Savanna Chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal, Navigate a Fire Landscape

Savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoli, Senegal, appear to be able to predict the “behavior” of wildfires of various intensities. Although most wildfires are avoided, even the most intense fires are met with relative calm and seemingly calculated movement by apes in this arid, hot, and open environment. In addition to reviewing instances of such behavior collected during the course of the Fongoli study, we also report chimpanzees’ use of burned landscapes during the dry season, when more than 75% of these apes’ home range may be burned annually. In burned areas, chimpanzees spent more time foraging and traveling than in unburned areas. Chimpanzees’ behavior in a fire context can help inform paleoanthropological hypotheses regarding early members of our own lineage and can provide insight into the ability of early hominins to conceptualize the behavior of fire and thus set the stage for our lineage’s use of fire.