Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

http://news.discovery.com/animals/female-chimps-seen-making-wielding-spears-150414.htm

by curtis • 11 years ago

205 99 11 years ago

news.discovery.com

Nicholas_C3• 11 years ago

Fascinating. I wonder if this was learned through invention or through mimicking humans.

If only we could simulate evolution millions of years and see how chimps evolve.

throwaway192301• 11 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dweN_7vhhk

wahsd• 11 years ago

Does it really matter? Learning is pretty much always mimicking others, whether it is you learning from others before you or our ancestors mimicking their predecessors like Australopithecus, Neanderthal or others. That's essentially what evolution is, adopting characteristics of preceding organisms by various means.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

Haven't chimps already been evolving in tandem with our last common ancestor for millions of years? Why should they suddenly fast forward their evolutionary progress now that we are observing them?

0xdeadbeefbabe• 11 years ago

Perhaps we can ask them in a couple years.

semi-extrinsic• 11 years ago

I've heard (think it was from the BBC Life series) that human evolution has sacrificed a lot of jaw muscle and other skull-related ruggedness as compared to monkeys, making room for bigger brains. Since this was obviously not a worthwile tradeoff for chimps etc. in the past, why should it be now?

Crito• 11 years ago

This may be what you are driving at, but in case it isn't: The impression that chimps are suddenly rapidly evolving may simply be a consequence of us watching them closely. We may simply be noticing behaviors that have been present for much longer.

tjradcliffe2• 11 years ago

They may not be, as others have pointed out, but on the other hand, humans have disrupted their environment and put them under extreme selective pressure of various kinds. We have also reduced their population, creating a greater likelihood of inbreeding, which allows new variations to spread very rapidly throughout the remaining population.

So it isn't our observing them that is relevant. We may be putting pressure on them that is driving their evolution, and evolutionary change can happen very rapidly when the pressure is high.

rlpb• 11 years ago

...chimps that we can accelerate to near light speeds.

Isn't that the wrong way round? The first generation of chimps would return after hundreds of years [have passed on Earth] having barely appeared to have aged at all.

If you want to see the future, it is you who has to accelerate to near light speeds and then you will return to an Earth far in the future.

fchollet• 11 years ago

If you accelerated your terrarium to a high fraction of c, time inside would appear (from our perspective) to slow down, not the other way around. What you want to do here is accelerate us to near light speed instead.

Nicholas_C3• 11 years ago

You're right, my mistake.

dghf• 11 years ago

Wouldn't we have to be the ones in the terrarium? Few years pass for the party zipping round at a large percentage of c, many years pass for those left behind on Earth.

Nicholas_C3• 11 years ago

Yup. Got that backwards.

njharman2• 11 years ago

If only we could simulate evolution a few million years and see how chimps evolve.

Look around. I see no reason a primate so similar to humans would not continue to evolve along the same lines.

thisjepisje• 11 years ago

Because humans already exist, perhaps.

Someone• 11 years ago

That idea is over 70 years old.nhttp://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcosmic_God:

"A highly secretive and reclusive biochemist named Kidder produces inventions that transform human life, spanning every aspect of science and engineering. Unbeknownst to anyone, Kidder has developed a synthetic life form, which he calls "neoterics." These creatures live at a greatly accelerated rate, and therefore have a very short lifespan and produce many generations over a short period of time. This allows Kidder, by presenting them with a frequently changing environment, to "evolve" them quickly into highly intelligent lifeforms who fear Kidder and worship him like a god. Kidder can control his neoterics' environment, and thus force them into developing technology far beyond that of humans."

iaw• 11 years ago

There was a Simpson's halloween homage to this.

Dn_Ab• 11 years ago

Other excellent stories in this genre: Blood Music by Greg Bear, Permutation City and Crystal Nights (http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/) by Greg Egan. Marooned in Realtime by Vinge had this a bit too—probably closest thematically to the GP's comment. A bunch of people wake up to a world that's been empty of humans for many thousands of years; the book spends some time talking about how some animals evolved.

qiqing3• 11 years ago

Excerpt from the article, "The researchers noted that female adult chimps made and used spears more often than adult males. The males relied more on their size and strength for hunting. Female chimps are almost always hindered by infants that ride on their backs or bellies, so spear hunting is far more effective for them than attempting to chase down prey."

duaneb• 11 years ago

Interesting. I wonder if female child ~~bearing~~ holding contributed to our move to bipedalism.

