6 - Female life histories

Summary

Tula:

Tula’s mother is Sada, who was born in K-group. As described earlier, we used sugarcane provisioning to increase our contacts with the Mahale chimpanzees. My first success with individual recognition of chimpanzees through provisioning was in 1966, when Sada was still riding on her mother’s back. So, Tula’s family is one of the very few chimpanzee families to be documented over four generations.

Tula is a female who is widely discussed. She has narrow eyes – not quite a beauty queen, but definitely charming. She first stole our hearts and dominated our camp conversations when she was five years old. She picked up a cigarette butt that one of my colleagues had tossed and pursed it between her lips (Please forgive us! This occurred almost 30 years ago!).