I just posted about JJ’s novel tool use, and I thought you may wanna see him actually fishing for ants. The authors of the paper provided videos of JJ using his tools. I’ve uploaded it to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Even though I’ve been posting a lot on tool use lately, I’m sure you will appreciate this new study. The new study, “Invention and modification of a new tool use behavior: ant-fishing in trees by a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou, Guinea,” has been published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Primatology. The writeup is very simple and informative, which is great because I consider this a very important paper in figuring out the origins of tool use and the intricacies of primate behavior.

The scope of this paper is a report on tool use seen in a male chimpanzee from Guinea. Tool use has been documented in several other wild chimpanzee societies, most notably was Goodall’s observations of Gombe chimps using tools. Since then other researchers have seen other wild chimps use tools, particularly using rocks to crack nuts open, and using twigs and sticks to fish or dip for ants. Ever so recently, we read and saw a Fongoli chimp hunt with a makeshift spear.

The clincher behind chimpanzee tool use in the wild use has been that it seems to be localized within the group that the behavior is observed in. This has gotten many researchers to hypothesize that this is some group specific behavior, a cultural trait per say. Researchers had no idea how tool use behaviors emerged in these respective groups, nor how long they have been practicing tool use.

In this new study, JJ, the male chimpanzee was the only chimpanzee in his group seen selecting for sticks used to fish for ants in a two year time period. This group of chimpanzees from Bossou has been studying for 27 years and this behavior has never been observed before. So his tool use tendencies seem to be novel amongst this group. Throughout the two years of observation, JJ progressively modified the optimal fishing stick, selecting for shorter and shorter ones. This indicates that JJ learned the characteristics of the best tool, one that would yield more ants.

Unfortunately, no observation has been made of JJ transmitting this behavior to other Bossou chimps. But it does indicate several thing… tool use can independently arise in chimpanzees, regardless of the fact that the group as a whole practices tool use or not. Also, it provides an insights into the cognitive capacity of wild chimps, like JJ, to problem solve and modify their behavior.

Yamamoto, S., Yamakoshi, G., Humle, T., Matsuzawa, T. (2008). Invention and modification of a new tool use behavior: ant-fishing in trees by a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou, Guinea. American Journal of Primatology DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20544

Pictured in this post is Conchita, a three-week-old white-naped mangabey monkey who is being hand-reared at London Zoo. Her mother is recovering from a cesarean. Photos were found from this news piece.

Tool use among orangutans was first documented by Carel van Schaik. In 1994, Carel observed orangutans developing tools to help themselves eat, while conducting field work in Gunung Leuser National Park, in the northwest Sumatra.

Specifically the orangutans were using sticks to pry open pulpy fruits that have “Plexiglas needles” capable of delivering a painful jab covering them. Using the tools, the orangutans were getting past handling the prickly husk and into the nutritious fruit. From an anthropological viewpoint, tool use represents an aspect of culture, since the entire group participates in a behavior that has developed over time. One unique thing to clarify is that only Sumatran orangutans have been observed to use tools, not orangutans from Borneo.

Recently, Gerd Schuster co-author of Thinkers of the Jungle: The Orangutan Report, took this photograph of,

“a male orangutan, clinging precariously to overhanging branches, flails the water with a pole, trying desperately to spear a passing fish…

The extraordinary image, a world exclusive, was taken in Borneo on the island of Kaja…

This individual had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River.

Although the method required too much skill for him to master, he was later able to improvise by using the pole to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.”

Pretty awesome image, no? If you wanna read more about orangutan tool use, here are three papers on the topic:

Schaik, C.P., Fox, E.A., Sitompul, A.F. (1996). Manufacture and use of tools in wild Sumatran orangutans. Naturwissenschaften, 83(4), 186-188. DOI: 10.1007/BF01143062

Call, J., Tomasello, M. (1994). The social learning of tool use by orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus). Human Evolution, 9(4), 297-313. DOI: 10.1007/BF02435516

van Schaik, C.P. (2003). Orangutan Cultures and the Evolution of Material Culture. Science, 299(5603), 102-105. DOI: 10.1126/science.1078004

It has been far too long since I’ve updated this blog. I apologize, there certainly has not been a lack of material to share — just a lack of time and overemphasis on Anthropology.net, which is totally my bad, I don’t intend to neglect this site again.

Anyways, photographer Frans Lanting recently travelled to take photos of the Fongoli chimpanzees in Senegal. He was on NPR yesterday to share his experiences. The Fongoli chimps, if you don’t remember, are the ones that have been observed to hunt with spears. Jill Pruetz actually was the one to see this behavior and I covered this news last year. I was a bit skeptical, but it seems like Lanting and Pruetz were able to observe this behavior again. From the NPR article,

Lanting and Pruetz observed the primates fashioning spears from tree limbs to capture bush babies, small mammals that hide deep inside hollow trees.

“No one has ever seen that before in any other chimps elsewhere,” Lanting says.

The Fongoli chimps often displayed behaviors akin to those of early humans.

“There is very little fundamental difference in my opinion between how these chimps live and how our very earliest ancestors lived,” Lanting says. “It’s just like looking at human beings. I regard these chimpanzees as very shy, private people.”

Like humans, the male chimps also seem to have a bit of a rhythmic bent; Lanting observed them drumming on hollow baobab trees as a way of impressing potential mates and intimidating rivals.

It took several months for the Fongoli chimps to begin accepting Pruetz and Lanting, who says they wore the same clothes every day so that the animals could become accustomed to their presence.

On days that the chimps let their guard down, Lanting says, he and Pruetz were able to observe behaviors that “are all confirmation to the fact that the boundaries between humans and chimps are really quite fuzzy.”

Be sure to check out the 9 minute long audio interview with Lanting.

