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Translation of field notes for developmental study of chimpanzee vocal communication, Part 2: Adults

PI(s): Frans Plooij (International Research-institute on Infant Studies)
Start Date: 15-Sep-2014
End Date: 16-Oct-2014
Keywords: behavior, development, database, natural population, communication
Many researchers are interested in chimpanzee vocal communication, both as an important aspect of chimpanzee social behavior and as a source of insights into the evolution of human language. Nonetheless, very little is known about how chimpanzee vocal communication develops from infancy to adulthood. The largest dataset of recordings from free-living immature chimpanzees was recorded by the late Dr. Hetty van de Rijt-Plooij and me at Gombe National Park, Tanzania (1971-73) but as these recordings were collected along with a large amount of other data, they have not yet been analyzed. In order to make this dataset available to more researchers, the original notes on the contexts of the calls of the subadult individuals were translated from Dutch to English in a former Nescent project in 2010. In this second project I will translate and transcribe the original notes on the contexts of the calls of the adult individuals from Dutch into English, for which there was not enough time in the first project.