Smart monkeys using tools

I thought these were interesting and show monkeys using tools and forward planning.

Breaking nuts - the plan - film called Monkey tool usage Hammer and Anvil

Summary: shows monkey's planning a way to harvest palm nuts, a very hard nut indeed and accomplishing it. The unanswered question is did they figure it out themselves or were they taught?

reply to post by Hanslune



Maybe in the far future we will be working together



Think of it, a monkey ambassador.

It would be a joy filled day for man and ape

reply to post by Hanslune

I have seen videos of other monkeys using sticks to retrieve termites from logs, but this was really cool. Their planning skills as a primate are impressive. Thanks for sharing.

reply to post by Hanslune


cool vid did you see the monkeys using rocks as self defense at the end of the vid, pretty cool

This is a wonderful example of cognitive and behavioral adaptation in the wild to exploit a resource.
It's not even our close cousins, the apes, but, proper monkeys.

It'd be wonderful were these to develop expression of other adaptive behaviors over time, scavenging for meat, and then connecting the dots into hunting, and connecting dots even further with tool use for hunting.
A million or so years will tell perhaps.

An additional example of how we underestimate monkeys and apes, even in the area we pride ourselves as kings of the animals can be readily demonstrated in the below video which illustrates chimpanzee short term memory superiority:



Being human is great, but, some of those 'lesser' animals aren't as handicapped as we might think in comparison to ourselves, and we, in some aspects may very well be the ones expressing retardation of certain abilities regressed out of importance of facility in favor of other more prominent and advantageous adaptations.

reply to post by AliceBleachWhite


Love your post and thoughts but we will probably have killed everything off by then...

reply to post by Hanslune


Thank you SO much for sharing this.

Those have got to be some very tasty nuts! A lot of hard work but, I was simply amazed by them pushing the boulders down. Wonder if they had been strategically placed there in advance, kind of looked like it.

reply to post by Hanslune


reminds me of this, my kids love this movie

When it comes to busting a nut, never bet against the ANGRY monkeys !

Hanslune
The unanswered question is did they figure it out themselves or were they taught?

I've seen these little guys in action (on TV) and they are quite the little Olympians. I'm sure most of the monkeys learn this technique from the others, but there had to be their "Thomas Edison" somewhere along the way.

reply to post by DocHolidaze


I do love that crazy song.

We can thank Richard Leaky for sending a grad student, Jane Goodall to observe the Chimpanzees - to see them is perhaps to see our ancestors millions of years ago.

I don't necessarily think that anybody (human) in the past taught monkeys to do this. Necessarily. I think that we don't give animals the credit they deserve. I think that their instincts are so fine-tuned that they don't even necessarily (there's that word again...) have to learn it from other monkeys.

The reason I said necessarily is because I believe that the knowledge of this world and necessarily (!) its animals in a way comes from a past that was closer to paradise, and more importantly a time when there was more fluid communication between species. A golden age in other words. I'm not a scientist but even physics teaches that the ancient past was much less chaotic than it is now.

So in other words religion (especially Abrahamic religion) meets with science.

Isn't there something about crows crushing nuts by putting them on the highway? Meh, maybe it's a legend pushed by animal rights activists?

Anyway, monkeys/primates/humans/whatever, all very much the same to me. Humans just happened to hit the jackpot in the evolutionary game.

jonnywhite
Isn't there something about crows crushing nuts by putting them on the highway? Meh, maybe it's a legend pushed by animal rights activists?

Anyway, monkeys/primates/humans/whatever, all very much the same to me. Humans just happened to hit the jackpot in the evolutionary game.

edit on 24-10-2013 by jonnywhite because: (no reason given)

Yes Luck

I once worked for a HR guy who use to take applications and place them into two piles (well before the digital age) one pile he would randomly pick and throw away.

He called those the unlucky people and not the sort he would want in his company and would then sort thru in the conventional way the lucky people.

We might be a 'lucky' species....