<img alt=“chimpanzee-face getty.BMP” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/chimpanzee-face%20getty.BMP” width=“230” height=“234” border=“0” align=“right” hspace=“10px”//>A captive chimpanzee in Sweden has exhibited a remarkably human trait: detailed planning for a future act of violence.
Santino the chimp carefully collects concrete and stones in weapons caches to throw at visitors to his Furuvik zoo home. Mathias Osvath, of Lund University, says this is the first unambiguous demonstration of future planning by a non-human.
While other primates are known to fashion tools, Osvath says that previous examples could always be seen as responses to immediate needs, such as breaking a stick to fish in a termite nest due to hunger. In this case, he writes in Current Biology, “The chimpanzee has without exception been calm during gathering or manufacturing of the ammunition, in contrast to the typically aroused state during [throwing] displays. The gathering and manufacturing has only been observed during the hours before the zoo opened, excluding potential triggering from the presence of zoo visitors.”
Osvath told AP that, while he may be a very good forward planner, Santino’s execution is a little lacking. The animal is a poor shot who rarely manages to hit visitors. Still, he says, “It is very special that he first realizes that he can make these and then plans on how to use them.”
Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the Washington Post, “People always assume that animals live in the present. This seems to indicate that they don’t live entirely in the present.”
De Waal, told ABC News that similar behaviour has been observed in other apes. “I have seen apes line up faeces as future ammunition,” he says.
Sadly for Santino, CanWest reports that his aggressive behaviour “earned him a date on the surgeon’s table for castration last fall” in the hope that lower testosterone levels might curb his enthusiasm for stone throwing.
Headline watch
Arrest That Chimp! – Science Now
‘Hail’ from the chimp: zoo ape stockpiles stones to throw at visitors – CBC
Stone the crows! Santino the rock-throwing ape proves chimps plan ahead – Daily Mail
Image: stock photo / Getty