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Clever orangutans invent nutcrackers from scratch

Chimpanzees are not the only great apes to develop tools without tutoring.
Padana the orangutan cracking nuts

A Sumatran orangutan named Padana raps nuts with a log ‘hammer’ atop a tree stump ‘anvil’, a technique she invented herself. Credit: Claudio Tennie

Chimpanzees have long been thought to be the only non-human great apes to regularly smash nuts with stones or wooden hammers — one of the most complex forms of tool use observed in nature. Now, researchers have found that orangutans, too, can use hammers to crack open nuts, and they learn to do so without copying others.

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Nature 596, 465 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02239-6

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