13 Facts About Toshisada Nishida

Toshisada Nishida was a Japanese primatologist who established one of the first long term chimpanzee field research sites.

Toshisada Nishida was the first to discover that chimpanzees, instead of forming nuclear family-like arrangements, live a communal life with territorial boundaries.

Toshisada Nishida studied Japanese macaques with Imanishi from 1963 to 1965 before traveling to Tanzania to study chimpanzees.

Toshisada Nishida's team planted sugarcane to attract the chimpanzees, who began to consistently visit the site after only six months.

Toshisada 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.

Kalunde played a game that Toshisada 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.

Toshisada Nishida noticed the chimpanzees consuming them very slowly in the morning, swallowing the leaves without chewing.

Toshisada Nishida was listed as the first author or editor on 17 books and volumes, two of which were in English.

Toshisada Nishida was a patron of the United Nations Environment Programme's Great Ape Survival project, and worked with UNESCO in an attempt to establish the great apes as a "World Heritage Species".

That year, Toshisada Nishida received the International Primatological Society lifetime achievement award.

Toshisada Nishida made his last field trip to Mahale in the summer of 2009.

In 2011, Toshisada Nishida asked two of his colleagues to ensure the Mahale project would continue for at least another century.

Toshisada Nishida died from cancer later that year, in June 2011.