Chimps use spears to hunt

more evidence that animals have tool-making and using capacity.


Chimps hunt prey with spears, scientists find - Young and female primates fashion weapons to attack bushbabies


Chimpanzees are capable of making spears to hunt other primates and have been seen using the weapons to apparently kill bushbabies for meat, scientists announced Thursday.

The researchers based their findings on observations of omnivorous chimps that dwell in savannahs similar to those from which humanity's ancestors are thought to have emerged.

"It is not adult males, but young chimpanzees, including adolescent females, who are exhibiting this behavior," Jill Pruetz, a primatologist at Iowa State University, told LiveScience.

"This has important implications for how we think about the evolution of tool use in our own species," Pruetz added. "We have tended to emphasize the role of adult males in hunting, and this research supports the assertion that we should not ignore females and other individuals."

Earlier this month, scientists reported that chimpanzees used stone tools as early as 4,300 years ago, suggesting that they learned to make and use the tools on their own, rather than copying humans.

Spear-hunting stuns researcher
The scientists investigated the Fongoli community of savannah-dwelling chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in southeastern Senegal. The researchers saw 10 chimps fashioning spearlike tools to forcibly jab at nocturnal primates known as lesser bushbabies (Galago senegalensis), which sleep inside hollow branches or tree trunks during the day. After their attacks, the chimps sniffed or licked their weapons, as if to see whether they shed blood.

"I was flabbergasted," Pruetz said.
Previously, researchers had spotted one chimpanzee using tools to flush out mammalian prey, specifically employing a branch to rouse a squirrel. However, Pruetz and her colleague, Cambridge biological anthropologist Paco Bertolani, saw something far more complex. The chimps routinely broke off branches, trimmed them of twigs, leaves and bark and sharpened the tips of their spears with their teeth.

There was just one successful attempt in 22 recorded instances of the chimpanzee hunts with their spears. "Still, this involves significantly less energy than in chasing down monkeys, so it is not surprising that it evolved," Pruetz said.

The red colobus monkeys, which are the chimp's favored prey, are absent in the relatively dry savannahs where the chimps live, as is much prey, Pruetz said. This may have spurred efforts to catch meat by other means. Females and juveniles may especially be drawn to hunting "perhaps to exploit niches that adult males haven't, using innovation and creativity to get around competition," Pruetz said.

Every waking hour spent with chimps
It took four years for the chimpanzees to become comfortable enough with the scientists to allow them to follow the chimps around and observe behaviors such as hunting.

"The greatest difficulty initially was finding them," Pruetz recalled. Unlike chimpanzees that dwell in tropical forests, whose home ranges are usually just roughly 4 square miles large, savannah-dwelling chimpanzee home ranges are 25 square miles or more.

"Nowadays, we basically stay with them all day until they go to sleep, and we come back before they wake up, to never let them out of our sight," Pruetz said. "It can take 30 minutes to two hours to walk back to camp after they go to sleep around 6 or 7 p.m., and we have to be back when they wake up around 6 a.m., so it can be exhausting. We're looking into getting a motorcycle."

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the research, Pruetz said, is the growing human population in the area, "which threatens to disturb the chimpanzees' habitat and may eventually result in either forcing them from the area or into extinction."

Pruetz and Bertolani detailed their findings online Feb. 22 in the journal Current Biology.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17281240/
[Edited 2/22/07 14:34pm]

Isn't this how that whole Planet Of The Apes thing started?

Illustrator said:

I'm not surprised at the intelligence of chimps. They are just like us, in some ways.

when i saw the title of this thread, i couldn't help but wonder what britney's crazy ass was doing NOW.

Anx said:

I also read that chimps have the manual dexterity to play percussion...



Suck on that ED.

Illustrator said:

FunkshaII said:

Anx said:

2the9s said:

I also read that chimps have the manual dexterity to play percussion...



Suck on that ED.

XxAxX said:

Anx said:

very cool!

cborgman said:

XxAxX said:

cborgman said:

very cool!

i think there will come a day when humans will face the horrifying realization that animals have sentience and self-awareness to differing degrees and all this time we have been treating them like 'animated lumps of clay' .....

