Chimpanzees are natural copycats

Research involving a big stone, a small stone and a nut has provided surprising new information into how chimpanzees solve problems. Scientist Kathelijne Koops, from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, gave this basic toolkit to two groups of chimps living in Guinea, west Africa. One group, living at Bossou, soon showed that they knew how to use the small stone as a hammer and the big one as a block on which to smash the nut and get at the goodness inside. However, another group, living just four miles away in Seringbara, were totally clueless about what to do. The surprising difference shows that chimps are not born with the skill to crack nuts (unlike a bird’s ability to build its nest, for example). Instead, it seems, nut-cracking is…

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The Week Junior (Digital) - 1 Issue, 322

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