Chimps use toolkits, researchers say

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <b> <p class="MsoNormal">Chimps use "tool kits," researchers say</p> </b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted Nov. 8, 2004<br> Courtesy Wildlife Conservation Society<br> and World Science staff</font><b> <font size="2" face="Arial"><br> <br> It has been known for years that chimps use simple tools — for instance, sticks to fish termites out of termite mounds. But now scientists have found chimps using entire tool-kits.</font></b> </p> <b> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">A remote rainforest in Central Africa is home to a these innovative chimpanzees that also "fish" for termite dinners, researchers say.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">Chimps in this area, known as the Goualougo Triangle, were videotaped using heavy sticks to punch holes in termite mounds, then using a lighter stick known as a "fishing tool" to extract termites. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2"> For underground termite mounds the chimps used a different stick-tool to puncture the nest before scooping up the termites.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">The area where the chimps live was recently saved from logging by a collaboration among the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, a timber company and the Republic of Congo.</font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">The research, by Crickette Sanz of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and colleagues, is published in the November issue of the journal <i> The American Naturalist</i>. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">The researchers said that four years ago, a Swiss timber company planned to establish a logging operation where the chimps live, which would have irreparably harmed this unique population that conservationists believe may have virtually no historic contact with humans.<br> <br> Subsequent cooperation between the conservation group, the company and the Republic of Congo led to the eventual protection of the forest, now part of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park.<br> <br> "Had the Wildlife Conservation Society not helped to save the Goualougo from being logged, this discovery would not have been made and the forest and the chimps would have been lost," said Steve Gulick of Wildland Security. </font></p> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">But Gulick added that the findings make him wonder what could have been found in the many other areas that have already been logged and destroyed -- or are about to be. </font></p> </b> <p> <b> <font size="2" face="Arial"><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/world-science">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/world-science</a></font> </b> </p> </body>