This is what the chimps are hunting...



Also, I watched a documentary on animals using tools...certain crows are very adept at using a stick to MAKE a hook-type tool to fish worms out of logs so they can eat them.

Measure in Love
Now the Lord is sayin' to me, "Whitey, Please..."

applekisses said:

This is what the chimps are hunting...



Also, I watched a documentary on animals using tools...certain crows are very adept at using a stick to MAKE a hook-type tool to fish worms out of logs so they can eat them.

XxAxX said:

applekisses said:

This is what the chimps are hunting...



Also, I watched a documentary on animals using tools...certain crows are very adept at using a stick to MAKE a hook-type tool to fish worms out of logs so they can eat them.

awww sometimes i hate that this is such a violent planet. why can't we all just photosynthesize and get along instead of stalking and eating each other?

Measure in Love
Now the Lord is sayin' to me, "Whitey, Please..."

applekisses said:

XxAxX said:

awww sometimes i hate that this is such a violent planet. why can't we all just photosynthesize and get along instead of stalking and eating each other?

I know. I think about that too. If we survive long enough, maybe it will come to that.

XxAxX said:

applekisses said:

I know. I think about that too. If we survive long enough, maybe it will come to that.

i keep hoping that cloning research will provide a way to grow protein in tanks. i know it sounds gross but it would be better than torturing actual animals just to get food

Measure in Love
Now the Lord is sayin' to me, "Whitey, Please..."

XxAxX said:

applekisses said:

I know. I think about that too. If we survive long enough, maybe it will come to that.

i keep hoping that cloning research will provide a way to grow protein in tanks. i know it sounds gross but it would be better than torturing actual animals just to get food

XxAxX said:

applekisses said:

This is what the chimps are hunting...



Also, I watched a documentary on animals using tools...certain crows are very adept at using a stick to MAKE a hook-type tool to fish worms out of logs so they can eat them.

awww sometimes i hate that this is such a violent planet. why can't we all just photosynthesize and get along instead of stalking and eating each other?

byronic said:

XxAxX said:

awww sometimes i hate that this is such a violent planet. why can't we all just photosynthesize and get along instead of stalking and eating each other?

stalking and eating bring us closer to nature, i find it horrifying when humans somehow feel that they should be above the food chain.

we are animals, the gods created us to kill, to eat, and to share in the bounty of nature. there is no moment in a persons life when they are not closer to the earth when they eat something that they themselves have killed. you never feel more appreciative of life then when your nourish yourself with it.

anytime i eat meat, i am thankful both to the gods, and to the spirit of the animal itself. and i try to eat as much hunted and wild meat as possible.

Yet this is not the first instance of tool use by apes or other animals.

This discovery merely confirms that chimps are intelligent creatures, created with enough intelligence to make and use simple tools and learn from one another, as do many other intelligent animals; this is a far cry from being made in the image of God, as Genesis describes humans, and in no way validates evolutionary ideas.

"I am the way, the truth and the life; No man cometh unto the father, but by me." - Jesus of Nazareth (John 14:6)

not to mention that neither adaptation nor evolution contradict the genesis account of the origin of life (or most other creation stories or ID)

SlamGlam said:

"I am the way, the truth and the life; No man cometh unto the father, but by me." - Jesus of Nazareth (John 14:6)

Eternaldragon said:

Abrazo said:

Eternaldragon said:

Yet this is not the first instance of tool use by apes or other animals.

This discovery merely confirms that chimps are intelligent creatures, created with enough intelligence to make and use simple tools and learn from one another, as do many other intelligent animals; this is a far cry from being made in the image of God, as Genesis describes humans, and in no way validates evolutionary ideas.

Don't you agree that us humans look a lot like chimps too? Take this for example:

GeorgeWBush said:

Abrazo said:

Don't you agree that us humans look a lot like chimps too? Take this for example:

reported!




and yes, we do look alike

which is only evidence that we came from the same "designer"

an unimaginative designer who's running out of ideas and has to reuse the same ones over and over again
[Edited 2/25/07 5:14am]