Chimps Found Making Own Weapons to Hunt for Food

Pojut writes "The Washington Post has an article involving chimps and weapons. Apparently, there have been direct observations of chimps in the west African savannah modifying sticks to create spears. They then use these spears to kill small mammals and eat them. It is the first time that an animal other than a human has been directly observed in crafting a weapon for the purpose of hunting or killing."

Comments

Very interesting.

[GrumpySimon]

The paper's really interesting, it's currently in press in Current Biology. Abstract:

Although tool use is known to occur in species ranging from naked mole rats to owls, chimpanzees are the most accomplished tool users. The modification and use of tools during hunting, however, is still considered to be a uniquely human trait among primates. Here, we report the first account of habitual tool use during vertebrate hunting by nonhumans. At the Fongoli site in Senegal, we observed ten different chimpanzees use tools to hunt prosimian prey in 22 bouts.

        This includes immature chimpanzees and females, members of age-sex classes not normally characterized by extensive hunting behavior. Chimpanzees made 26 different tools, and we were able to recover and analyze 12 of these. Tool construction entailed up to five steps, including trimming the tool tip to a point. Tools were used in the manner of a spear, rather than a probe or rousing tool. This new information on chimpanzee tool use has important implications for the evolution of tool use and construction for hunting in the earliest hominids, especially given our observations that females and immature chimpanzees exhibited this behavior more frequently than adult males.

Should have the DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2006.12.042 when it's published (it's NOT active yet - give it some time).

However, from a quick reading of the paper, this seems to be a simple extension of the ant-nest probing behavior (i.e. jam a stick into a nest and feed off the ants/termites that rush out). What *is* interesting is that the chimps appear to have crafted these tools through a number of steps (which is uncommon, AFAIK, the only other animal to do this is the New Caledonian Crow.

Re:Yeah

[rilister]

The birds are in on it too: this totally blew me away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo
looks like an animal crafting a tool to me.

More about this here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/crow/

Cheers,
Rob

Not really news

[6-tew]

I attended a lectured about this in first year Physical Anthropology... nearly ten years ago. But then in an evolutionary sense that's a ridiculously small span of time so I guess you could call it new. Kind of like the ice receding back to the poles. Fear not Mr. Heston, the ages won't be trying to take the gun from your "cold, dead hand" for a little while.

Re:But from where...

[DigiShaman]

You know the ol saying. "Monkey see, monkey do."

Making a weapon requires foresight into the possible effects they may have. I seriously doubt chimps have such cognitive skills. I'm willing to be it was learned behavior from another chimp, where the original chimp was a pet that learned it from a tribe's man.

Re:Don't make a monkey out of me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I made my own fishing pole in high school. Several of my co-students made their own muzzle-loaders instead, though I doubt they actually used them for hunting. I caught and ate my own fish with that pole.

Forgetful crows building tools

[Harmonious Botch]

I recommend taking P's advice: watch the video. It is fascinating. But in the follow up article that P also mentions, they note that in 10 subsequent tests the crow did the same thing 9 times. Not 10.
So, having solved the problem, the crow forgets how to do it once? That is wierd. It suggests that the crow has the ability to figure out things like this, but cannot store the knowledge very well. My interpretation of this is that it is a better survival trait to for the crow to invest in problem solving brain cells rather than memory.

Re:It's not just the chimps.

[nickheart]

Well, chimps were documented using sticks as tools in December 2001. With more research i'm sure you could find earlier examples

Your point about other animals using TOOLS is not interesting, it's changing those TOOLS into WEAPONS that is only an ape/chimp(/human) trait.

Re:But from where...

[nbritton]

"I would like to know if this is a learned behavior from an outside source or if this is simply something they have discovered on their own."

I think they discovered it on their own, think about it:
Mammalia -> Primates -> Hominoidea -> Hominidae -> Homininae -> Hominini -> Pan -> Pan Troglodytes (Chimpanzee)
Mammalia -> Primates -> Hominoidea -> Hominidae -> Homininae -> Hominini -> Homo -> Homo Sapiens (Human)

We are so close to Chimpanzee's that a human/ape hybrid is possible without the help of genetic manipulation, i.e. wear a condom if your that desperate. It's believed that the Pan/Homo split happened about 6 million years ago some where in Africa.

So the question really is... 6 million years into the future will Pan Troglodytes be as smart as current day Homo Sapiens?

Re:But from where...

[OldManAndTheC]

Well, the article does say that the difference is the "crafting" aspect -- the chimps were observed to strip the leaves off of the twigs and sharpen them, thus "fashioning" weapons as opposed to using what comes to hand.

I'd think this would get boring after a while. Crafting tools and killing defenseless little creatures -- are they trying to level up, or what?? :)