I’m scouring the American Journal of Primatology for a paper on gorillas using tools as weapons in the wild. National Geographic News says the paper is out, but I can’t find it anywhere in the early edition nor in the current issues. I’ll continue looking, but in the mean time here’s what we got to run on (and it ain’t much)

“Researchers [doing a three year study of Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli)] in Cameroon have documented three cases in which the [gorillas] threw clumps of grass or tree branches at humans.”

The people who documented the behavior suggest that the gorillas possibly learned their unusual behavior from interactions with humans. Captive gorillas have been documented picking up stone throwing from their chimpanzee neighbors, so it’s not too improbably that wild gorillas could pick up grass and branch hurling from human neighbors. How did these gorillas learn the behavior? Could it be possibly due to mirror neurons? Conveniently this is a perfect transition into an upcoming PNAS paper on tool use and mirror neurons in macaques, that was announced in this ScienceNOW news article,

“To investigate how the brain performs this sleight of hand, [the team] recorded brain activity in two macaque monkeys. Each was trained for 6 to 8 months to grasp items of food with pliers. The team documented the activity of 113 neurons in F5 and in a brain area called F1, which has also been implicated in the manipulation of objects. The researchers first established the brain’s firing sequence when the monkeys grasped only with their hands. The experiment was then repeated while the monkeys used normal pliers that required first opening the hand and then closing it to grasp the food. The same neurons fired in the same order. Remarkably, the same neurons also fired, in the same order, when the monkeys used “reverse pliers” that required them to close their fingers first and then open them to take the food.”

The research is coming from the University of Parma which seems to be specializing in this sorta research because about a year and half ago they documented mirror neurons role in mimicry. In the new paper, the researchers,

“conclude that when learning to use a tool, the pattern of neuronal activity is somehow transferred from the hand to the tool, “as if the tool were the hand of the monkey and its tips were the monkey’s fingers.” As for how the same neurons could affect both the opening and the closing of the hand, the team speculates that they may be connected with other sets of neurons that more directly control these movements. The authors also point out that area F5 is rich in so-called mirror neurons, a type of nerve cell discovered earlier… that fires both when a primate performs an action and when it observes another individual doing the same thing. Mirror neurons in F5, the authors suggest, may be involved in this transfer process as a monkey learns how to use a tool by watching others.”

The first observations of gorillas using tools in the wild was made a couple years ago, and last year we saw (albeit not too convincingly) a chimp fashioning a spear to hunt, so I’m not too surprised about this news… I just wanna see it!

A new Current Biology paper has documented what I’ve been following attentively sine 2006, the effect of exposure of human pathogens to great apes in the wild. The paper, “Pandemic Human Viruses Cause Decline of Endangered Great Apes,” is out on early advance release.

In order to thoroughly study the epidemiology of two communities of chimpanzees at the Taı National Park, a multidisciplinary approach involving behavioral ecology, veterinary medicine, virology and population biology was taken to track human disease. Tissue samples taken from chimpanzees that had died in a series of outbreaks dating back to 1999 tested positive for two human respiratory viruses that are major sources of human infant mortality in the developing world, namely human respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus. Viral strains sampled from the chimpanzees were closely related to pandemic strains concurrently circulating in human populations as far away as China and Argentina, suggesting recent introduction from humans into the chimpanzees.

The multidisciplinary research revealed an important distinction in issues revolving around ape conservation,

“The research project has however also had strongly positive effects. Longitudinal surveys showed that the presence of researchers had suppressed poaching activities in the surrounding area. Consequently, chimpanzee densities at both the research study site and a nearby chimpanzee tourism site were much higher than would be expected given their accessibility to poachers.”

In the past, I’ve covered on how the pathogens behind the diseases, Yaws, Ebola, and Anthrax have decimated ape populations. These three pathogens are affiliated with human society, specifically population density and sanitary as well as animal domestication issues. This new study specifically focused on the impact of human viruses to which wild great apes have little to none acquired immunity.

Here’s three posts where I covered the other diseases:

• Yaws disease among gorillas and the affect it has on reproductive success
• Ebola virus has decimated over 5,000 gorillas
• The role of Anthrax in the Great Ape Die-Off

Last month Ayumu and five other chimpanzees made the news because of their outstanding cognitive performance. They even beat out college students in their tests. The results of the study was reported in Current Biology, “Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees.”

If you don’t believe me check out the video of Ayumu rocking the test:

Very impressive performance. Luminosity Games has remade Ayumu’s game. If you wanna try to see if you’re any better than Ayumu, give it a shot here. I’m not very good at the game.

The following video is a bit dated, it’s from 2004… but still I’m sharing it with you because it is very informative and rare. The video is of  Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s TED talk, in which she presents human traits and behaviors in bonobos, specifically the bonobo that made her famous, Kanzi.

PNAS will soon publish a paper from Mike Bruford and colleagues who isolated DNA from gorilla hair and feces and ultimately came up with a conclusion that the modern genetic composition of gorilla populations varies across different parts of their current geographic range and that this variation may be tied to Ice Age climate change and river barriers.

If that doesn’t make much sense, let me explain how such a situation would create genetic differences. During climate change between ice ages, populations that were in higher latitudes, found themselves separated physically because ice barriers formed and then collapsed, ultimately this segregated populations from one another another. Likewise, in drier climates, the tropics expanded and contracted to create isolated pockets much like what is created ice barriers. Ultimately these physical entities separated populations from one another. Also the genetic differences between gorilla populations is explained, in part, by the distance gorillas need to travel around river barriers, since in common with other large primates, they cannot cross large rivers.

Bruford comments on how this current study of gorilla population genetics is a crucial consideration,

“given the current catastrophic decline of great apes throughout Central Africa, current climate change patterns and the need to develop strategies to protect remaining populations from extinction.”