JulianMorrison2• 11 years ago

There is speculation that the baby sling did. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/history/prehistoric-...

crimsonalucard3• 11 years ago

This is similar to how human civilization formed. Areas of plentiful food have no need for farming or saving up food as wealth thus, it is only in places where food/resources are less plentiful did technological civilization develop.

tomp• 11 years ago

Also, I've heard the theory (I don't know if it's true) that while Chinese invented porcelain and used it for containers (cups, plates, etc), Europeans never did, and ended up inventing glass instead (and windows, microscopes, telescopes, ...).

dools• 11 years ago

That's inaccurate. You should check out "guns, germs and steel".

kriro• 11 years ago

There's an interesting set of forces when it comes to "early stage" innovation (imo). On the one hand what you say is true...sheer necessity forces innovation. On the other hand if there's plenty of food one can save food and use the time not spent hunting/gathering to invent/build new technology.

That's pretty much the economics point of view. Save+invest->innovation/technology. Catch a couple of fish, save them if possible. Use time not spend on catching fish to build a net...have more fish. Rinse, repeat.

pXMzR2A• 11 years ago

It's 2015. We have seen again and again the Black Rights Movement, Women's Rights Movement, various Third Word Rights movements, and the Animal Rights Movement interrogate and challenge, again and again, the ways in which human cultures assign value to various categories of living beings.

And here we are, saying

OMG monkeys using "tools" as defined by humans! Golden ponies and red chameleons!!

Get over it already.

tsotha2• 11 years ago

This isn't really news. I remember seeing an article about chimps hunting bushbabies with spears at least five years ago.

dalke• 11 years ago

Eg, from 2007: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11234-spearwielding-ch...

tsotha2• 11 years ago

Gah. Time keeps speeding up as I get older.

jonlucc2• 11 years ago

I think what's happening is that the news is reported to be that chimps make and use tools to hunt, when in fact, the new data seems to be about female chimps being much more likely to make and use spears than males.

iamcurious• 11 years ago

That isn't new either. From dalke's reference:

    Intriguingly, the behaviour is mostly confined to females and immature chimps.

rickdale• 11 years ago

I was watching a show about Orangutans recently and one of the things I thought was interesting was that orangutans in the wild are independent in the sense that they usually eat by themselves. But when they are put in captivity and they are around other orangutans they start to learn from each other and build off of each others concepts. In the wild when alone they stick with what they know, but when around other orangutans they learn from each other.

Chimps on the other hand eat and do other stuff with each other and are usually(if not always) part of a group and so they have more complex actions in nature just from learning from one another, picking up tips and building upon what they know.

tjradcliffe2• 11 years ago

If you ever want to have real fun, point this out to a doctrinaire feminist who is heavily invested in the idea that men are more violent than women because in the primordial landscape men did most of the hunting. I did this to a freind once, quite innocently, and she ended up so angry she could--in her own description--barely speak.

There is a whole literature in a particular brand of feminism (mostly associated with the radicals) that simply takes the association of hunting and interpersonal violence on faith, whereas in fact we're pretty sure men are more violent than women because of mate competition. The fact that we observe hunting behaviour amongst female chimps (who are less violent than male chimps) and female bonobos (who are far less violent than chimps, and no more violent than male bonobos, who also hunt) makes it clear that hunting behavior has nothing much to do with interpersonal violence.

This makes good sense from an evolutionary perpsective: killing a member of another species is a profoundly different kind of selective event than killing a member of your own species, particularly in a social primate like proto-humans where the individual you kill is likely to be closely related to you. The selective pressures on the two behaviours are almost completely disjoint, but to believe the feminist myth--or the equally silly pseudo-evolutionary anti-feminist myths that preceded it--you have to believe they are somehow related.

michaelkeenan• 11 years ago

You make some interesting points, but there should be a norm against introducing a political topic on a non-political thread. There's a way to get to a political point from most non-political topics, but then every thread leads to a political fight.

