For a long time, it was a popular conceit that humans alone could produce tools and technology -- it was once regarded as something that defined humanity. Jane Goodall's research dispelled that myth nearly 50 years ago and since then we've not only found more evidence of tool use among primates, but ever more complicated technology that is passed down among individuals within groups. In fact, so much is being discovered that we may have to seriously reconsider some things about the nature of humanity.
Researchers use the term "tool kits" to describe the repertoire of tools used habitually by a group of chimpanzees. The tool kits of most chimpanzee populations consist of about 20 types of tools, which arc used for various functions in daily life, including subsistence, sociality, sex, and self-maintenance. This tool-kit size is relatively constant, whether the apes live in rainforest or on savanna, with one regional exception: The tool kits of three Ugandan populations (Budongo, Kanyawara, and Ngogo), all well-habituated, are about half the usual size, for reasons as yet undetermined.
The uses to which tools are put vary across chimpanzee populations. At Goualougo, Republic of Congo, the most commonly used tools are for extractive foraging, whereas at Ngogo, they are for hygiene and courtship. However, some tools are used by all chimpanzee populations: They all make leaf sponges to obtain drinking water, show aimed throwing of missiles, and communicate by drumming on tree buttresses.
Chimpanzees also use tool sets, that is, they use two or more tools in an obligate sequence to achieve a single goal. In the most impressive example, a chimpanzee population in Gabon uses tool sets of five objects: pounder, perforator, enlarger, collector, and swab to obtain honey. Other tool sets arc used to fish for termites or dip for army ants. all these tool sets must be used in the correct functional order to be successful. Some primatologists have argued that this necessity for sequential order is a sign of complex cognitive processes. ...
Among all animals, only chimpanzees appear to be able to use one type of mw material to make many kinds of tools (e.g., leaf as sponge, napkin, or fishing probe), or make one kind of tool from many raw materials (fishing probe from grass, bark, vine, and twig). Only chimpanzees have been shown to vary in their tool use at a multitude of levels, from individual, family, community, and population to subspecies. Chimpanzees also continue to yield new fonts of tool use from continuing study
Source: Science, April 30, 2010
The more we study other animals, the more we learn about ourselves because who and what we are evolved out of the same stuff as all the other animals -- especially primates. Of course, people keep finding new things that they want to attribute to humans alone. People focus on language, morality, and all sorts of behaviors that they insist characterize "humanity" and thus can't be found anywhere else in nature.
This is also a principal motivation behind the continued belief in "souls." Setting aside the lack of evidence of such things, even believers can't point to any basis for thinking that they exist only in humans. We have far deeper connections to nature than many people want to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment