Bossou is a tiny village with an enormous reputation: at the foot of the Nimba Mountains, in Forest Guinea, lives one of the most famous communities of wild chimpanzees in the world. Famous because these apes use tools — stones as hammer and anvil to crack nuts, leaves as sponges to drink — and because they have been studied for almost half a century by scientists who have turned Bossou into a unique window onto the minds of our closest relatives.
But Bossou is not just an open-air laboratory. It is also a moving example of coexistence: the Manon people consider the chimpanzees sacred totem animals and have protected them for generations in the forests around the village, including a sacred forest. That alliance between local tradition and international science has allowed the chimpanzees to survive, although today the community is small and fragile, and its future uncertain.
This guide explains what makes the chimpanzees of Bossou so special, how to organise a respectful visit from Nzérékoré and Lola, which rules to follow so as not to harm the animals, how to combine Bossou with the Nimba Mountains and what to expect from a remote and sensitive destination. It is one of the most unusual nature experiences in all of West Africa.
Bossou is a Manon village in Forest Guinea, at the foot of Nimba, whose modern history revolves around its chimpanzees. The Manon people revere them as totem animals and have protected them by tradition in their sacred forests; on that basis, in 1976 an international scientific research programme began — led by Japanese primatologists — that revealed to the world that these chimpanzees use stones as tools, a key discovery for understanding animal 'culture' and the origins of human technology. In 2001 the Bossou Environmental Research Institute (IREB) was created. On our history page we tell the story of the relationship between the Manon and the chimpanzees, the long scientific study and why this community of apes is in danger today.
Read the full history ↓The green southeast of the Toma, Kissi and Guerzé peoples, with sacred forests and masks, UNESCO-listed Mount Nimba and the chimpanzees of Bossou; this is where the 2014 Ebola outbreak began.
Read the history of Forest Guinea →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Bossou is a small village in Forest Guinea, in the far south-east of the country, tucked at the foot of the Nimba Mountains and a stone's throw from the border with Liberia. Surrounded by wooded hills and farmland, at first glance it looks like just another hamlet in the region, home mainly to the Manon people, forest farmers who grow rice, cassava, coffee and oil palm.
What makes Bossou exceptional can't be seen at first glance: the forests around the village are home to a community of wild chimpanzees that has turned this remote corner into a well-known name in scientific circles around the world. It is one of the very few places where great apes and humans have shared the same territory, in relative harmony, for generations.
The key to this coexistence lies in local culture. For the Manon of Bossou, chimpanzees are not just any animals, nor game to be hunted, but special beings, linked to the ancestors and protected by tradition. That belief, later joined by scientific research, is what has allowed the chimpanzees of Bossou to survive to this day.
The relationship between the Manon of Bossou and their chimpanzees is one of the most remarkable examples in the world of culture-based conservation. According to local tradition, chimpanzees are totem animals, sacred beings linked to the community's ancestors, which is why hunting or harming them is forbidden. In this worldview, killing a chimpanzee would be almost like attacking a relative or an ancestor.
This traditional protection is reinforced by a sacred forest in Bossou, a patch of jungle set aside by the community's beliefs, where the chimpanzees find shelter and food. Sacred forests, so typical of all of Forest Guinea, serve a double purpose here, both spiritual and ecological: they are places of worship and genuine reserves of biodiversity at the same time.
Thanks to this alliance between faith and nature, the chimpanzees of Bossou were able to survive in a region where, elsewhere, great apes have been decimated by hunting and deforestation. It is a powerful reminder that conservation doesn't always come from laws or national parks: sometimes it grows out of the culture and beliefs of local communities.
In 1976, Bossou opened up to science. Drawn by this protected and accessible chimpanzee community, primatologists, above all from the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan, with figures such as Tetsuro Matsuzawa, began a long-term study that continues to this day and has made Bossou one of the most important places on the planet for understanding great ape behaviour.
The headline discovery was tool use. The chimpanzees of Bossou crack the very hard nuts of the oil palm by placing them on a stone that serves as an anvil and striking them with another stone that serves as a hammer, carefully choosing the stones by shape and hardness. They also make 'sponges' by crushing leaves to soak up water from tree hollows, use stems to fish for ants and sticks to extract honey or palm pith. The young learn these techniques by watching the adults for years: it is, in every sense, cultural transmission.
These discoveries have had an enormous impact: they show that making and selectively using stone tools is not exclusive to humans, and they help us picture what the first hominins might have been like when, millions of years ago, they started striking stones. Recent research in Bossou even compares the way these chimpanzees choose their stones with that of the hominins of the Oldowan culture. To consolidate this work, the Bossou Environmental Research Institute (IREB) was set up in 2001, devoted to primatology, botany, zoology and environmental sciences.
Despite its fame and its traditional protection, the chimpanzee community of Bossou is very small today and its future is uncertain. Over the decades the group has dwindled for a number of reasons: the ageing and death of key individuals, a lack of new births, disease (including outbreaks that have hit the group) and, above all, isolation. The Bossou forest became cut off from the great Nimba massif by deforested and farmed land, which stops new chimpanzees arriving from the reserve and leads to dangerous inbreeding.
To try to reverse this, scientists and communities have promoted a 'green corridor': a reforestation project aimed at reconnecting the Bossou forest with the Nimba forest, so that the chimpanzees can move between the two again and the population can be strengthened. It is a race against time, because every individual that dies without offspring brings the community closer to the point of no return.
The Guinean press has even spoken of 'the last chimpanzees of Bossou' disappearing in silence, a dramatic reminder of how fragile this treasure is. Pressure from farming, deforestation and, on the horizon, the large mining projects of Nimba add further uncertainty. Bossou is at once a symbol of hope, through coexistence and science, and of alarm over the disappearance of great apes in Africa.
For travellers, Bossou offers one of the most unusual nature experiences in West Africa: the chance to walk through the forest in search of a world-famous community of wild chimpanzees, guided by local people and as part of a research and conservation project. It isn't a show or a zoo: it is a delicate encounter with free animals, on their own ground.
That's why the visit comes with strict rules designed to protect them: keep your distance, stay quiet, don't eat near them, don't use flash and, above all, don't go near them if you're ill, because chimpanzees are extremely vulnerable to human viruses. Following these rules isn't a formality: it's the difference between helping their conservation and putting them at risk.
Visiting Bossou, and combining it with the nearby Nimba reserve, is also a way of supporting local communities and chimpanzee protection, since part of what you pay goes to both. It's a destination for mindful travellers who are willing to go a long way, walk through the jungle and approach, with humility, some evolutionary relatives who, in this corner of Guinea, show us how much we have in common.
