In a first, chimpanzees seen smashing and eating tortoises

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/chimpanzees-eat-tortoises-smash-shells/

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

73 37 7 years ago

Mikeb852• 7 years ago

It's fascinating to see evolution unfold before our eyes that may replicate our own evolution circa 5-10 million years ago.

SketchySeaBeast2• 7 years ago

Why is this evolution? I imagine this is nothing new, we just hadn't seen it before.

mjollnir• 7 years ago

Exactly. Mentioned briefly in the article (e.g., the habituation of chimpanzees to researchers), but the idea of non-human "culture" has been strange to/dismissed by researchers for some time, only because we did not have enough data to understand the diversity of their behavior. This is almost certainly an example of researchers simply getting new (and interesting!) data.

thrower123• 7 years ago

I'm a little flabbergasted that the idea of animals using tools is so groundbreaking. I've seen squirrels pick apples up off the ground, climb to the top of a tree, and drop the apple over and over again to break it into small convenient pieces. I've seen birds do the same thing too, with shellfish. You see all kinds of stuff when you have your eyes open.

Mikeb852• 7 years ago

True, they've probably been doing this for a million years. But they're our closest relatives, and we have living examples of primates that are at various points of eating vegetation/meat, using tools and not, etc...

Seeing a primate eating meat and using tools despite being built to eat vegetation suggests a link to our own past.

dpflan• 7 years ago

Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra

southerndrift• 7 years ago

You're in a desert and you're walking along in the sand and all of a sudden you look down and...

vbuwivbiu• 7 years ago

they are apparently delicious https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreview...

WaitWaitWha• 7 years ago

We have chimps and "chimps" using cell phone. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/b08v5...

Turtle smashing mental level requirements are not much higher than social media surfing, but there are plenty of examples they can learn complex sequence of steps and pass it on.

sachdevap• 7 years ago

"Turtle smashing mental level requirements are not much higher than social media surfing" -- what leads you to this conclusion? It is not clear to me that this is a trivial statement.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

I'll second this anecdotally because I have no problem browsing hackernews all day but yesterday I fought desperately trying to crack a coconut for half an hour.

empath75• 7 years ago

The chimp using Instagram is amazing. Wow.

dsfyu404ed2• 7 years ago

Well actually Instagram is using the chimp because it's selling the chimp's metadata to advertisers. ;)

anthuman• 7 years ago

Chimps have been shown to use tools and pass on the knowledge to their offspring.

https://phys.org/news/2016-10-wild-chimpanzee-mothers-young-...

RenRav• 7 years ago

They've never been documented eating any reptiles? Not even something trivial like lizards? That seems so odd, I don't know why but I assumed they ate just about everything.

Causality1• 7 years ago

That was my reaction as well. Small palm-sized lizards are so common I'm amazed no one has observed a chimp snatching and eating one.

toomanybeersies• 7 years ago

The've been documented eating monkeys: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150728-chimps-nearly-wiped-...

I think that the lede is more that they're using problem solving to eat the turtles by breaking their shell.

Aromasin• 7 years ago

As far as my brief reading has got me, despite what was my general understanding until now they generally eat very little meat at all [1]. I guess it makes sense in this case that they're never been found eating reptiles.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-eat-l...

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

This is cool, but percussive techniques are not limited to chimps. e.g. bearded capuchins use what is essentially a hammer and anvil to break nuts: https://www.livescience.com/27524-nut-cracking-monkeys-skill...

TheSpiceIsLife• 7 years ago

If I call correctly sone birds do this too, using stones to break nuts. Was probably some kind of corvid.

dsfyu404ed2• 7 years ago

Seagulls drop crabs and shellfish all the time.

amanaplanacanal• 7 years ago

I've seen crows drop walnuts in front of oncoming cars so they'll get run over. Corvids are smart birds.

winchling• 7 years ago

I'm fascinated that tortoises are in fact reptilian since I'd previously thought that reptiles were a strictly meat-eating class. Also that an ancient battle formation was named after them.

delhanty• 7 years ago

Marine iguanas, found on Galapagos, are another counter-example to reptiles being strictly meat-eating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana#Feeding

The marine iguana forages almost exclusively on red and green algae in the inter- and subtidal zones.

sockpuppet9992• 7 years ago

Tortoises are mostly vegetarian although I've seen them eat garden snails. Turtles however are cold blooded predators that eat meat all the time

Lowkeyloki• 7 years ago

Well, this is terrible news on World Turtle Day.

In a first, chimpanzees seen smashing and eating tortoises

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