologists recognize striding bipedalism as the defining attribute of the Hominidae, but there is little agreement as to how and why this primary adaptation evolved. As our closest relatives, chimpanzees can provide behavioral and ecological clues that will help us understand the early evolution of our lineage. Here, the PI proposes to habituate and study a particularly appropriate chimpanzee community in order to test a number of bipedalism origin hypotheses. Early hominids display a mix of human and ape-like characteristics. They can be described crudely as chimpanzee-like from the waist up, and human-like from the waist down. One explanation for this curious mosaic of traits derives from research on Gombe and Mahale chimpanzees. At these sites bipedalism was most common when chimpanzees fed on small fruits in short trees. Such trees were mostly located in the driest part of the chimpanzee range. On the ground chimpanzees stood up to pick these fruits from the lowest branches. When they gathered fruits in the trees they fed partly standing bipedally and partly hanging by one arm. The fact that trees that elicit bipedalism in chimpanzees were found in the driest part of their range is intruiging, since early hominids lived in similar dry habitats. Bipedalism is unlikely to have evolved for feeding on such fruits unless they were abundant. We might therefore expect that small fruits are more abundant in present-day dry habitats than in wetter habitats. The PI proposes to study chimpanzees in a dry forest in the Semliki Valley Wildlife Reserve, Uganda in order to determine whether Semliki has significantly more small-diameter fruits than wet habitats, and whether dry-forest chimpanzees are more bipedal than other chimpanzees.

大多数人类古生物学家认为，两足行走是人科的定义属性，但对于这种主要适应是如何以及为什么进化而来的，人们几乎没有达成共识。 作为我们最亲近的亲戚，黑猩猩可以提供行为和生态线索，帮助我们了解我们血统的早期进化。 在这里，PI建议习惯和研究一个特别合适的黑猩猩社区，以测试一些两足动物起源的假设。 早期的原始人类表现出人类和类人猿的混合特征。 他们可以粗略地描述为腰部以上像黑猩猩，腰部以下像人类。 对这种奇怪的特征组合的一种解释来自对贡贝和马哈尔黑猩猩的研究。 在这些地点，当黑猩猩以矮树上的小水果为食时，两足行走是最常见的。 这种树大多位于黑猩猩活动范围内最干燥的地方。 在地面上，黑猩猩站起来从最低的树枝上摘这些水果。 当他们在树上采集水果时，他们部分是两足站立，部分是单臂悬挂。在黑猩猩中引起两足行走的树木是在其活动范围中最干燥的地方发现的，这一事实令人不安，因为早期的原始人类生活在类似的干燥栖息地。 两足动物不太可能进化为以这种水果为食，除非它们是丰富的。 因此，我们可以预期，在今天干燥的栖息地比在潮湿的栖息地更丰富的小水果。 PI建议在乌干达Semliki山谷野生动物保护区的干燥森林中研究黑猩猩，以确定Semliki是否比潮湿栖息地有更多的小直径水果，以及干燥森林黑猩猩是否比其他黑猩猩更双足。