Trauma, degenerative disease, and other pathologies among the Gombe chimpanzees

The well-known and extremely well-documented chimpanzees from Gombe National Park were analyzed for presence of skeletal pathologies. Of the 15 animals available for study, 11 were old and complete enough to permit systematic analysis. Of these, 10 showed some evidence of skeletal pathological involvement. The most common type of lesion seen resulted from trauma. Those chimps with the most fractures (Old Female, 3; Flo, 4; Hugo, 8) are consistently the oldest individuals in the sample. In addition to accidental falls, the most common cause of trauma was from interpersonal violence, resulting in bite wounds (see in two individuals) and fractures (see in three individuals). Conversely to trauma, degenerative disease was exceedingly rare in this population, found in no large intervertebral joints (N = 344) and only two major synovial joints (N = 186). In fact, the complete lack of osteophytosis, even in older individuals, stands in stark contrast to the situation seen in modern humans, perhaps in our species reflecting a biomechanical cost of bipedality.