Gabon Its fauna seen by a camera trap What diversity!

My wife and I 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. We are neither scientists nor veterinarians nor primatologists nor photographers. Our first videos posted on our YouTube channel, ten years ago, essentially showed wildlife "walking" in front of the lenses of our trap cameras equipped with motion detectors: The crossing of an elephant in front of a trap camera lens for about five seconds is not particularly interesting, except as in this case of a slide show showing the diversity of wildlife moving in front of the single trap!
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. 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 huge 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 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 different and distorted behaviors 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 behavior 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.
Keep watching my homemade videos (170 pieces) that I put online on my channel and read the description attached to each one of them. You will know very interesting explanations about animal reactions front of my mirrors in the jungle and share its link with your friends: https://www.youtube.com/XHB06400CANNES/videos

Видео Gabon Its fauna seen by a camera trap What diversity! канала Xavier HUBERT-BRIERRE