For 60 years, primatologists have been studying the habits of certain populations of chimpanzees. In this way, it has been possible to know that these animals use different tools with great skill. For example, they use twigs to extract honey and “fish” ants and termites in their nests, and they use stones to break nuts .
Now, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has found that chimpanzees that live in some enclaves of West Africa, where they do not usually have contact with humans, pile rocks inside the trunks of some trees. These scientists, who have launched an international program to study this species, have placed camera traps around these points to observe their behavior in detail.
Thus, they have been able to determine that chimpanzees regularly visit these points. So, they scoop out one of the rocks that they have previously gathered and throw it against the tree while making a long, characteristic call . Zoologists have found that this occurs mainly in males, but also in females and youngsters.
At the moment, this behavior has only been detected among some groups of West African chimpanzees and is not related to the typical use that they give to other tools. According to the biologist Christophe Boesch , director of the Primatology Department of the aforementioned German institution, it seems to include cultural elements. Furthermore, in an article published in Scientific Reports , Boesch and his collaborators indicate that the study of this behavior could shed some light on the origin of rituality in our own species .
Image and video: Max Planck Society
