Daily Post, Liverpool, England
02-24-07
HEADLINE: Chimps revealed as spear hunters
CHIMPANZEES have been observed making and using "spears" to hunt small
animals, it was revealed yesterday.
Scientists made the discovery in Fongoli, Senegal, where they recorded 22
instances of chimps jabbing sticks into tree cavities or hollow branches to flush
out prey.
The apes used enough force to injure the animals they were after. In one case, a
chimpanzee actually impaled a bushbaby on a stick and extracted it from a tree.
Although hunting is normally an adult male activity among chimpanzees, females
appeared to dominate spear hunting.
Only one adult male was observed taking part. The others were either adult and
young females, or young males.
The behaviour of the chimps supports a theory that females may have played an
important role in the development of early human tool technology, said the
scientists.
Team leader Dr Jill Pruetz, assistant professor of anthropology at Iowa
State University in Ames, US, said: "In the chimp literature, there is a lot of
discussion about hunting by adult males, because basically, they're the only ones
that do it, and they don't use tools.
"Females are rarely involved. And so this was just kind of astounding on a
number of levels. It's not only chimps hunting with tools, but females, and the
ones who hunted the most with them were adolescent females."