Toshisada Nishida
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Toshisada Nishida (3 March 1941 – 7 June 2011) was a
Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...
primatologist who established one of the first long term chimpanzee field research sites. He was the first to discover that chimpanzees, instead of forming nuclear family-like arrangements, live a communal life with territorial boundaries. His discoveries of the medicinal use of plants by wild chimpanzees helped form the basis of the field of
zoopharmacognosy Zoopharmacognosy is a behaviour in which non-human animals self-medication, self-medicate by selecting and Ingestion, ingesting or Topical medication, topically applying plants, soils and insects with medicinal properties, to prevent or reduc ...
. Nishida was a
full professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...
of
Zoology Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the anatomy, structure, embryology, Biological classification, classification, Ethology, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinction, extinct, and ...
at
Kyoto University , or , is a National university, national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan. The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen gra ...
, the President of the Primate Society of Japan, the President of the International Primatological Society, and the Editor-in-Chief of the journal
Primates Primates is an order of mammals, which is further divided into the strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and lorisids; and the haplorhines, which include tarsiers and simians ( monkeys and apes). Primates arose 74–63  ...
. In 2008, he was a recipient of the Leakey Prize for his accomplishments in human evolutionary science.


Scientific career


Early career

As a graduate student, Toshisada Nishida studied primatology at Kyoto University under
Junichiro Itani was a Japanese anthropologist who served as a professor emeritus at Kyoto University and as president of the Primate Society of Japan. He is considered a founder of the discipline of Japanese primatology. Biography Junichiro Itani was born at ...
, a successor of Japanese primatologist
Kinji Imanishi was a Japanese ecologist and anthropologist. He was the founder of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute and, together with Junichiro Itani, is considered one of the founders of Japanese primatology. Biography Early life and educ ...
. Nishida studied
Japanese macaque The Japanese macaque (''Macaca fuscata''), also known as the snow monkey, is a terrestrial Old World monkey species that is native to Japan. Colloquially, they are referred to as "snow monkeys" because some live in areas where snow covers the g ...
s with Imanishi from 1963 to 1965 before traveling to
Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...
to study chimpanzees.


Chimpanzee research

Despite being more genetically distant from humans than chimpanzees, in the 1960s
baboon Baboons are primates comprising the biology, genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys, in the family Cercopithecidae. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow ba ...
s were considered the best model of
human evolution ''Homo sapiens'' is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as Human skeletal changes due to bipedalism, bipedalism, de ...
as they had descended from the trees to become savanna-dwellers as
early humans ''Homo'' () is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus ''Australopithecus'' and encompasses only a single extant species, ''Homo sapiens'' (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called ...
did. However, baboons did not possess many of the characteristics deemed important for human evolution, such as tool technology,
cooperative hunting A pack hunter or social predator is a predatory animal which hunts its prey by working together with other members of its species. Normally animals hunting in this way are closely related, and with the exceptions of chimpanzees where only male ...
, food sharing,
territoriality In ethology, territory is the sociographical area that an animal consistently defends against conspecific competition (or, occasionally, against animals of other species) using agonistic behaviors or (less commonly) real physical aggression. ...
, cultural traditions, and certain cognitive capacities, such as
planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...
and theory-of-mind. Chimpanzees, however, show all characteristics. Early primatologists had observed chimpanzees traveling through trees, eating fruits at their leisure, but rarely noted anything of interest in their behaviour. In the 1960s, there were only two field sites studying chimpanzee behaviour: one led by
Jane Goodall Dame Jane Morris Goodall (; born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall; 3 April 1934), formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, Primatology, primatologist and Anthropology, anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremo ...
in the Gombe Stream, and another located in the foothills of the Mahale Mountains at
Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika ( ; ) is an African Great Lakes, African Great Lake. It is the world's List of lakes by volume, second-largest freshwater lake by volume and the List of lakes by depth, second deepest, in both cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. ...
, which was staffed by Japanese scientists and led by Nishida. Nishida's team planted
sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...
to attract the chimpanzees, who began to consistently visit the site after only six months. Based on his field observations, Nishida defended his dissertation at Kyoto University in 1968.


