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Friday, February 23, 2007
Chimps Getting Angry
I don't know quite what to make of this front page story in today's Washington Post, with the headline "For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons for Hunting." Is this a bi-product of a violent society? Or just some evolved chimps? Anyway, here are some quotes from the article:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed
fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals
-- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other
than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal
who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that
human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
By researchers "who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust?" What does that mean? Were they always there when the chimps needed a few bucks?
And then there's this:
Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing
the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and
sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed
them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals --
sleep during the day.
In one case, after repeated stabs, a chimpanzee removed the injured or dead
animal and ate it, the researchers reported in yesterday's online issue of the
journal Current Biology.
"It was really alarming how forceful it was," said lead researcher Jill D.
Pruetz of Iowa State University, adding that it reminded her of the murderous
shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie "Psycho." "It was kind of
scary."
Like Psycho? I don't really know what else to say about that.
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