Xavier HUBERT-BRIERRE

Why have we set up large mirrors and camera traps in Gabon's jungle? Read the attached description

*This is how we came up with the idea of setting up huge mirrors in the Gabonese rainforest:* My wife and I are neither scientists nor veterinarians nor primatologists nor photographers. *We wanted to thank Gabon, which has welcomed our family for more than 35 years (in the retail sector), to show on YouTube the diversity of the fauna of this beautiful country and to make Internet users want to visit it.* Our first videos posted on our YouTube channel essentially showed wildlife "passing" in front of the lenses of our trap cameras equipped with motion detectors: The passage of an elephant in front of the objective of a trap for about twenty seconds is not particularly interesting. On the other hand, a video of young elephants playing in a river while adults are quenching their thirst is much more enjoyable to watch. https://youtu.be/4XFgRkSaeTs Elephant calves have fun during a creek crossing (Gabon jungle). To find such "spots" it is advisable to get further away from the path used by the few 4x4 vehicles of Nyonié, to go deeper into the forest and to walk in the beds of creeks and small rivers. This is not safe, especially when you are old and becoming partially deaf. Fortunately my wife has a very accurate hearing. To progress more easily in the forest, animals use this off-road trail, without vines, bushes, brambles and trees mixed on the ground because of the very numerous tornadoes in this region on the Equator line. We came up with the idea of placing very large mirrors at the end of a long straight line of an off-road track to catch their eyes and "block" them in front of their image. We have also placed other mirrors under trees where numerous animals appreciate the fruits. At other locations in the middle of the forest it would have been very lucky for animals to meet their reflection. Our use of mirrors has been of great interest to primatologists, including members of the PSG, not the Paris Saint Germain football club, but the Primate Specialists Group, who have only been able to study self-recognition in a mirror in great apes in laboratories with captive animals or animals born in captivity, used to contact with humans. These animals did not have to search for food, defend their families against other congeners and predators, sometimes imitating humans, and therefore had very different distorted behaviours from primates living in complete freedom with their group or family in a remote area of Gabon's forest. Our cameras have highlighted a very particular behaviour among chimpanzees in the Nyonié region and resulted in a scientific publication, "Reflections in rainforest mirrors facilitate behavioral observations of wild chimpanzees Primates n°58 2017-01". On our two following videos this behavior is filmed: https://youtu.be/ttMGcLrQ12E (Rump-Rump Rubbing in Chimpanzees = anti-stress effect? A social behavior ever observed previously) and https://youtu.be/4vliTnJ7Olo (scared chimps reassure themselves with pseudo-copulation and rump-to-rump contacts front of mirror). This is how, incidentally in wild animals, we discovered and became interested in their self-recognition in our large mirrors. *In animals as in humans, self recognition in a mirror is not innate.* It is the result of the more comfortable training in the mirror at home among young humans in the company of their parents who have done this training and who have the words to explain to their young child the properties of the mirror. To do this training, one must be exposed to one's reflection many times and examine it quietly: one's face, body and the gestures (attitudes) it copies. This learning in the mirror can last several weeks and it is only around the age of 2 years that the young human understands that in the mirror it is not a play partner who makes the same movements as he does. An adult human, facing a mirror for the first time in his life, while unaware of its properties and even its existence, would also behave irrationally. Watch https://youtu.be/cG87HaiO9Ys?t=364 Toulambis tribe in Papua New Guinea Among primates, in the insecurity of the jungle learning with his parents who have not done this and who do not speak, this is much more difficult even for intelligent individuals. *While mirror training can be successful in some blackback gorillas (females, adolescents and children),* after a long practice in mirror in laboratory as in wild, it is *compromised among silverbacks* where looking another silverback, or its reflection, straight in the eyes is a sign of defiance, an attitude that these peaceful males avoid. *After many years of encountering these mirrors, this silverback has still learned that a silverback reflection does not present the slightest danger for him* *Please read the description attached to each of my 180 videos published on my YouTube channel you will know very interesting informations about animals reactions front of my mirrors in the jungle* https://www.youtube.com/XHB06400CANNES/videos