Ian Mannix
Cosmos newsroom
New York-born, London-based scientist, photographer, artist and storyteller Elodie Freymann can spend days on end deep in an untamed jungle with chimpanzees, but that’s not why she’s scared.
“I love chimpanzees and I’m terrified that we’ll lose them,” Freyman told Cosmos.
“I’m completely fascinated by chimpanzees and the fact that there are forest pharmacies and medicine cabinets. I think we need to step away from trying to learn about animals to trying to learn from them—opening up our minds to what they may know that we don’t about the natural world.
Freymann’s work was in the news this week describing how chimps use forest medicines.
Her personal website which includes her photos, films, illustrations and paper art is sub-titled: “Translating Science Through Art” and includes a book, “The Evolution of Life Across Geologic Time” which is bound in an edition of 25 with gold-foil covers.
In 2019 Freymann took a break from the film world, where she worked as an art director, assistant producer, and freelance graphic designer, to begin a MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
“I liked it so much I stayed on for a PhD. My research focused on how wild chimpanzees self-medicate with medicinal plants. This brought together my interests in primatology, botany, social anthropology, filmmaking, scientific illustration, and conservation.
“Over the course of 9 months living in Uganda’s Budongo Forest, I worked with 2 communities of wild chimpanzees, following them each day, recording their behaviours, and learning as much as I could about the ecology of their habitats.
“I also conducted a series of ethnomedicinal interviews with traditional healers, and collected plants for pharmacological testing.
“For my upcoming project based at Brown University, I’ll be traveling to the Peruvian Amazon to study self-medication amongst the animals there (no chimps this time sadly). I’m still in the fundraising phase for that expedition.”
Freymann admits she has been obsessed by primates.
“As a kid, my nickname was Monkey. My obsession with chimpanzees specifically came after learning about the work of Dr Jane Goodall – an inspiration to so many.
“When you spend time with chimpanzees you really get to know them personally. Each and every one has a name and has a completely distinct personality. Some are shy, some are boisterous, some are goofy. I miss them when I’m away. How could you not? They’re amazing!”
To be inspired about primate research is one thing, doing it can be difficult. To collect videos and behavioural data can require spending all day in the forest.
“This work can absolutely be hard at times, but it’s worth it 100%. You definitely have to be used to being away from home for long periods, and living in the middle of a forest, but as someone who grew up in a busy city, I very much love the peace of the forest. I always do my best thinking doing fieldwork and have time to do offline hobbies like painting and reading.
“Together with incredible field staff who work full time at the station, we find the chimpanzees and follow them all day, writing what they do and how they behave.
“For this study, I was looking specifically for injured or wounded chimpanzees and taking note of anytime they interacted with their wounds. For other studies, I have focused more on their diets or the plants they are choosing to eat.
“I think the chimpanzees I study have it pretty good compared to some other groups, but there are still vulnerabilities. For one, there’s always the risk that the chimpanzees will lose their habitat to logging or deforestation. This is something we need to pre-emptively protect.
“There’s also the risk that they could get sick from human-borne pathogens, but if they have access to wild medicines they may be able to protect themselves. Even still, we have to make sure we give chimpanzees the freedom and space to live in their natural habitats without anthropogenic threats, and to protect their wild spaces.”
Above: put yourself into the Ugandan jungle with Elodie Freymann (Supplied)
Of course, there is always the eternal search for funding to enable her to travel to remote field stations.“A lot of the research I’ve published so far came out of my PhD at the University of Oxford. In addition to the funding I got from the University for my studies, I also did a lot of grant writing and was able to win some external grants to do my fieldwork.
“The Explorers Club, for example, is a great place to look for grant funding and provided me with the some of the money to do my second field season. Now that I’ve finished my PhD I work as a post-doc, and do grant writing to raise funds.
“Across my work I strive to blend the worlds of science and art to communicate complex ideas through visually engaging mediums. Specifically, I am interested in documenting stories about how people interact and co-exist with the flora and fauna around them – and how anthropogenic disturbances are disrupting these symbiotic relationships.”
Chimpanzees talk like you and me
