Curious Chimpanzee Investigates Remote Camera by Prodding it With Stick
A chimpanzee investigated a remote camera by poking it with a stick, in a rare video of an ape using a tool in the wild.
The footage was captured on January 27 in Gabon’s Batéké Plateau National Park by Panthera scientists who were hoping to capture footage of big cats rather than curious chimps. However, when the scientists went to review the footage, they instead saw the image of a nosy primate jabbing at their camera.
“The capture is also particularly remarkable considering the remoteness of the area and the decades of poaching that have ravaged chimpanzee numbers in Batéké,” a Panthera spokesperson tells PetaPixel.
Chimpanzees are well known for their sophisticated tool use, employing a variety of objects like sticks, stones, and leaves for tasks such as foraging, grooming, and even hunting, making them the most diverse tool users outside of humans.
Bonobos are the only other ape species to use tools but researchers have found that they do not play with objects in the same way chimpanzees do.
“Chimpanzees are object-oriented, in a way that bonobos are not,” says researcher Dr Kathelijne Koops, who conducted a study at Cambridge University’s Division of Biological Anthropology and at Zurich University’s Anthropological Institute and Museum.
“Given the close evolutionary relationship between these two species and humans, insights into the tool use difference between chimpanzees and bonobos can help us identify the conditions that drove the evolution of human technology.
“Our findings suggest that an innate predisposition, or intrinsic motivation, to manipulate objects was likely also selected for in the hominin lineage and played a key role in the evolution of technology in our own lineage.”
Panthera is an organization devoted to the conservation of the world’s 40 species of wild cats and the vast ecosystems they inhabit. The chimpanzee footage was captured in the same region where videos of a lone male lion were sighted in 2015 for the first time in 20 years and made headlines.
Image credits: ANPN / PANTHERA / GAMOBA MULTIMEDIA & PRODUCTION STUDIOS
