Chimps Observed Making Tools to Hunt
According to Reuters, U.S. researchers said on Thursday that chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies. Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University said it was only females who fashioned and used the wooden spears. Pruetz thought it was a fluke when he saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it. But then she saw almost the same behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily. The chimps strip a branch of it's leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to make a point. They then use it to stab into holes where bush babies could be sleeping. Pruetz said this spear-hunting might produce more competition between males and females because it occurred when the group was foraging together.
The Star Tribune reported that the chimps live in the West African savannah and that this is the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans. The multi-step spear-making practice was documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust. This observation supports the long-debated proposition that females tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture. This enviornment is very similar to the one in which early humans evolved and is different enough from other sites to expect differences in chimp behaviors.