Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 2006
Jill Pruetz

 


SPRING 2006
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The ecology of chimps

Jill Pruetz is in touch with her inner monkey.

Er, we mean chimpanzee. There’s a difference, and Pruetz is quick to tell you so. She makes it a point to educate oh-so-gently about the world of primates – her world.

“I taught my little nephew to say ‘gibbon,’” she says. “And he knows that a gibbon is not a monkey.”

Pruetz, an assistant professor of anthropology, heads up a research team in Senegal, West Africa that is studying a community of savanna chimpanzees.

Much of what we know about chimps is based on Jane Goodall’s 40-year study in an African jungle, Pruetz said.

“Many of the chimp studies have concentrated so much on behavior that there’s very little in terms of ecology for me to compare with,” she said. “So that’s my main focus: how ecology affects behavior.”

Pruetz spends as much time as she can in Senegal – summers and a couple of weeks around Christmas – as she balances her primary research with her teaching and advising duties in the Department of Anthropology. Her Senegalese “home” is a mud-and-thatch hut in a small village right in the middle of the chimp habitat, where there is no electricity, no running water, and certainly no computers – unless you drive 30 minutes into the nearest town.

It’s interesting, rather dangerous work, details of which she often doesn’t share with her mother until after the fact. She’s frequently stung by African killer bees; she contracts malaria a couple of times a year; there’s always the fear of dehydration in the rain-starved savanna, where the temperatures routinely stay above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And if you’re bitten by a black mambo snake, that’s it – you’re dead.

But it’s all worth it. Pruetz’ ground-breaking research project, started in 2000, is five years ahead of schedule. The 29-or-so chimps in “her” community are habituated to the presence of Pruetz and her research team.

“I can walk among them now, just like a real primatologist.”

-- C. Gieseke

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