Scientist Snoozes for 6 Nights in Chimp Nests
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| A chimpanzee nest in Kenya. CREDIT: Joey Verge, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license |
Every night, wild chimpanzees build themselves nests high in the trees and tuck themselves in for a good night’s sleep. But no one knows exactly what makes these nests good sleeping spots for chimps. So biological anthropologist Fiona Stewart decided to find out — by bedding down in the chimp nests herself.
Stewart, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge, found that the shaggy arboreal assemblages in her field site in Tanzania weren’t exactly five-star lodgings, but they did keep hertemperature
up and the bug bites down. Sleeping high above ground also eased the anxiety of hearing hyenas call to each other in the East African night.
Stewart “is a very adventurous person,” said William McGrew, Stewart’s former doctoral adviser and a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her findings could help explain why early humans broke from the chimp tradition of sleeping in trees, McGrew said.
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