Gombe Photo Gallery — Page 3
Kahama Males
The Kasakela chimpanzee community began to fracture after alpha male Mike’s fall from power in 1971. As Humphrey and Charlie (with Hugh’s backing) vied for dominance, a significant faction broke away. This splinter group — comprised of seven males (Charlie, Hugh, Goliath, Godi, Dé, Willy Wally, and Sniff) along with several females — established itself to the south, becoming the distinct Kahama community by 1973.
Hugh disappeared in late 1972 of unknown causes.1 Godi and Dé were attacked by gangs of Kasakela chimps2 in early 1974, and were presumed dead before the start of the Figan Follow. Most of the photos below were taken on August 26, 1974, and are the last known photos of Charlie, Willy Wally, and Sniff.
Charlie
Charlie (age ~23) was one of the first chimps to visit Jane’s camp in the early 1960s. Supported by his presumed brother Hugh, Charlie led the split from the Kasakela community and became alpha male of the newly formed Kahama community. He died in May 1977, following an apparent attack by Kasakela males (Goodall, 1986).3
Charlie and Sniff in Kahama valley. 
Charlie (center) looks up at colobus monkeys. Honey Bee grooms Willy Wally (also watching colobus monkeys) in the foreground. Sniff moves off to the right.
Charlie still watching colobus monkeys.
Willy Wally
Like Charlie, Willy Wally (age ~23) visited Jane’s camp as an adolescent in the early 1960s. He walked with a pronounced limp, having lost the partial use of a lower leg during the 1966 polio epidemic. Willy Wally appears only rarely in the writings of Jane Goodall and her students. He vanished under unknown circumstances sometime between the deaths of Charlie in May 1977 and Sniff in November 1977 (Goodall, 1986).
Willy Wally in Kahama valley.
Willy Wally watches colobus monkeys. Charlie sits behind him.
Willy Wally (left) and Charlie.
Willy Wally pant-hoots while hanging by one arm in dense vegetation.
Sniff
Sniff (age ~14) was one of the most successful hunters of red colobus monkeys during 1973 and 1974. During this period, lone male chimpanzees were observed hunting 19 times and making 6 kills. 4 Remarkably, Sniff accounted for four of those kills, despite being observed relatively infrequently. He was the last surviving member of the Kahama community, having been attacked by a gang of Kasakela males in November, 1977 (Goodall, 1986).
Sniff eats mshai berries in upper Kahama valley.
On Day 11, while David and Juma followed Figan, Curt and Yahaya tracked Sniff alone in Kahama. Sniff proceeded to hunt and catch a colobus monkey, then spent the next 3½ hours slowly consuming it without making any attempt to recruit other chimpanzees to share the meat.
Mr. August.
- Wrangham, R. W. (1975). Behavioural ecology of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cambridge].
↩︎ - Goodall, J., Bandora, A., Bergmann, E., Busse, C., Matama, H., Mpongo, E., Pierce, A., & Riss, D. (1979). Intercommunity interactions in the chimpanzee population of Gombe National Park. In D. A. Hamburg & E. R. McCown (Eds.), The Great Apes: Perspectives on Human Evolution (Vol. V, pp. 13–53). Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.
↩︎ - Goodall, J. (1986). The chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of behavior. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. pp 509-510.
↩︎ - Busse, C. D. (1978). Do chimpanzees hunt cooperatively? The American Naturalist, 112(986), 767-770.
↩︎