Tai

Declared in 1972 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, Taï protects one of the last great fragments of primary rainforest surviving anywhere in West Africa, a region where clearance for farming has removed more than 80% of the original forest cover in the past century. It is celebrated in primatology for the research begun in the 1970s by the Swiss scientists Christophe and Hedwige Boesch, who documented here the sophisticated use of stone tools by wild chimpanzees to crack nuts — a cultural behaviour passed down the generations that is still studied as some of the clearest evidence of non-human cultural tradition. The park is also one of the last refuges of the pygmy hippopotamus, a far shyer and more forest-dwelling animal than its common relative, and listed as endangered.