Victor Narat

CNRS- MNHN

Human-animal pathogenic transmissions threaten both human and animal health, and the processes catalyzing zoonotic spillover and spillback are complex. Prior field studies offer partial insight into these processes but overlook animal ecologies and human perceptions and practices facilitating human-animal contact. Conducted in Cameroon and a Europe...

Le colloque « L’animal à l’Anthropocène », organisé par le CNRS et le Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, s’est tenu en ligne en décembre 2020. Ce colloque avait pour objectif d’analyser l’évolution des rapports utilitaires et affectifs entre humains et animaux dans le contexte de l’Anthropocène, avec l’ambition de réunir une grande diversité de...

The forest-savannah mosaics are an ecological and heterogenous formation, where landscape structure and composition vary substantially. This study investigates the spatial organization of human activities at the scale of village terroirs of the North Batéké Chiefdom, Democratic Republic of Congo. How are human activities organized on the periphery...

Human-animal pathogenic transmissions threaten both human and animal health, and the processes catalyzing zoonotic spillover and spillback are complex. Prior field studies offer partial insight into these processes but overlook animal ecologies and human perceptions and practices facilitating human-animal contact. Conducted in Cameroon and a Europe...

Comparative behavioral studies of hand use amongst primate species, including humans, have been central in research on evolutionary mechanisms. In particular, the manipulative abilities of our closest relatives, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), have been widely described in various contexts, showing a high level of dexterity both in zoo and in nat...

• This pilot study shows that wild bonobos display the fundamental temporal rules of vocal turn-taking • Occurrences of calling patterns are in line with the unique observation collected from a captive group • Calling patterns do not differ significantly with age and sex • Calling patterns appear context-dependent In several species of non-human pr...

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are the only great apes that inhabit hot, dry, and open savannas. We review the environmental pressures of savannas on chimpanzees, such as food and water scarcity, and the evidence for chimpanzees' behavioral responses to these landscapes. In our analysis, savannas were generally associated with low chimpanzee populat...

Along the edges of the Congo basin forest, where forest-savannah mosaics are the main ecological formation, it is important to determine how this mosaic has developed, particularly for forest protection. Have savannah lands resulted from deforestation or have forest patches expanded into them? Given the long-standing human occupation of this region...

Understanding the ecological and behavioral variation of primates is central to improving conservation strategies. Studies of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have shown marked behavioral variability across a wide range of habitats. By comparison, bonobos (Pan paniscus) occur mainly in continuous forest sites, and socioecological models explaining beh...

Comparisons of mammalian gut microbiota across different environmental conditions shed light on the diversity and composition of gut bacteriome and suggest consequences for human and animal health. Gut bacteriome comparisons across different environments diverge in their results, showing no generalizable patterns linking habitat and dietary degrada...

Most landscape cover assessments for conservation programmes rely largely on remote sensing analyses. These analyses, however, neglect how people inhabiting protected zones perceive and structure land cover. Using socio‐ecological systems (SES) analysis in a forest‐savannah mosaic on the Congo Basin forest edge (Democratic Republic of Congo), we in...

Most primates are arboreal, and the current context of habitat fragmentation makes gap- and road-crossing behaviors more and more common. Great apes may try to avoid behaviors such as arboreal leaping because given their size such behaviors are risky. Here, we report impressive gap-crossing by wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) in the Democratic Republic...

Emerging infectious diseases of zoonotic origin constitute a recurrent threat to global health. Nonhuman primates (NHPs) occupy an important place in zoonotic spillovers (pathogenic transmissions from animals to humans), serving as reservoirs or amplifiers of multiple neglected tropical diseases, including viral hemorrhagic fevers and arboviruses,...

Supporting information table. (DOCX)

Supporting information movie. Hunting and butchering a monkey (Cercopithecus nictitans). This movie was filmed during a participant-observation in May 2016. VN followed one hunter conducting a monkey hunt near a forest camp between 6 to 10 AM. This movie shows the shooting, transport and butchering steps. During this observation, two monkeys were k...

Zoonotic transmissions are a major global health risk, and human–animal contact is frequently raised as an important driver of transmission. A literature examining zooanthroponosis largely agrees that more human–animal contact leads to more risk. Yet the basis of this proposition, the term contact, has not been rigorously analyzed. To understand ho...

Ce dossier "Regards sur le passé" est issu d’un colloque organisé à l’occasion des 30 ans de la Société Francophone de Primatologie. Les trois premiers articles, consacrés à l’histoire de la primatologie, présentent les analyses d’historiens et traitent essentiellement de l’intérêt croissant des scientifiques, au cours du XXe siècle, pour les prima...

This report describes bonobo (Pan paniscus, Hominidae) behavioral flexibility and inter-community differences with high tannin level fruit processing. In fruiting plants, tannin should discourage certain seed dispersers (direct deterrence hypothesis) such as primates. Based on data deriving from five study sites; LuiKotale, Lomako, Wamba, Malebo and M...

