Notice: This is the official website of the All Empires History Community (Reg. 10 Feb 2002)

  FAQ FAQ  Forum Search   Register Register  Login Login

Chimpanzees observed making spears for hunting

 Post Reply Post Reply
Author
vulkan02 View Drop Down
Arch Duke
Arch Duke
Avatar
Termythinator

Joined: 27-Apr-2005
Location: U$A
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 1835
  Quote vulkan02 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Chimpanzees observed making spears for hunting
    Posted: 12-Mar-2007 at 15:57
Chimpanzees 'hunt using spears'
Chimp%20tool%20%20%20Image:%20Current%20Biology
Chimps sharpened the spears with their teeth
Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers documented 22 cases of chimps fashioning tools to jab at smaller primates sheltering in cavities of hollow branches or tree trunks.

The report's authors, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani, said the finding could have implications for human evolution.

Chimps had not been previously observed hunting other animals with tools.

Pruetz and Bertolani made the discovery at their research site in Fongoli, Senegal, between March 2005 and July 2006.

"There were hints that this behaviour might occur, but it was one time at a different site," said Jill Pruetz, assistant professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, US.

"While in Senegal for the spring semester, I saw about 13 different hunting bouts. So it really is habitual."

Jabbing weapon

Chimpanzees were observed jabbing the spears into hollow trunks or branches, over and over again. After the chimp removed the tool, it would frequently smell or lick it.

In the vast majority of cases, the chimps used the tools in the manner of a spear, not as probes. The researchers say they were using enough force to injure an animal that may have been hiding inside.

However, they did not photograph the behaviour, or capture it on film.

Senegal%20chimp%20%20%20Image:%20Iowa%20State%20University
Adolescent females exhibited the behaviour most frequently (Image: M Gaspersic)
In one case, Pruetz and Bertolani, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge, UK, witnessed a chimpanzee extract a bushbaby with a spear.

In most cases, the Fongoli chimpanzees carried out four or more steps to manufacture spears for hunting.

In all but one of the cases, chimps broke off a living branch to make their tool. They would then trim the side branches and leaves.

In a number of cases, chimps also trimmed the ends of the branch and stripped it of bark. Some chimps also sharpened the tip of the tool with their teeth.

Female lead

Adult males have long been regarded as the hunters in chimp groups.

But the authors of the paper in Current Biology said females, particularly adolescent females, and young chimps in general were seen exhibiting this behaviour more frequently than adult males.

"It's classic in primates that when there is a new innovation, particularly in terms of tool use, the younger generations pick it up very quickly. The last ones to pick up are adults, mainly the males," said Dr Pruetz, who led the National Geographic Society-funded project.

This is because young chimps pick the skill up from their mothers, with whom they spend a lot of their time.

"It's a niche that males seem to ignore," Dr Pruetz told BBC News.

Many areas where chimpanzees live are also home to the red colobus monkey, which the chimps hunt. However, the Senegal site is lacking in this species, so chimps may have needed to adopt a new hunting strategy to catch a different prey - bushbaby.

The authors conclude that their findings support a theory that females may have played a similarly important role in the evolution of tool technology among early humans.
The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief - Le Bon
Destroy first and construction will look after itself - Mao
Back to Top
pekau View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar
Atlantean Prophet

Joined: 08-Oct-2006
Location: Korea, South
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3335
  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Mar-2007 at 21:34
They also use the stick with sticky saliva or other sticky substances to get the ants out of their hole... clever creatures, really. Reminds me of a nice novel about how neuroscience restructured chimpanzees so that they are not only intelligent, but they have souls as well.
     
   
Join us.
Back to Top
red clay View Drop Down
Administrator
Administrator
Avatar
Tomato Master Emeritus

Joined: 14-Jan-2006
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 10226
  Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Mar-2007 at 22:27
Wake me up when they are seen using chainsaws.
 
