The antiquity of the tools suggests that chimpanzee tool-making has been passed from chimpanzee to chimpanzee for more than 200 generations, the authors write.
In excavations in the Taï rainforest, researchers have uncovered a trail of stone tools that are the first prehistoric evidence of a chimpanzee tool-kit, according to a report published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Chimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions.
After noting that chimpanzees' "tool kits" are now known to include 20 items, Dr. McGrew casually mentions that they're used for "various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance".
This analysis replicates the species differences observed in both the tools and causality scale and the theory of mind scale (theory of mind: F1,63 = 9.962, p = 0.002, bonobos > chimpanzees; tools and causality: F1,63 = 15.891, p<0.001, chimpanzees > bonobos).
When you first reported chimp tool use, Dr. Leakey declared, "We must now redefine man, redefine tool or accept chimpanzees as human!" Did that ever happen? A. It's never happened.
It is only in the great apes that there is strong evidence of organizational complexity in what are apparently learned traditions (chimpanzee: in tool-use [33], [34], [35] and with plant foods [36]; orangutan: in tool-use [37], [38] and with plant foods [39]; gorilla: with plant foods [40], [41], [42]).
Ultimately, eight of the nine chimpanzees used tools to obtain the juice and they adopted 15 different kinds of tools over the course of the 31 sessions.
Sex? Chimpanzees have tools for sex?
