Cool

Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution:

Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies

"Heh, look—I got me two of 'em!"

Okay, that's really not what we're talking about, George.

Anyway…

U.S. researchers said on Thursday [the study] demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

…Chimps are known to use tools to crack open nuts and fish for termites. Some birds use tools, as do other animals such as gorillas, orangutans and even naked mole rats. But the sophisticated use of a tool to hunt with had never been seen.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate. But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

…Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. … "The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.

Does that mean I might have talent and purpose beyond birthin' babies after all?!

Someone give these female chimps a typewriter and see if they can't figure out how to write for a general audience about such topics as military history, too—because if they can, maybe we can rethink some other antiquated, dumbass notions about women, too.