Chimps bear arms

Until now we thought that humans were the only animals that craft weapons designed to help them kill other animals. Well, it's time for us to move over. Researchers in Senegal have observed chimpanzees fashioning crude spears out of tree branches and jabbing those spears into tree-branch hollows where bush babies (small, noctural primates known by the more scientific name of "galagos") sleep during the day. While chimps have been known to make tools for more benign purposes--using a a leaf as a sponge for soaking up drinking water, for instance--this is the first known observation of chimps using tools specifically designed for hunting. One researcher claimed that the chimps' stabbing motions reminded her of "the shower scene from Psycho." I guess all we can do now is hope that the chimps don't come for us.

Toward the end of the article, we're treated to a quote from renowned primatologist and HUP author Frans de Waal, who predicts that we'll continue to discover that behaviors we had previously thought unique to humans will turn out to not be so unique after all:

Frans B.M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said aggressive tool use is only the latest "uniquely human" behavior to be found to be less than unique.

"Such claims are getting old," he said. "With the present pace of discovery, they last a few decades at most."

de Waal's latest book for HUP is Animal Social Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies, but he's also the author of Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us about Human Social Evolution, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, and Peacemaking among Primates.