February 24, 2007
"And every night the monkey butlers will regale us with jungle stories."
Posted by pete at February 24, 2007 1:13 AMOr, you know, stab us in the throat (via MetaFilter):
In a revelation that destroys yet another cherished notion of human uniqueness, wild chimpanzees have been seen living in caves and hunting bushbabies with spears. It is the first time an animal has been seen using a tool to hunt a vertebrate.
Many chimpanzees trim twigs to use for ant-dipping and termite-fishing. But a population of savannah chimps (Pan troglodytes verus) living in the Fongoli area of south-east Senegal have been seen making spears from strong sticks that they sharpen with their teeth. The average spear length is 63 centimetres (25 inches), says Jill Pruetz at Iowa State University in Ames, US, who observed the behaviour.
And the method of procuring food with these tools is not simply extractive, as it is when harvesting insects. It is far more aggressive. They use the spears to hunt one of the cutest primates in Africa: bushbabies (Galago senegalensis).
Bushbabies are nocturnal and curl up in hollows in trees during the day. If disturbed during their slumbers - if their nest cavity is broken open, for example - they rapidly scamper away. It appears that the chimps have learnt a grisly method of slowing them down.
Was it really necessary to point out how cute the bushbabies are? Would it be more acceptable if they were killing warthogs?
Using spears, eh? Y'all know what comes next, I trust:
Mal of Firefly: “What happened? Was it monkeys? Was it space monkeys???”
What’s really interesting about the story (other than the fact that our closest relatives are real pricks who value cuteness in their kebabs, but that’s not exactly new) is who is emphasizing and distorting what. There are a number of implications in the research, but people are focusing on the fact that females have been observed doing this spear hunting (in most other chimp communities, it’s only males who hunt, and then cooepratively). My favorite distortion, though was from a student: “i heard on the radio today about a discovery where the female chimps were the tool makers for wars. it appears some Australian scientist found evidence of sticks with gnaw marks to resemble points at the end to defend themselves.”
So, you see, it’s the chyck chimps y’all should be fearing.