AT CONGO BAY

More than 40 years ago, Jane Goodall did the first observations that surprised the world. She discovered that chimpanzees used tools to catch termites inside their nests. Now it has been discovered that they have developed their own technology. The branches rods they used to "fish" were converted in a kind of brush, in order to catch more termites with only one movement. The new rod, whose point is kind of unwoven, enables them to catch 10 times more termites.

These observations were made by a team from Max Planck Evolutionary Anthropology Institute, in Leipzig, German, and were published at Biology Letters, from British Royal Society, a few days ago.

Chief-researcher of the group, Crickette Sanz, informs that this behavior has been observed in a group of chimpanzees that live in an area called Goualougo Triangle, in Congo Bay, and has not been observed in any other group yet. It is a technology developed by the group, which has been filmed with remote control cameras. With these cameras it was able to witness how they frayed the points of the rods to extend the contact area, making that more termites could be caught. The entire procedure, from the production of the rod with the branches to the act of fraying the point and put the brush-rod inside the termite nest, had been filmed and caused the researchers to be astonished.

Researcher Sanz lamented that the chimpanzees are so threatened to extinction, now that she was starting to study them in more depth. "When we start to learn about this new and complex behavior with tools, chimpanzees who are demonstrating this behavior are in danger because of deforestation, hunting and Ebola virus."

Video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7922120.stm

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International