And how sure are you that they don't have souls now[if there is such a thing]
"Arguing with someone who hates you or your ideas, is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter what move you make, your opponent will walk all over the board and scramble the pieces".
Unknown.
Back to Top
pekau View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar
Atlantean Prophet

Joined: 08-Oct-2006
Location: Korea, South
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3335
  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Mar-2007 at 22:31
Red clay, wake up. Wink
     
   
Join us.
Back to Top
Knights View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar
suspended

Joined: 23-Oct-2006
Location: AUSTRALIA
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3224
  Quote Knights Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Mar-2007 at 05:41
Yes, I've heard about this. Very intelligent creatures chimpanzees...(dolphins are more intelligent!)...A major factor of their intelligence is their ability and 'want' to mimic humans and other animals/chimps - quite amazing actually. If one chimp finds something beneficial to do or make, others follow, and eventually a culture is created. (Culture are mimicked or learned habits spreading among a population in this case).
Pekau is right about the sticks. Chimps lick twigs and insert them into ant/termite nests to extract honey. The same method is used for probing honey stores (bee hives) in tree trunks.
One of the most fascinating feats of intelligence and teamwork I have seen displayed in a primate, is actually by a monkey rather than an ape - the Capuchin monkey. Living in central America means that they are vulnerable to Jaguars. This particular population had learned a method to counter a jaguar, turning a defensive into an offensive. The capuchins would shape rocks (by hitting them against an "anvil") until they were sharp-ish. A store would be kept at the top of a small rocky dirt cliff nearby. Footage was shown of a jaguar ambushing and pursuing the sneaky monkeys. They proceeded to run up the cliff-mound and began hurling the sharp rocks at the poor jaguar. It had no idea why it was suddenly getting whacked by rocks, but it was promptly evaded and ran off. Capuchins 1: Jaguar 0. Approve

- Knights -
Back to Top
Goban View Drop Down
Colonel
Colonel
Avatar

Joined: 09-Mar-2006
Location: Subterranea
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 581
  Quote Goban Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Mar-2007 at 14:20
The only problem is that they didn't capture this on film. Unfortunately, these observations are hard to sell with out these mediums today... Even my Professor has mentioned this (we've discussed these spears in class).
 
The thing about these spears is that they suggest tool manufacture not just simply tool usage. There is a big difference. BTW, Knights, I would really appreciate it if you could give me some resources about the Capuchins (that is awesome Smile).
 
Chimpanzees have demonstrated the manufacturing of tools in captivity. Well, they have demonstrated the capacity to learn how to make tools anyway. Kanzi, a Pan paniscus (Bonobo), can knapp simple tools (flakes) to cut rope securing food. I'll try to find a video online; it's amazing...


Edited by Goban - 14-Mar-2007 at 02:57
The sharpest spoon in the drawer.
Back to Top
pekau View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar
Atlantean Prophet

Joined: 08-Oct-2006
Location: Korea, South
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3335
  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Mar-2007 at 14:22
See the movie MVP. It's actually worth watching somewhat.
     
   
Join us.
Back to Top
Goban View Drop Down
Colonel
Colonel
Avatar

Joined: 09-Mar-2006
Location: Subterranea
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 581
  Quote Goban Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 03:06
Well, I couldn't find the darn video, but here is a nice picture...
 
 
The sharpest spoon in the drawer.
Back to Top
Gargoyle View Drop Down
Colonel
Colonel
Avatar

Joined: 25-May-2006
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 681
  Quote Gargoyle Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 03:51

Oh Yes... Chimpanzees are quite Intelligent Animals... Their kind even Explored Space before Humans did!

Who knows... In the near future Chimps might even find a cure for Cancer!




Back to Top
Aelfgifu View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar

Joined: 25-Jun-2006
Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3387
  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 05:49
Originally posted by pekau

They also use the stick with sticky saliva or other sticky substances to get the ants out of their hole...
 
So? Crows can do that...
 
It does not prove animals are particularly smart, it proves we humans are just not as special as we like to think.

Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.
Back to Top
Knights View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar
suspended

Joined: 23-Oct-2006
Location: AUSTRALIA
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3224
  Quote Knights Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 06:42
Originally posted by Aelfgifu

Originally posted by pekau

They also use the stick with sticky saliva or other sticky substances to get the ants out of their hole...
 
So? Crows can do that...
 
