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"I was actually astonished to see the sheer quantities of bushmeat being taken out of the forest," said team member Dr Cleve Hicks, at the University of Amsterdam. "It was really shocking." He estimates that
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Because of the remote nature of the terrain and the ferocity of the DRC civil war, it was only in the last decade that the apes were studied in detail by primate researchers. Hicks documented a group of super-sized chimps with a unique culture, including a sighting of the apes feasting on a leopard carcass - although it was unclear whether they had actually killed the animal. He said that the local belief that the animals howl at the moon has never been confirmed.
To document the threat posed by bushmeat traders, Hicks and his colleagues conducted regular surveys of bushmeat markets in local towns and on roads on either side of the Uele river in northern DRC. In
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In total, the team saw 44 orphan chimps and 35 carcasses, plus nine leopard skins, 10 okapi (a type of antelope) skins, parts of 14 elephants, bushmeat from two hippos, 169 monkey carcasses and 69 monkey orphans. Two of the orphan chimps had their top incisors knocked out or burned down with hot knives to prevent them from biting their handlers.
The study is published in the peer-reviewed journal African Primates.
Almost all of this trade, which the researchers describe as "larger and
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Hicks, who is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said that one tribe, the Barisi, used not to harm the animals because they believed their tribe was descended
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The spread of a Christian group called the "message believers" whose doctrine is based on the teaching of an American faith healer and preacher called William Branham who died in 1965 has swept away some of the old beliefs. Hicks said that followers interpret his teachings as condoning bushmeat hunting.
Hicks said that many people do not know that it is against DRC law to
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"Once the population is fragmented [its decline] is probably going to speed up rapidly," said "Hicks. "What we are seeing probably is the beginning of that process. Its not too far gone yet too stop it ... There are very few roads so theoretically it wouldn't be that difficult to control."
Alice Macharia of the Jane Goodall Institute in Arlington, Virginia said: "The increasing level of the
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Source:
The Guardian, "Congolese chimpanzees face new 'wave of killing' for bushmeat", accessed September 9, 2010
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