Chimps Found Making Own Weapons to Hunt for Food 410
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."
Very interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)
Should have the DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2006.12.042 [doi.org] 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 [auckland.ac.nz].
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZnsO2ZgWo [youtube.com]
looks like an animal crafting a tool to me.
More about this here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/crow/ [sciencemag.org]
Cheers,
Rob
Not really news (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't make a monkey out of me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Forgetful crows building tools (Score:3, Interesting)
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. (Score:2, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
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... (Score:3, Interesting)
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??
Re:But from where... (Score:1, Interesting)
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Now the twist to the story...
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.