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A lone male chimpanzee in the wild: The survivor of a disintegrated unit-group

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Abstract

K Group, originally one of the two major study groups of chimpanzees since 1965 in the Mahale Mountains National Park, western Tanzania, was almost extinct by 1983: at most seven individuals remained in the group at the beginning of 1983. K Group continued to exist for more than four years, but in 1987 a male was left alone at the age of 15 after all the other chimpanzees of the group emigrated or disappeared. Since then he has been observed sporadically for more than five years only within the former range of K Group, without having any contact with the many resident chimpanzees of the neighboring M Group, the other major study group. The present observations reconfirm the strong philopatric tendency of adult male chimpanzees.

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Uehara, S., Nishida, T., Takasaki, H. et al. A lone male chimpanzee in the wild: The survivor of a disintegrated unit-group. Primates 35, 275–281 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02382725

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02382725

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