Chimpanzees Use Spears to Hunt Bush Babies

Posted on April 25, 2015  Comments (1)

Video replaced with new one because original was removed 🙁

Savanna Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus, Hunt with Tools by Jill D. Pruetz and Paco Bertolani

Although tool use is known to occur in species ranging from naked mole rats to owls, chimpanzees are the most accomplished tool users. The modification and use of tools during hunting, however, is still considered to be a uniquely human trait among primates. Here, we report the first account of habitual tool use during vertebrate hunting by nonhumans. At the Fongoli site in Senegal, we observed ten different chimpanzees use tools to hunt prosimian prey in 22 bouts. This includes immature chimpanzees and females, members of age-sex classes not normally characterized by extensive hunting behavior. Chimpanzees made 26 different tools, and we were able to recover and analyze 12 of these.

Tool construction entailed up to five steps, including trimming the tool tip to a point. Tools were used in the manner of a spear, rather than a probe or rousing tool. This new information on chimpanzee tool use has important implications for the evolution of tool use and construction for hunting in the earliest hominids, especially given our observations that females and immature chimpanzees exhibited this behavior more frequently than adult males.

The full paper, from 2007, was available as a pdf when I visited (I don’t really trust these publishers and what articles by professors they will block access to later when they don’t clearly say it is open access – in fact the journal broke the link on the post I made about this in 2007 now that I checked – sigh).

The full paper isn’t filled with overly complex scientific jargon (as scientific papers can be). In that sense it is an easy read; it is a bit graphic for those that are squeamish.

Dr. Jill Pruetz maintains an interesting blog the Chimpanzees she studies: Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project

Related: Chimps Used Stones as Hammers – Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Bird Using Bread as Bait to Catch Fish – Crows can Perform as Well as 7 to 10-year-olds on cause-and-effect Water Displacement Tasks

One Response to “Chimpanzees Use Spears to Hunt Bush Babies”

  1. Chimpanzees Solving Numerical Memory Test Better Than People » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    October 29th, 2016 @ 12:01 pm

    […] Chimpanzees Use Spears to Hunt Bush Babies – Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Crows can Perform as Well as 7 to […]

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