Discoveries regarding chimpanzees

During Nishida's first visit to Mahale, he observed chimpanzees living in
communities A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place (geography), place, set of Norm (social), norms, culture, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Ide ...
with territorial boundaries, noting the existence of
hostility Hostility is seen as a form of emotionally charged aggressive behavior. In everyday speech, it is more commonly used as a synonym for anger and aggression. It appears in several psychological theories. For instance it is a Facet (psychology), f ...
between neighbouring groups. As chimpanzees are often encountered alone or in small groups in the forest, and due to the difficulty of determining community relations between chimpanzees, this challenged the existing scientific belief that chimpanzees lived in nuclear family-like groups. At the Mahale site, scientists followed Kinji Imanishi's methods to identify and name individual chimpanzees, following them over a long period of time in order to understand relationships within the community. The Mahale scientists habituated themselves to the chimpanzees through food provisioning: first with sugar cane, and later with bananas. Nishida developed a "mobile provisioning" technique in which a random site was chosen to distribute food, then scientists would announce their presence by imitating the chimpanzees' hooting calls, allowing the apes to approach and obtain food. As the scientists never used a fixed feeding site, the chimpanzees normal roaming patterns remained intact. Since the 1960s, the Mahale field site has been important to chimpanzee research. There, scientists have learned that chimpanzees medicate themselves with plants, that they have complex tool skills that differ from group to group, they hunt and eat meat, they raid neighbouring territories, and that males engage in
power politics Power politics is a term which denotes an approach to political matters which aims to enhance the power of government actors. The term has much usage in the realm of international relations, and it is often used pejoratively. The German term fo ...
while competing over status and females. In 1982, at the same time that
Frans de Waal Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal (29 October 1948 – 14 March 2024) was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in ...
wrote ''Chimpanzee Politics'' on apes in captivity, Nishida and his students were documenting very similar power struggles among wild chimpanzees, including one by a male named Kalunde. Kalunde played a game that Nishida called "allegiance-fickleness", which allows elderly males to maintain a key position in the group by regularly switching sides in alliances with younger males.


Cultural differences in chimpanzees

Nishida collaborated frequently with Western scientists. In 1975, he invited William McGrew and Caroline Tutin, primatologists familiar with the chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, to Mahale. They had no reason to expect major behavioural differences in the same
subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...
of chimpanzee with the same
ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...
; however, McGrew and Tutin observed the Mahale chimpanzees frequently engaging in handclasp grooming, a behavior that had not been observed in the Gombe chimpanzees. Based on their visit, McGrew and Tutin were the first to seriously question the assumption of "typical" chimpanzee behaviour, an important step towards culture studies on the great apes.


Zoopharcognosy

While at the Mahale site in the early 1970s, Nishida observed wild chimpanzees consuming
Aspilia ''Aspilia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. ''Aspilia'' is native to sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, Yemen, and tropical South America. Some authors have merged this genus with '' Wedelia'', but others maintain that more ...
leaves, which have no nutritional value and are not digested. He noticed the chimpanzees consuming them very slowly in the morning, swallowing the leaves without chewing. Nishida, along with primatologist
Richard Wrangham Richard Walter Wrangham (born 1948) is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking. ...
, published their observations of the potentially medicinal use of plants by wild chimpanzees in 1971. De Waal believes that this paper, along with later studies conducted on self-medication among animals, became the foundations of the field of
zoopharmacognosy Zoopharmacognosy is a behaviour in which non-human animals self-medication, self-medicate by selecting and Ingestion, ingesting or Topical medication, topically applying plants, soils and insects with medicinal properties, to prevent or reduc ...
, or the study of self-medication by animals through the ingestion of plants, insects, or soils.


Published works

Nishida was listed as the first author or editor on 17 books and volumes, two of which were in English. His body of work, which featured some of the first papers published in English by Japanese primatologists, often featured great attention to detail, resulting in comprehensive catalogues of behaviour patterns. His final book, ''Chimpanzees of the Lakeshore'', was published posthumously in 2012 by
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...
.


Conservation work

Nishida was a patron of the United Nations Environment Programme's Great Ape Survival project, and worked with
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
in an attempt to establish the great apes as a "World Heritage Species". In 1985, he successfully lobbied the Tanzanian government to protect the Mahale Mountains, forming the
Mahale Mountains National Park Mahale Mountains National Park (''Hifadhi ya Taifa ya Milima ya Mahale'', in Swahili) is a national park of Tanzania. The park is located on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika in Uvinza District of Kigoma Region. Named after the Mahale Mou ...
. In 1994, he founded the Mahale Wildlife Conservation Society.


Recognition

In 2008, Toshisada Nishida and primatologist Jane Goodall were made co-recipients of Leakey Prize, which recognizes accomplishments in human evolutionary science. That year, Nishida also received the International Primatological Society lifetime achievement award.


Retirement and death

In March 2004, Nishida retired from
Kyoto University , or , is a National university, national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan. The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen gra ...
. De Waal, who attended his lectures often, stated that they were "riveting, especially given the historical details of how our knowledge has grown over the years and the critical role Japanese scientists have played in modern primatology". After his retirement, Nishida stayed focused on primatology and chimpanzee conservation. In 2004, he became Director of the Japan Monkey Centre, serving as Editor-in-Chief of its journal, Primates, until his death. He made his last field trip to Mahale in the summer of 2009. In 2011, Nishida asked two of his colleagues to ensure the Mahale project would continue for at least another century.Hosaka K. (2011) ''Professor Toshisada Nishida: Chief Editor of Pan Africa News.'' Pan Africa News 18(1): 1-3. Nishida died from cancer later that year, in June 2011.


Notes


References


Attribution


External links


Mahale Wildlife Conservation Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nishida, Toshisada Primatologists Japanese mammalogists Academic staff of Kyoto University Japanese conservationists 1941 births 2011 deaths Scientists from Kyoto Prefecture