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Meet the Scientists
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Chloe Cipolletta
Since January 1998, Chloe has been attempting to habituate western lowland gorillas in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park in the Central African Republic. Previously she worked with Christophe Boesch to habituate chimpanzees in the Tai Forest off the Ivory Coast from 1994 to 1996, and for a brief period at the orangutan research station at Gunung Leuser National Park in Sumatra.
Although mountain gorilla habituation had been made famous by the work of Dian Fossey, getting western lowlands to accept human presence was thought to be impossible when Chloe first began research. This was due to the extremely dense forest vegetation and the historically poor relationship between gorillas and man in Central Africa (the only humans the gorillas knew were hunters).
From August 1998 on, Chloe and her team focused their study on one gorilla group, the Munye. Alongside BaAka pygmies, who have incredible tracking skills, Chloe was able to locate and then integrate herself with the gorillas nearly every day. The gorillas initially reacted to Chloe's team with aggression and fear, but as time passed these expressions were replaced, first with indifference to the intruders, and eventually with curiosity about them. By the time NATURE filmed at Dzanga in November 2003, the gorillas seemed almost completely comfortable with Chloe and her team sitting just a few yards away.
Although Chloe's work, sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund and the German Technical Cooperation, has primarily focused on encouraging tourists to visit Dzanga-Ndoki (thereby providing an alternative to logging as a means of financial stability), it has also allowed new insight into the lives of western lowland gorillas.
David Watts
David P. Watts (Ph.D., Chicago 1983) is a professor of anthropology at Yale University whose research specialty is the behavior and ecology of nonhuman primates. In Panama, he has done fieldwork on the behavior of white-faced capuchin monkeys; in Rwanda, on the behavioral ecology of mountain gorillas; and in Uganda, on the behavioral ecology of chimpanzees. He was also the Director of the Karisoke Research Centre in Rwanda for two years.
In collaboration with Dr. Jeremiah Lwanga and Dr. John Mitani, David has maintained a research project on chimpanzee behavior at Ngogo, in the Kibale National Park in Uganda, since 1995. With more than 70 adult males and females and approximately 150 individuals in total, this community is the largest that has been reported thus far in the wild. Due to the extremely large number of males in this group, the Ngogo chimpanzees hunt often and with an unusual degree of success. The male chimps also frequently patrol the boundary of their territory. This has led to several documented cases of lethal intergroup aggression. David's work has contributed to our understanding of why chimpanzees hunt and share meat, and has provided insight into the intriguing evolution of sharing.
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