Various studies have found that Chimpanzees are skilful and witty as humans and now one more study revealed that Chimpanzees can use tools spontaneously and flawlessly with taking help from others. They don’t even have to watch and learn how to use things.
The researchers looked for the spontaneous re-occurrence of a tool-use behaviour practised in wild chimpanzees where sticks are used to scoop algae from the top of water surfaces.
Chimpanzees at Twycross Zoo in the UK were provided with a container of water with pieces of floating food. The subject chimpanzees successfully used to sticks and also spontaneously showed the same underlying pattern of scooping which is used by the wild cousins.
The results, published in the journal PeerJ, challenge the accepted belief that chimpanzees learn how to use things by emulating each other, but now it’s revealed that some forms of tool-use are instead within their pre-existing behavioural repertoire.
AP
"The commonly held belief is that chimpanzee behaviour is cultural, much like how human culture has been passed between groups," said researcher Elisa Bandini.
"But if that was the case, the same behaviours should never re-occur in naive subjects. Nobody, for example, could accurately reinvent extinct languages on the spot," said Bandini.