January 14th, 2008
Published by Ben Beck

Partially eaten snake, possibly by a chimpanzee, found by the Great Ape Trust team in the Cyamudongo bloc of forest in Nyungwe National Park.

Editor’s note: Today, Great Ape Trust of Iowa Director of Conservation Dr. Benjamin Beck continues his 10-part blog on his recent trip to Rwanda. Beck, along with Great Ape Trust Founder and Chairman Ted Townsend, Communications Director Al Setka and Peter Clay, a senior orangutan caretaker, were in Rwanda from Nov. 28-Dec. 6 to begin the process to establish the Rwanda National Conservation Project with Earthpark and the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, two other Iowa-based projects supported by Townsend.

We arose at 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 3 in preparation for our chimpanzee trek in the Cyamudongo bloc of Nyungwe. This is an isolated fragment, about 5 kilometers from the main forest, and had recently been annexed into the park. We descended into a deep gorge in early morning light, and after an hour made contact with the habituated group. We saw only a male and female, but heard others nearby in the forest around us. Al tried gamely to photograph them, but unlike the gorillas who had favored us with a close, well-lit, and unobstructed view, the chimpanzees stayed high in the fruit tree, strongly backlit by the rising sun.

When we made contact, our wonderful guide, Oreste, pointed out a dead snake, directly beneath the chimpanzees. It was a fresh body, with no flies or smell. The posterior three-fourths of the body had been completely consumed, leaving only cleanly-picked spine and bones. The anterior one-fourth was intact, although we could not see a head. Oreste forbade us from examining the remains more closely, which was probably wise since my best guess at its identity is a highly venomous black mamba. We did take good pictures, and within 30 minutes, the snake body was swarming with flies and raising a strong stench of death (the forest consumes its victims quickly).

Oreste was sure that the chimpanzees had killed and eaten the snake. We had heard a big commotion as we approached the group, of the sort that typifies successful hunting in other chimpanzee groups. The kill was clearly fresh, and it was directly beneath the chimpanzees. The bones had not been eaten, as they probably would have been if the predator had been a carnivorous mammal. A raptorial bird probably would have left the bones, but only after carrying the snake off to consume it away from the apes. We will never know, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that the chimpanzees had preyed upon the snake.

If true, this would be a scientific first, so we will probably write a short note for a scientific journal. After a long, steep walk uphill, we returned to our cabin for a shower and lunch, and headed north toward Gishwati with Louis Rugerinyange. The distance is only about 60 kilometers, mostly along the western edge of Nyungwe. But the trip took at least four hours (we encountered a washed-out bridge and had a flat tire), over a switch-backing rutted mountainside “road.” But we did see a dog on the way, the first of only three that I saw on our entire nine-day trip. Dogs unwittingly became feral scavengers during the genocide, and had to be completely eradicated when peace was restored. The return of “man’s best friend” might be a symbol of the restoration of normality in Rwanda.

We arrived in the city of Kabouye, on the shore of Lake Kivu, at about 8 p.m. Peter, Louis and I struggled through supper; Al wisely chose to go directly to sleep. Our hotel was electrified, and we were reminded that a vast reserve of methane gas had recently been discovered beneath the surface of Lake Kivu. Methane would soon fire power plants that might electrify as many as 40 percent of Rwandan homes and businesses.

Next: Project will almost certainly include study of chimpanzee behavior