It does not prove animals are particularly smart, it proves we humans are just not as special as we like to think.

Crows are very intelligent indeed, and have a keen ability to learn...do you remember from another thread, Aelfgifu, what I said about crows and traffic? I think it was in history of animals. Smile

Here's the link:
http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16186&PID=304078#304078


Edited by Knights - 14-Mar-2007 at 06:52
Back to Top
Aelfgifu View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar

Joined: 25-Jun-2006
Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3387
  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 08:46
Yes, I remember the crows.... I like crows...Big%20smile

I like Bluetits too...

Such a cute little ball of pure feathered agression...LOL

Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.
Back to Top
Goban View Drop Down
Colonel
Colonel
Avatar

Joined: 09-Mar-2006
Location: Subterranea
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 581
  Quote Goban Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Mar-2007 at 14:55
Originally posted by Aelfgifu

Originally posted by pekau

They also use the stick with sticky saliva or other sticky substances to get the ants out of their hole...
 
So? Crows can do that...
 
It does not prove animals are particularly smart, it proves we humans are just not as special as we like to think.
 
Yup, I think it's both though... The one is the parent of the other.Smile
The sharpest spoon in the drawer.
Back to Top
Leonidas View Drop Down
Tsar
Tsar
Avatar

Joined: 01-Oct-2005
Location: Australia
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 4613
  Quote Leonidas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Apr-2007 at 07:02
Another story article about Chimp intelligence, i've coloured some parts that i havent heard of yet.




Evidence of chimps' intelligence grows
Published: April 18, 2007

CHICAGO: Observed in the wild and tested in captivity, chimpanzees invite comparison with humans, their close relatives. They bear a family resemblance that fascinates people, and scientists see increasing evidence of similarities in chimp behavior and skills, making some of them think on the vagaries of evolution.

For some time, paleontologists and evolutionary biologists have known that chimp ancestors were the last line of today's apes to diverge from the branch that led to humans, probably 6 million, maybe 4 million years ago. More recent examination shows that despite profound differences in the two species, just a 1.23 percent difference in their genes separates Homo sapiens from chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes.

And certain similarities between the two species, scientists say, go beyond expressive faces and opposable thumbs.

Chimps display a remarkable range of behavior and talent. They make and use simple tools, hunt in groups and engage in aggressive, violent acts. They are social creatures that appear to be capable of empathy, altruism, self-awareness, cooperation in problem solving and learning through example and experience. Chimps even outperform humans in some memory tasks.

"Fifty years ago, we knew next to nothing about chimpanzees," said Andrew Whiten, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "You could not have predicted the richness and complexity of chimp culture that we know now."

Jane Goodall, a young English woman working in Africa in the 1960s, began changing perceptions. At first, experts disputed her reports of chimps' using tools and social behavior. The experts especially objected to her references to chimp culture. Just humans, they insisted, had "culture."

"Jane suffered early rejection by the establishment," said Richard Wrangham, a Harvard anthropologist. "Now, the people who say chimpanzees don't have emotions and culture are the ones rejected."

The new consensus framed discussions in March at a symposium, "The Mind of the Chimpanzee," at the Lincoln Park Zoo here. More than 300 primatologists and other scientists reviewed accumulating knowledge of chimps' cognitive abilities.

After one session, Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta said that as recently as a decade ago there was still no firm consensus on many of the social relationships of chimps. "You don't hear any debate now," he said.

In his own studies at the Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory, de Waal found that chimps as social animals have had to constrain and alter their behavior in various ways, as have humans. It is a part of ape inheritance, he said, and in the case of humans, the basis for morality. The provocative interpretation was advanced in his recent book, "Primates and Philosophers."

Other reports shortly before the symposium had elaborated on the abilities of chimps as toolmakers. Jill Pruetz, a primatologist at Iowa State University, described 22 examples of chimps in Senegal making stick spears to hunt smaller primates for their meat. Goodall was the first to call attention to chimps as hunting carnivores, not strictly vegetarians.

Pruetz observed chimps jabbing the spears into hollow tree trunks where bush babies often dwell. Just one attempt was successful. Previously, chimps had been seen using sticks mainly to extract termites from their nests.

