1: Termite feast
Looks like a lovely day to be a chimpanzee but a bad day to be a termite as the chimps pick at the nest on a sunny day.
This particular troop fashion their termite-fishing tool by stripping a thin branch of its leaves and then chewing the end into a 'brush-trip' that the termites attach to more easily. Increased foraging success has lead to this extra stage in fishing-tool construction: the chewed branches more fibrous ends, the sticky chimp saliva, or a combination of both makes for a better tool. This 'brush-tip' technique is not known for chimpanzees elsewhere in Africa.
Termite nests are made of hardened mud and other materials that provide structural strength and defend the nest against mammalian predators, so the picking is not always so easy.
Watch the next film to see how the chimpanzees get around this.
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Read more
New insights into chimpanzees, tools, and termites from the Congo Basin. C Sanz, D Morgan & S Gulick. The American Naturalist (Nov 2004), 164:5, pp. 567-581
| abstract | Full text | PDF |
The second inheritance system of chimpanzees and humans. A Whiten. Nature 436, 52-55 (1 Sep 2005) doi:10.1038/nature04023
| Abstract | Full text | PDF (248K) |
