Warming climates have chimps changing behaviours — but it can only go so far

Our planet is changing. So is our journalism. Keep up with the latest news on our Climate and Environment page.

Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.

This week:

For some species of chimpanzee, getting in the water is not what they would consider a good time, but climate change's effects are forcing this great ape to do just that. 

"Many chimpanzees will sometimes be quite hydrophobic," said Ammie Kalan, a primatologist at the University of Victoria. "But we'll see chimps that live in these areas where it gets upwards of 40°C during the day … they will go and sit in pools of water." 

While that doesn't seem dramatic, it's the trade-off of what they need to be doing during that time spent in the water or hiding in caves to beat the heat. 

"They cannot then go around foraging — what they would normally do during the day if they didn't have to deal with [heat] stress," Kalan told CBC News. 

This is just one of the behavioural changes warned about in a recent paper. It's a sign that some animals can adjust to new realities that climate change brings to their environment, but only to a point. Experts also say chimps can't just migrate to cooler areas and as it gets hotter, the animals may fight with others over ways to cool off. 

"We already see increased conflict for standing water resources," said report author Stefanie Heinicke of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "So where people are using standing water [for] their livestock, but then also chimpanzees use these resources to drink." 

 A more alarming pressure for these animals is deforestation and the decline of natural habitats where they can cool down. 

Rachel Ikemeh, founder-director of the South-West/Niger Delta Forest Project, has been in conservation for 20 years. She works to protect species in Ise Forest, in Nigeria's southwest. It's a crucial site, she said, because it houses the endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee — a subspecies that was only classified in the late 1990s.

"We had the risk of actually losing a potential subspecies before they are even … officially confirmed." 

Encroachment, deforestation and total fragmentation of the forest are "driving the population to extinction," Ikemeh said.

While solutions can't be one-size-fits-all and need to be community-specific, Ikemeh suggests protecting the forests is a start — and a win-win for humans and apes.