Monkey of Mass Destruction
If you’re like me (and assuming you woke up this morning hung-over after celebrating Antonella staying on A.I. last night you are), then you also scour the Washington Post each morning in search of good solid reporting on monkeys. Today’s Post was no disappointment. Rick Weiss takes us deep into the mind of those loveable, gentle and adorable chimpan... wait… what? They do what?! That’s some seriously messed up shit – you mean to tell me chimpanzees are arming themselves for a fight against humans?? That’s right folks, Rick Weiss takes his Pulitzer aim in an article entitled, “For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting.” It could have just as easily been subtitled, “For First Time, Chimps Replace Bears on Tommy’s List of Most Feared Animals of Death.”
Several years ago I was all about getting a monkey, a chimp in fact. Something told me it was a bad idea. Perhaps it was fate. Perhaps it was fate in the form of a Condo Board and a threatening cease and desist letter from the DC Animal Control Board. But I like to think of it as Fate. Had I procured that little Chimp Beast, I would no doubt be writing this blog with a severed opposable thumb, which doesn’t even make sense. What also doesn’t make sense? – that we are letting these little monkey armies amass all over the world. I’m copying the text of the article below for your own safety. Please read and reread. Then print and stick it on your front door like I did with a sign that says “I surrender chimps – please spare me.”
Washington Post – February 23, 2007
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than human. The multi-step spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
For point of reference: Small mammal = 8 year old Senegalese kid at bus stop.
The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.
Just as I suspected. The root of all this spearmaking stems from the females’ over creativity and reckless innovation. Next thing you know they’ll be letting women chimps vote and order their own food at the rainforest cafe. If spearmaking doesn’t worry you, this should.
Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day.
A: What happened to the good ol days when a chimp only “power gripped” itself?
B: You have to be a seriously fucked up looking creature to be referred to by an esteemed taxonomic scientist as “monkeylike.”
In one case, after repeated stabs, a chimpanzee removed the injured or dead animal and ate it, the researchers reported in yesterday's online issue of the journal Current Biology. "It was really alarming how forceful it was," said lead researcher Jill D. Pruetz of Iowa State University, adding that it reminded her of the murderous shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho." "It was kind of scary."
Right. And the Hindenburg “kind of” had a fire problem.
The new observations are "stunning," said Craig Stanford, a primatologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. "Really fashioning a weapon to get food -- I'd say that's a first for any nonhuman animal."
Separately, Craig S. California, a professor of last name irony at Stanford agreed.
Scientists have documented tool use among chimpanzees for decades, but the tools have been simple and used to extract food rather than to kill it. Some chimpanzees slide thin sticks or leaf blades into termite mounds, for example, to fish for the crawling morsels. Others crumple leaves and use them as sponges to sop drinking water from tree hollows.
Ok, I have no problem with that. Tommy vs. Chimp armed with crumbled leaf is no match. Unless of course it’s on a Sunday following a Saturday workout with Fabian in which case the crumpled leaf by itself could beat up Tommy.
But while a few chimpanzees have been observed throwing rocks -- perhaps with the goal of knocking prey unconscious, but perhaps simply as an expression of excitement -- and a few others have been known to swing simple clubs, only people have been known to craft tools expressly to hunt prey.
So if a chimp spears my face out of excitement I should be cool with that. But if he really wanted to knock me unconscious when he pierces my eye with the stick, well now that’s just going too far.
Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of the University of Cambridge made the observations near Kedougou in southeastern Senegal. Unlike other chimpanzee sites currently under study, which are forested, this site is mostly open savannah. That environment is very much like the one in which early humans evolved and is different enough from other sites to expect differences in chimpanzee behaviors.
I lost it at “Paco.”
Pruetz recalled the first time she saw a member of the 35-member troop trimming leaves and side branches off a branch it had broken off a tree. "I just knew right away that she was making a tool," Pruetz said, adding that she suspected -- with some horror -- what it was for. But in that instance she was unable to follow the chimpanzee to see what she did with it. Eventually the researchers documented 22 instances of spearmaking and use, two-thirds of them involving females.
She was unable to follow the chimp to see what she did with it but then again that was the last time she ever heard from Paco…hmmm…
In a typical sequence, the animal first discovered a deep tree hollow suitable for bush babies, which are nocturnal and weigh about half a pound. Then the chimp would break off a branch -- on average about two feet long, but up to twice that length -- trim it, sharpen it with its teeth, and poke it repeatedly into the hollow at a rate of about one or two jabs per second. After every few jabs, the chimpanzee would sniff or lick the branch's tip, as though testing to see if it had caught anything.
Poking repeatedly at one or two jabs per second intermixed with some sniffing and licking… maybe I could learn something from these guys after all.
In only one of the 22 observations did a chimp get a bush baby. But that is reasonably efficient, Pruetz said, compared with standard chimpanzee hunting, which involves chasing a monkey or other prey, grabbing it by the tail and slamming its head against the ground.
Wait, I was getting worked up about these chimps just having sharpened sticks? Now I learn they like to slam my head into what?!!
In the successful bush-baby case, the chimpanzee, after using its sharpened stick, jumped on the hollow branch in the tree until it broke, exposing the limp bush baby, which the chimp then extracted. Whether the animal was dead or alive at that point was unclear, but it did not move or make any sound.
Or breathe or have a bush baby pulse, so yeah, it was probably dead Mr. Wizard.
Chimpanzees are believed to offer a window on early human behavior, and many researchers have hoped that the animals -- humans' closest genetic cousins -- might reveal something about the earliest use of wooden tools.
That’s what she said.
Many suspect that the use of wooden tools far predates the use of stone tools -- remnants of which have been found dating from 2 1/2 million years ago. But because wood does not preserve well, the most ancient wooden spears ever found are only about 400,000 years old, leaving open the question of when such tools first came into use. The discovery that some chimps today make wooden weapons supports the idea that early humans did too -- perhaps as much as 5 million years ago -- Stanford said.
Adrienne Zihlman, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said the work supports other evidence that female chimps are more likely than males to use tools, are more proficient at it and are crucial to passing that cultural knowledge to others. "Females are the teachers," Zihlman said, noting that juvenile chimps in Senegal were repeatedly seen watching their mothers make and hunt with spears.
Except for that one chimp they call Brittany Spearsmaker.
Females "are efficient and innovative, they are problem solvers, they are curious," Zihlman said. And that makes sense, she added.
Shocker this scientist is a chick. What’s next , human females have the same sized brain as males? Go throw that chimp stool against some other wall, Zihlman, I’m not buying it.
"They are pregnant or lactating or carrying a kid for most of their life," she said. "And they're supposed to be running around in the trees chasing prey?"
Right. Like the male has it any better? He’s out working hard all day and then has to come home at night to a chick that has the face of a chimp.
Frans B.M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said aggressive tool use is only the latest "uniquely human" behavior to be found to be less than unique. "Such claims are getting old," he said. "With the present pace of discovery, they last a few decades at most."
My guess is with that type of cocky attitude, Mr. Frans B. M. de Waal will be the first one to get chimp speared. Not me though, I’m getting a pet Bear for protection!
posted by tommy @ 2:03 PM
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