Chimps use cleavers and anvils as tools to chop food

Chimps use cleavers and anvils as tools to chop food

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Poni, a chimp who likes to chop his food


For the first time, chimpanzees have been seen using tools to chop up and reduce food into smaller bite-sized portions.

Chimps in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea, Africa, use both stone and wooden cleavers, as well as stone anvils, to process Treculia fruits.

The apes are not simply cracking into the Treculia to get to otherwise unobtainable food, say researchers.

Instead, they are actively chopping up the food into more manageable portions.

Observations of the behaviour are published in the journal Primates.
PhD student Kathelijne Koops and Professor William McGrew of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, UK, studied a group of chimps living wild in the Nimba Mountains.

Ms Koops research is focused on the use by the chimps of elementary technology, such as the use of tools while foraging.

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Cleaver and smashed fruit (shown by arrow)

"For example, nut-cracking in the Bossou chimpanzee community in Guinea involves the use of a movable hammer and anvil, and sometimes the additional use of stabilising wedges to make the anvil more level and so more efficient," explains Ms Koops.

It must be amazing to watch thers beautiful creatures act like humans, makes you wonder doesn't it.

I've always said a monkey could do my job..

This is cool, but methinks it is due more to conditioning that natural evolution and problem solving. Still not bad for a chimp.

Chimps mentally map fruit trees

Chimpanzees remember the exact location of all their favourite fruit trees.

Their spatial memory is so precise that they can find a single tree among more than 12,000 others within a patch of forest, primatologists have found.

More than that, the chimps also recall how productive each tree is, and decide to travel farther to eat from those they know will yield the most fruit.

Acquiring such an ability might have helped drive the evolution of sophisticated primate brains.

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Not only do chimps use tools they have fantastic memories and of course very good mimics.