Tracing the path of human evolution

Semliki Chimpanzee Project in Uganda offers IUB's Hunt a living laboratory

By Susan Williams

Since Frank Paladino's sea turtles can't tell us about the emergence of Homo sapiens, Kevin Hunt, associate professor of anthropology at IUB, spends a lot of time hanging around Africa. He studies chimpanzees in the wild, in remote areas at "the end of the trail, after asphalt has trickled to gravel, and gravel has trickled to rutted dirt tracks."

Kevin Hunt While studying primates in the wild is 'enormously rewarding,' it's a hard life, not at all as it's portrayed in romantic movies about researchers in Africa.

Hunt studies chimpanzee posture, locomotion and food-gathering practices in order to understand why apes have developed their own peculiar posture and way of moving.

"Since we can never study our ancestors directly," he said, "we rely on their traces to understand them. I attempt to link specific anatomical features in chimpanzees and australopithecines (the earliest link to the human species) with specific behaviors. Then I use these links to trace the path of human evolution, particularly through reconstruction of their foraging habits."

Hunt began studying chimpanzees in 1986 in Tanzania. His latest research, the Semliki Chimpanzee Project, is in the Semliki Valley Wildlife Reserve in Uganda. The project is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Green Wilderness Group Ltd., and IU's Center for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of Technology (CRAFT), with which Hunt is affiliated.

chimp The Semliki Valley Wildlife Reserve is ideal for chimpanzee watching. At least two communities of chimpanzees live there, and the area is remote enough that the logging industry hasn't yet found it profitable to destroy the trees that supply food to the primates. Its nearly inaccessible location also means the chimps show no behavior that would indicate they've been poached or harassed by humans.

"The young ones are curious about us," Hunt said. "The adults just ignore us. It seems they think we're a strange kind of chimpanzee."

And the reserve is ideal for Hunt's particular research.

"Chimpanzees are bipedal when feeding from short trees with small fruits," he said. "These sorts of trees are rare in most places where we find chimps, but they're abundant at Semliki. I'm hoping it will be easier to study bipedalism at this dry site, since the behavior will be more common. The ultimate aim is to understand what caused bipedalism to evolve in humans."

While studying primates in the wild is "enormously rewarding," it's a hard life, not at all as it's portrayed in romantic movies about researchers in Africa.

"It's easier than most would imagine to allow your focus to shift from primate study to improving your own or someone else's living conditions," Hunt said. "I know field workers who are so distressed by local poverty, disease or poor medical care, that they find it impossible to do their work.

"I minimize distractions by reminding myself to focus on my research, but I've known others to become full-time social workers."