How chimps teach their kids tool tricks

In the wild, observed tool use by birds has been limited to the corvids (crows and jays), which show various other complex behaviors—they’ll remember your face and recognize the passing of their dead. In 2012, a captive cockatoo named Figaro was observed spontaneously using multiple steps to process a tool, behavior has never been seen in this species in the wild. And earlier this year, a pet Swiss brown cow in Austria named Veronika caused a sensation because she likes to pick up random sticks and use them to scratch herself. It’s a form of multipurpose tool use and suggests that the cognitive capabilities of cows have been underestimated by scientists. The authors highlighted two case studies of tool transfer in particular: one involving ant-dipping (see video above), the other involving baobab fruit transfer (see video below). In the first, recorded in February 2018, a small group of chimps was clustered around an ant nest as the adults engaged in ant-dipping. An adult female named Soukki dipped a twig into the ant nest and left it there as she brought over her infant, Saïsaï. Saïsaï then pulled out the twig and ate the collected ants. A subsequent recording showed Saïsaï fully mimicking her mother’s ant-dipping behavior.