Wild Gorillas Impress With Their Tools

fatgav writes "The BBC is running an article about wild gorillas being seen to use tools in the wild. It is especially significant as not only have Gorillas never been seen to use tools, but they have been using them in a way unlike other great apes. From the article: 'The most astonishing thing is that we have observed them using tools not for obtaining food, but for postural support.' The scientists are getting excited as it can help to explain questions as to how the most advanced great ape (us) came to evolve."

Comments

Baboons

[HermanAB]

I have seen baboons open doors, open garbage cans, whack things with sticks, whack shellfish with rocks - and baboons are held to be less intelligent than other great apes.

Possibility

[xgamer04]

Maybe they saw humans (or some other 'higher' ape) using tools? I dunno, it's a possibility, right?

Re:Possibility

[Ieshan]

Probably ought to go back to Thorndike.

In any display of anything classified as "animal intelligence", animal modeling is usually not the answer. There was once a widely believed anecdote from Romanes about a group of mice who, after watching humans load up boats filled with things and paddle across rivers, would do the same with small blocks of wood and tiny paddles. No, seriously. Ridiculous, right? Right.

Ape Tales

[Doc Ruby]

I can't find the article in Google now, but I remember about 5 years ago reading about ape tribes exhibiting "written language" behavior. As I recall, apes would set out from their tribe's collective sleeping place to find food in nearby forest. After they found some, they'd return, breaking twigs along their path. Other apes in their tribe could follow the "signs" back to the food later. But apes of other tribes couldn't recognize the signs. The apes apparently learned to interpret the signs in their own tribal language, but not others.

Now they're seen using walking sticks. Perhaps we'll find that apes use the sticks in different styles, and that some styles are learned by watching other apes. What would we look for to discover that some of that learning is derived from the marks made by the sticks, rather than watching a stick-using ape "in person"? If we found those records, would we have discovered "ape fashion magazines"?

Re:But... Genetically designed by space aliens?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not to offend those who place great faith in the omnicient Flying Spagetti Monster.

But is it possible that we are unique because we were genetically engineered by an intelligent alien race? Maybe despite evolution, humans had a little help, and what if... What if the evolutionary process is reversed? What if the monkeys are genetic mutations of us? or Continued experimentation by our hypothetical space brothers and sisters derived from human genetics, and not the reverse, as is commonly believed?

I'm not saying I know, or have proof. Just here's another angle to contemplate.

Hopefully substantive

[John Hawks]

The interesting thing about gorillas is that they make tools quite readily in captivity, but hadn't yet been observed to use them in the wild. This would imply that their toolmaking facility was not actually a product of adaptation for toolmaking in their natural habitat.

We could entertain a couple of hypotheses about this. Perhaps all apes share a common toolmaking ability shared from our common ancestors, which now is used in some lineages (humans, chimpanzees) but not extensively in others (gorillas). Or, which I think more likely, ape tool use draws upon other cognitive adaptations that are related to social learning and interactions, and actually using tools is a sometimes-beneficial side effect.

In a related story this week, a group of experimenters found that chimpanzee social learning involves imitation of the techniques observed from other individuals, instead of merely copying the goals of those individuals. Chimps are conformists, in other words.

From my weblog:

Using this procedure, the experimenters introduced a device that would vend food to the chimpanzees. The device could be worked in either of two ways: by using a stick to lift a hook, or by using the same stick to poke a flap. The workings of the device inside are not visible from the outside, although both lifting and poking are always available to the chimpanzee using the device.

The question is, when chimpanzees learn extractive foraging techniques, how much of the learning is direct imitation of the techniques they see others doing, and how much is emulative learning by individual experimentation?

The results showed that even when the chimpanzees experimented with the apparatus themselves and learned both ways to get the food, they still tended to adopt the method that predominated in their group. I would guess that this trend toward learning the techniques in the group is important for learning social roles and interactions with other individuals.

--John

Re:Worst... Title... EVAR... +Some real facts

[lawpoop]

Well, this makes sense. With Gorillas, one dominant male controls a whole harem of females. He doesn't necessarily impregnate them all, but he certainly controls who mates with them. Because male gorillas don't have to compete with one another as far as mating (they only compete in 'tough man' competitions to control harems), they have small penises, testicles, and sperm counts, relative to their promiscuous human and chimpanzee cousins.

In the instance described above, it sounds like the female wanted to ensure that she got the little bit of sperm that the dominant male was producing, and that no other female got it.