A team of archaeologists led by Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary reported finding stones in Ivory Coast that chimps used 4,300 years ago to crack nuts. Today's chimps have often been videotaped using rocks as a hammer to open nuts. The old stones with starch residues from nuts, the researchers said, were the earliest strong evidence of chimp tool use, and the finding suggested that chimps had learned the skill on their own, rather than copying humans.

Other researchers combine field work showing chimp behavior in natural habitats with laboratory experiments that are created to disclose their underlying intelligence - what scientists call their "cognitive reserve."

For example, chimps on their own would not sit at a computer responding with rapid touches on the screen as a test of their immediate memory. Videos of their doing just that at Kyoto University in Japan especially impressed the symposium scientists.

Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a Kyoto primatologist, described a young chimp watching as numbers one through nine flashed on the computer screen at random positions. Then the numbers disappeared in no more than a second. White squares remained where the numbers had been. The chimp casually but swiftly pressed the squares, calling back the numbers in ascending order - 1, 2, 3, etc.

The test was repeated several times, with the numbers and squares in different places. The chimp, which had months of training accompanied by promised food rewards, almost never failed to remember where the numbers had been. The video included scenes of a human failing the test, seldom recalling more than one or two numbers, if any.

Humans can't do it," Matsuzawa said. "Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task." Matsuzawa suggested that early human species "lost the immediate memory and, in return, learned symbolization, the language skills."

Other experiments at Kyoto's primate center demonstrated the ability of chimps to recognize themselves and focus attention on others. Masaki Tomonaga, who conducted the tests, said that an infant made eye contact with its mother at about two months and that sometime after the first year was able to maintain a gaze as the mother moved about. Tomonaga said such "gaze following" developed in humans about the same age, "though infant humans generally have more complex interactions."

Misato Hayashi, also from Kyoto, described experiments with infant chimps' manipulating nesting cups and square and cylindrical blocks. They were slower to learn than humans, but the manual dexterity was there. A human starts stacking blocks shortly after age 1, he said; chimps are almost 3 before getting the hang of it.

In experiments with mirrors, researchers showed that chimps had an awareness of themselves that is absent in monkeys but present in dolphins and all the great apes. Similar tests by Emory scientists showed some self-recognition among elephants. These behaviors were reported by de Waal and his associate J.M. Plotnik.

At the symposium, researchers said the interest in learning more about chimps was not just a case of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Their behavior and intelligence, scientists say, may offer insights into the abilities of early human ancestors like Australopithecus afarensis, the apelike "Lucy" species that thrived more than 3 million years ago. A more urgent motivation for the research, primatologists say, is that these are sentient beings and the closest living relatives of humans, and their survival is threatened.

Elizabeth Lonsdorf, a primatologist at the Lincoln Park Zoo and a symposium organizer, said researchers needed "to keep their eyes out for ways to improve the care of chimpanzees."

Diseases like ebola and anthrax are taking their toll. Hunting chimps for "bush meat" is increasing. Many of the forest habitats of chimps in central Africa are being cut by loggers and land developers. As a result, Lonsdorf said, "Groups of the animals are getting closer together, which increased the threat of chimp violence and territorial disputes."

Goodall recalled that when she went to Africa nearly a half-century ago, at least a million chimps lived in the continent, and "now there are perhaps only 150,000." In that time, they have impressed scientists with physical and emotional reminders of their kinship to humans and their occasional triumphs over them at a computer screen.

IHT




Back to Top
Aelfgifu View Drop Down
Caliph
Caliph
Avatar

Joined: 25-Jun-2006
Location: Netherlands
Online Status: Offline
Posts: 3387
  Quote Aelfgifu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Apr-2007 at 07:19
How can they see from the stone it was a chimp using it?

Women hold their councils of war in kitchens: the knives are there, and the cups of coffee, and the towels to dry the tears.
Back to Top
 Post Reply Post Reply

Forum Jump Forum Permissions View Drop Down

Bulletin Board Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 9.56a [Free Express Edition]
Copyright ©2001-2009 Web Wiz

This page was generated in 0.125 seconds.