Chimpanzees and monkeys use stone tools

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-chimps-living-in-the-stone-age

by Someone • 11 years ago

82 42 11 years ago

tudorw12• 11 years ago

A tear for this, that they are running out of time because we want trainers and cars and sofas and little plastic things you put in drinks then throw away, given time they might be our friends, the way we act I'm not sure they would choose to be :(

masterleep• 11 years ago

Chimps eat other monkeys alive, sometimes even humans, so no particular need to be sentimental about it.

tudorw12• 11 years ago

Alright, fuck em, oh hang on, we bomb the living daylights out of entire cities, i'm lost in the moral maze

anonymfus• 11 years ago

Humans too.

subliminalzen2• 11 years ago

How was this behavior induced? By primatologists who set up unnatural and hostile situations for chimpanzees to see what they would do? Because that is NOT normal behavior. Don't insinuate that it is.

CyberDildonics• 11 years ago

Are you posting this from a wooden computer in a tree fort?

tudorw12• 11 years ago

I'm hammering it out by hand on a 1950's typewriter while wearing an alpaca hat with ear flaps, I hand the unbleached recycled parchment to a well dressed gent who rides like the wind stopping only to sup ale and change horses who crosses the channel then joins a train of merchants heading east, on successfully crossing these dangerous lands the parchment finally lands in India where it is transcribed by and posted on my behalf, because.

forgotpasswd3x• 11 years ago

Are you under the impression that you can't understand something is bad while still being part of the problem?

boomzilla3• 11 years ago

Would it be better for them to get extinct, or to become advanced enough to understand that there is a much more technologically superior race in the same planet and that their lives and deaths totally depend on that race?

tudorw12• 11 years ago

We depend on bees, how do you feel about that?

boomzilla3• 11 years ago

I feel very good: they are tools and the only way they can intentionally harm us is for all of them to collectively commit suicides.

notNow• 11 years ago

Wait till they become fully aware of the concept of death and their eventual demise and after that when they invent "spirituality" and conjure up silly rituals to distract them away from remembering their fate and the mental stress and anguish that come with it.

Monkeys are in for one hell of a ride right there.

ars2• 11 years ago

They aren't going to become advanced enough (if they were going to, they would have already). But if that was an option it's certainly the better one.

That race they [would be] dependent on is a pretty nice one for the most part.

JoeAltmaier• 11 years ago

Have entered the stone age, 4000+ years ago.

Scriptor• 11 years ago

Sensational title. The actual stone age was called such because humans were actively modifying and creating new stone tools.

forgetsusername• 11 years ago

That process started somewhere.

krapp2• 11 years ago

And until it started, it didn't deserve to be called the "Stone Age." Using rocks to bash things doesn't really count. When they're making flint knives and skinning their prey and using the hides to keep warm then maybe it's a story.

ars2• 11 years ago

This would be much more interesting without the "Stone Age" nonsense.

The hallmark of the stone age is modifying the stone, not using the stone.

tudorw12• 11 years ago

I'll concede on this, frankly the least I was expecting was sticks with rocks bound to the end, the reality turns out to be they worked out that heavier rocks smash stuff better, it's going to be a few millenia before they can hold down a decent conversation, let alone pick a good wine to go with fish...

differentView• 11 years ago

That'll never happen unless it's through the aid of human technology, in which case, it'll really be humans entering a new age of advancing communication and intelligence of non-human animals than any one species advancing themselves.

eric_h• 11 years ago

By this definition of "Stone Age", sea otters have also entered into the Stone Age.

sombremesa• 11 years ago

By the number of upvotes this kind of crap gets, HN has also entered into the stone age.

tudorw12• 11 years ago

Thank you and good night :) Sombre indeed!

ionwake• 11 years ago

Great reply.

tudorw12• 11 years ago

He's having a go at the otters now.

duaneb• 11 years ago

Do sea otters customize/enhance/improve their tools or just use them?

teaneedz• 11 years ago

Love it.

curiousjorge• 11 years ago

so this makes me think, what made our species so successful if not our tools since it seems quite common. Was it the discovery of fire?

tudorw12• 11 years ago

I think the gist of it is our increased brain capacity let us acheive more with the tools, and more importantly to propagate knowledge of developments over generations because we lived in interconnected groups, societies, better communicators perhaps.

sampo• 11 years ago

There are theories, not generally accepted in mainstream biology/anthropology.

One is that our ancestors lived in coastal areas, where seafood made it much "cheaper" (in the evolutionary sense) to obtain the kind of fatty acids needed for growing a bigger brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/lives-the-brain/201001/...

mrinterweb• 11 years ago

"chimpanzees have been using stone tools in the rainforests of Ivory Coast for at least 4300 years." So is this a news title from 2315BC? I would have expected the article to be written in hieroglyphics. Would have been a nice touch if "Breaking" or "This just in" were prepended to the article title.

Chimpanzees and monkeys use stone tools

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