Chimpanzee Research in Budongo Forest
Most visitors come to Budongo Forest for an hour with wild chimpanzees. Fewer realise they are stepping into one of the longest-running chimpanzee research sites on the continent — a working field station whose findings have reshaped how science understands animal culture, communication and even the roots of human medicine.
This guide looks past the trek itself to the science behind it. It covers the Budongo Conservation Field Station, the two chimpanzee communities it follows, the landmark discoveries made here, the conservation work that keeps the forest intact, and how decades of patient study quietly underpin the tourism you experience today.
The Budongo Conservation Field Station
The station was founded in 1990 by the British anthropologist Professor Vernon Reynolds, who had first visited Budongo to study its chimpanzees back in 1962. Alarmed by reports that infants were being captured in the forest, he set up the Budongo Forest Project to establish whether a viable population survived at all.
The project took over an old sawmill site abandoned during the Idi Amin years, renovating the timber workers’ houses into laboratories and dormitories. Over the following five years researchers gradually habituated a chimpanzee community, and observation has continued more or less unbroken ever since. In 2007 the project gained Ugandan NGO status and was renamed the Budongo Conservation Field Station (BCFS). Today it employs more than 40 Ugandan nationals and sits at the northern tip of the Albertine Rift, within the wider Murchison Falls Conservation Area.
Two Communities: Sonso and Waibira
Research centres on two neighbouring communities of eastern chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). The Sonso community, named after a nearby river, has been studied continuously since the mid-1990s and is thoroughly habituated. The larger Waibira community was opened for study more recently, giving scientists a rare chance to compare two groups living side by side in the same forest.
That side-by-side arrangement is scientifically precious. Because the two groups share almost identical habitat, any differences in their behaviour are more likely to reflect learning and tradition than ecology — a natural experiment in what researchers cautiously call chimpanzee culture.
Landmark Findings: Tools, Sponges and Culture
Budongo’s chimpanzees are unusual in that they use no stick or stone tools. Instead their repertoire revolves around leaves. To drink from tree hollows they fashion leaf sponges, folding and chewing leaves into an absorbent wad — a behaviour that becomes far more common in the dry season, when even a rainforest group faces water shortage.
The most celebrated discovery came in 2011, when a Sonso male named Nick was filmed making a sponge from moss at a mineral-rich clay pit. Within six days seven more chimpanzees had copied him, and others began reusing sponges left behind by their companions. Neither behaviour had been seen in over twenty years of watching the group. Using social network analysis, researchers showed that this spread was best explained by social learning rather than individual invention — direct, real-time evidence that wild chimpanzees learn new tools from one another. Follow-up experiments even suggested the animals recognise that moss sponges hold more liquid than leaf ones, hinting at the kind of functional comparison thought to underpin cumulative culture.
A Chimpanzee Pharmacy
Budongo has also become a leading site for the study of self-medication. A 2024 investigation led by the University of Oxford combined health monitoring of 51 chimpanzees with pharmacological testing of the plants they ate. Injured or sick individuals were observed seeking out foods of little nutritional value but notable bioactivity.
Laboratory tests found real medicinal potential in these choices. Bark and dead wood from species such as Alstonia boonei and Khaya anthotheca showed strong antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activity, and chimpanzees with wounds, respiratory symptoms or parasite loads were seen feeding on exactly these items. It remains the most detailed evidence yet that wild apes may deliberately treat their own ailments — with obvious interest for human drug discovery.
Talking Chimps and the Origins of Language
Budongo has produced some of the most influential work on chimpanzee communication. Studies by Katie Slocombe, Klaus Zuberbühler and colleagues presented the animals with a model python and recorded their alarm calls. The chimpanzees did not simply react in fright: they called more when close friends arrived, monitored their audience with gaze alternation, and kept calling only until the others were safe.
These are hallmarks of intentional, goal-directed signalling — qualities once thought unique to gesture. The findings challenged the idea that ape vocalisations are involuntary and lent weight to the view that human language has a shared vocal and gestural origin. Related work here has explored how the two communities differ in hunting: Sonso overwhelmingly prey on guereza colobus monkeys, while Waibira take a broader range including red duiker, differences that again point to socially transmitted tradition.
Conservation: Snares, Goats and Collaboration
Research at Budongo has always gone hand in hand with protection. Wire snares set for antelope maim and kill chimpanzees, so in 2002 BCFS launched a snare removal programme staffed largely by reformed hunters, whose bush skills make them expert at finding traps. A veterinary team treats snared animals and also cares for local livestock.
Recognising that hunting is often driven by poverty, the station pioneered a livelihoods scheme in 2009, providing breeding goats to former poachers in exchange for a pledge to abandon illegal forest use. The work is sustained by long partnerships with the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, Oakland Zoo and universities including Oxford, York, St Andrews and others whose researchers pass through each year, producing hundreds of scientific papers.
How Research Underpins Your Visit
The trek you can book today exists because of this science. Habituation — the years of gentle daily contact that allow chimpanzees to feed and rest calmly near people — is a research achievement first and a tourism product second. The trackers who radio your ranger with the group’s overnight position are the same field staff who gather behavioural data.
Tourism, in turn, helps fund the station and the forest’s protection. It is a genuinely reciprocal relationship, and one reason a morning at Budongo feels more grounded than a typical wildlife encounter. For the practicalities, see our guides to chimpanzee trekking in Budongo and the full-day chimpanzee habituation experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can ordinary visitors take part in the research?
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Not directly, but the habituation experience lets you spend a full day shadowing a semi-habituated group alongside field staff, which is the closest a traveller gets to the research routine. Genuine data collection is reserved for trained personnel to keep it rigorous and to protect the animals.
- Can students or scientists work at the station?
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Yes. BCFS regularly hosts national and international researchers and student placements, with on-site accommodation and laboratory facilities. Applications are made directly to the station rather than through a safari operator.
- How long has research run here?
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Continuously since 1990, making Budongo one of the longest-running chimpanzee study sites in Africa, with the Sonso community habituated across the mid-1990s.
- Is the research site the same as the tourist trekking site?
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They are closely linked but distinct. Tourist trekking is centred on Kaniyo Pabidi, while the core research station lies elsewhere in the same forest. Both benefit from decades of shared knowledge.
Plan Your Safari
A visit to Budongo lets you walk in the footsteps of a landmark scientific effort while supporting the forest that makes it possible. Explore our Budongo Forest guide and best places to see primates, then browse our Murchison Falls safari packages and we will arrange permits, park fees and expert guiding around this remarkable research forest.