For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting

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Interesting story:

For the insatiable, here's the full research paper.

 

Dont really see why this is in the AoDA but it is cool none the less. I wonder what the will make next? A crude sling perhaps?

[ February 28, 2007, 13:31: Message edited by: TrueBlueAussie ]

 

Maybe Planet of the Apes wasn't just a movie...

 

Nope, it was a book as well.

 

I heard about this in the news few days back...

This will have interesting implications on many levels. First of all after this it's clearer than ever before that tool-making is no longer the sole property of humans. Then it is also clear that the ability to stand properly on two feet can no longer be considered as a prerequisite for intelligence. This also strengthens the hypotheses of apes, or at least chimpanzees having culture.

With this in mind it is also not so inconceivable that Homo erectus would have the mental capabilities of building boats, since the ability of tool-making and intelligence goes further back than ever imagined.

This will weaken the position of the already artificial distinction between humans and other animals. Let's face it: we might be special, but not something completely out of this world and spectacular. It'll be harder to defend that stance after finding those spearmaking chimps.

One of the side-effects of this will be that researching our fellow simians will gain even more interest. This will also give even more ground to defend animal rights as it will be even harder to claim that other animals aren't sentient beings.

Not all of the above at once, of course not. But I'd imagine these kind of trends to be on the rise after such a finding.

 

Well, that is certainly intresting, very intresting. I wonder what they could achieve in ten thousand years (if they still exist)?

 

This does indeed further break down the artificial distinction between humans and other animals.

It also requires us, I think, to consider the possibility of a moral life for chimps. Not all will agree, I know. But one of the great moral debates for humans is violence against other beings in general and killing other beings in particular.

Being too lazy to go read the paper, I wonder: did the observatino see only use of spears againts other species? It's going to occur to some bright chimp eventually that the short route to alpha-hood might be via a spear point.

At the same time I am a little cautious about the close interaction of researchers and chimps. I hope their methodology was careful enough to avoid the unconscious cues that may have "helped" the chimps with the spear-making process. Probably it was, but the thought crossed my mind.

Goodness, this is a random-sounding note, but there it is.

 

I think it goes well beyond that. We have known for a long time that chimps and other primates use and fashion tools. Keep in mind that a tool and a basic level is simply using or modifying any object for a purpose other than which nature intended. Using a rock to crack open a nut qualifies as using a tool, because presumably, nuts do not exist solely for the purpose of cracking nuts. Of course, we've also known primates to use tools much more complex than rocks as well. The reason this goes to a different level is that they are actually fashioning weapons.

The reason why, IMO, this is more significant is it requires thinking ahead. It's one thing to find a nut and then go looking for a rock, or find a termite nest and then go looking for a stick. However, you can't construct a spear on the spot. If you're out hunting, you can't find prey, and then stop and make a spear and expect the prey to hang around until you are done.

Chimps killing other chimps has been observed numerous times, although not in the exact way you described. When it occurs it's usually when two packs of chimps are occupying the same territory. I know of no observations of chimps killing other chimps within their own pack.

 

Revmaf, they weren't observed to attack each other with their weapons, rather than trying to reach and kill unreachable prey, bush babies (some other ape, it seems), which was hiding in a tree trunk or similar places.

However, I don't doubt, given the time and experience, that chimps can begin using weapons against each other and to defend themselves/attack (not with a spear, perhaps, since it requires more thinking than swinging a club or a stone). It's natural that when an animal learns a more efficient way of doing something (in this case that using a stone or a piece of wood to hit something), it will usually begin using it.

 

Wow, that's pretty interesting but not surprising because they're quite intelligent. I mean, I always see those documentaries on TV going on about how chimps communicate with each other, how they make use of tools and how they imitate people. I remember once I saw some local woman washing some clothes by the riverbank and next to her was a mother chimp carrying a baby on her back and copying her actions (on TV I mean).

 

Quite. That is the major difference. As pointed out in the research article, even dolphins can be considered to use tools. Much of the 'use of tools' debate depends on what you define a tool to be. But this case the chimpanzees toolcrafting is within the limits of even the strictest definition of toolcrafting. Unless you really start splitting hairs and claiming that a "proper" tool is made of sharpened pieces of rocks attached to pieces of sticks. You can narrow the definition only so far...

Jane Goodall has reported about Chimpanzees killing the members of the Gombe pack killing each other in several occasions. One that I can recall was a female chimp killing the offspring of other females. And sometimes the battle for the alpha male position can be pretty fierce resulting the defeated to die from its injuries.

But so far it hasn't been documented that chimps would fashion tools with the purpose of killing members of their own pack. With the Gombe pack the use of tools in hierarchy battles were used for intimidation purposes and it can be considered to be more opportunistic than premeditated. This is a completely different scenario.

Even if the chimps would have imitated humans in their toolmaking, it shows that they're much smarter than people usually give them credit for. But imitation would of course lessen the impact of this finding by making it questinable enough for the serious sceptics to disagree about the intelligence of the chimps...