In the absence of direct evidence, an imagined “cut hunter” stands in for the index patient of pandemic HIV/AIDS. During the early years of colonial rule, this explanation goes, a hunter was cut or injured from hunting or butchering a chimpanzee infected with simian immunodeficiency virus, resulting in the first sustained human infection with the v...

Background and aims – Forest-savanna mosaics are some of the very diverse habitat types of the Congo Basin; multiple factors influence their dynamics such as climatic and edaphic conditions, animal dispersion, and anthropogenic activities. Presently, few studies have described this type of habitat, despite their important role in biodiversity conse...

Phylogenetic and geographic proximities between humans and apes pose a risk of zoonotic transmission of pathogens. Bonobos (Pan paniscus) of the Bolobo Territory, Democratic Republic of the Congo, live in a fragmented forest-savanna mosaic setting, a marginal habitat for this species used to living in dense forests. Human activities in the forest h...

Habituation is the term used to describe acceptance by wild animals of a human observer as a neutral element in their environment. Among primates, the process takes from a few days for Galago spp. to several years for African apes. There are also intraspecies differences reflecting differences in habitat, home range, and ape-human relationship hist...

There is a diverse range of community-based conservation projects, from a top-down process with projects initiated by national and international institutions to a bottom-up process based on trial and error. In every conservation project, new actors appear, new messages are spread, and each person takes these messages in their own way. As a part of...

La captivité peut être source d'ennui et de stress pour les primates, à l'origine d'une fréquence élevée de comportements stéréotypés et autocentrés. Le stress chronique menace la santé des individus car l'élévation anormale et constante des taux de glucocorticoïdes entraine une dépression du système immunitaire et des séquelles neurologiques. Pour...

Etudier l’ecologie alimentaire d’une meme espece dans differents types d’habitats, et notamment les aliments de base (consommes toute l’annee) et de reserve (consommes en periode de rarefaction des ressources alimentaires), est un moyen permettant de mieux comprendre les adaptations anatomiques et comportementales a differentes contraintes environn...

Depuis 2012, un protocole pluridisciplinaire a ete mis en place afin d’etudier les differents types d’habitat presents sur le site d’etude des bonobos dans la foret de Manzano, un des sites de conservation communautaire de l’ONG Mbou Mon Tour situe dans le territoire de Bolobo en Republique Democratique du Congo. Pour repondre aux objectifs scienti...

Si le stress est un mecanisme adaptatif qui permet aux populations sauvages et captives de s'adapter a une situation donnee, il peut egalement s'averer deletere : immunodepression, troubles reproducteurs, cardiovasculaires, digestifs, neurologiques, etc. Inherent a la notion de bien-etre animal, il s'agit toutefois d'un phenomene difficile a quanti...

Dans le cadre d’études portant sur les bonobos (Pan paniscus) d’Embinima en République Démocratique du Congo, nous avons mis en place un protocole combinant la télédétection et d’autres méthodes de relevé de terrain afin de déterminer les différents types d’habitats existants dans les forêts d’étude. Une méthode de classification non supervisée sur...

Mieux comprendre les interactions entre les grands singes, les habitats et les hommes est un enjeu majeur pour la conservation de ces primates menacés. Cette étude porte sur les interactions entre des bonobos (Pan paniscus) et un socio-écosystème particulier. Dans une mosaïque forêt-savane, habitat peu fréquent pour le bonobo, des Batéké qui respec...

L’habituation se définit comme l’assimilation d’observateurs par des animaux sauvages à des éléments neutres de l’environnement. Son évolution dépend des relations passées entre les populations locales et ces animaux, de l’organisation sociale de l’espèce, de sa densité, du type d’habitat et de la méthode utilisée. Pour les espèces de grands singes...

Great apes are endangered due to poaching, deforestation, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. Studying the interactions between great apes, their environment and local population is necessary for understanding the adaptability of great apes to habitat disturbance and to assess the specific threats in the local context. Development of the human...

Nematodes of the genus Oesophagostomum are common intestinal parasites found in cattle, pigs and primates. They can cause severe illness, resulting from the formation of granulomas, caseous lesions and abscesses in the intestinal wall. Human oesophagostomosis is endemic in northern Ghana and Togo. In these regions, epidemiological investigations ha...

Great apes are endangered due to poaching, deforestation, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation. Studying the interactions between great apes, their environment and local population is necessary for understanding the adaptability of great apes to habitat disturbance and to assess the specific threats in the local context. Development of the human...

L’habituation des primates à la présence d’observateurs humains nécessite un temps variable en fonction des espèces, allant de quelques jours pour certains primates nocturnes à cinq à dix ans pour les grands singes. Dans ce cas, le processus d’habituation doit être bien réfléchi car il implique un engagement local sur le long terme. Même si l’habit...

Certain toxic plants are beneficial for health if small amounts are ingested infrequently and in a specific context of illness. Among our closest living relatives, chimpanzees are found to consume plants with pharmacological properties. Providing insight on the origins of human self-medication, this study investigates the role social systems and ph...