I think it's especially important not to criticize a political point that no-one has brought up in the thread already. It's always tempting to address the worst arguments rather than the best ones, and there's more leeway to do that we we're not constrained by replying to something someone's actually said.

peteretep2• 11 years ago

    > there should be a norm against introducing a political
    > topic on a non-political thread

No there shouldn't. You're welcome to use those little grey arrows to vote about what you want to see, but you are one voice amongst many.

tedks2• 11 years ago

There is a whole literature in a particular brand of feminism (mostly associated with the radicals) that simply takes the association of hunting and interpersonal violence on faith

This is a straw woman. I cannot think of any radical feminist for whom this is an important point. (You probably don't mean actually radical feminists, but just liberals with whom you disagree, but that's another point.)

I think virtually any feminist would say that men are violent because patriarchal society teaches and programs men to be violent. It teaches boys that violence is an acceptable way of solving problems, interacting with others, etc., and even when violence is overtly discouraged (for example, in schools) it is often covertly encouraged (the pride a father displays in a son who hits back against a bully, the resulting respect on the schoolyard for that child, not to even mention video games, movies, and other cultural role models).

But maybe you've just read different feminists from me. What prominent radical feminists, or even liberal feminists, hold this viewpoint?

cjsthompson2• 11 years ago

What's wrong with hitting back a bully if you can? If you can, by all means do it. The problem is not that, it's shaming those who can't hit back.

rquantz4• 11 years ago

I don't know why this was downvoted, it's a perfectly reasonable post. I can believe there is some second wave feminist who has written something like what the GP was saying above – feminists are pretty damn diverse. That said, it seems like most modern feminists are pretty skeptical of evolutionary psychology, and would be unlikely to make arguments about modern human behavior based on paleolithic culture. If you know otherwise, please produce whatever feminists you're talking about.

I don't know you, Mr. tjradcliffe, but I suspect that if you think it's fun to bait your feminist "friends" (why is this woman friends with you?), then she probably got mad at you not because of your fabulously argued points, but because you were being an asshole.

halfcat3• 11 years ago

There is a line from a post apocalyptic TV show: "Ain’t nothing sadder than an outdoor cat that thinks he’s an indoor cat". Why is it considered "misbehaving" when men don't act like women? We have advanced to a rather cushy society that allows for this stance to seem reasonable, and when considered only in this setting, perhaps it is. But the world is not all roses. Sometimes violence is not only an acceptable way of dealing with a situation, sometimes it is the only way of dealing with it and achieving a successful outcome. The bully comes in many forms, and when it's you, or your family, or your society that peaks the bully's prolonged interest, you only have one question: Fight, or flight? This decision boils down to whether or not you stand any chance against the bully. If your child is being stalked by a street gang, you should probably get in the car, drive 30 hours and relocate. If your child gets beat up by the school bully every week, then by all means, get him training on how to throw a punch, and the next time the bully chooses to bully, your child should break his nose. This sounds harsh, I'm sure, but my opinion comes from the experience of being in such situations (mostly as an adult, with non-violent bullies). The bully and I were lucky, as the bully got bored and moved on. But that experience made it crystal clear that one of the most horrible crimes anyone can commit is abusing one's power over another who is not capable of defending themself. We all agree rape is among the worst crimes a human can commit. It's an extreme case of abuse of power. Bullying, in whatever form, is abuse of power. I am in full agreement with Sun Tzu that it's better to avoid a battle if possible, because there is always a cost. But once you determine a battle is unavoidable, the right thing to do becomes clear, and in some cases the right thing includes violence. Luckily, most of us live in good enough circumstances that resorting to violence is rarely the right choice, but it's foolish to think violence is never an acceptable way of dealing with problems. Anyone who thinks that should count themselves lucky that their life experience so far has not brought them face to face with a real bully who won't go away.

qiqing3• 11 years ago

Early attempts to study stress hormones from aggression in large cats (e.g., lions and tigers) studied hunting behavior. The researchers puzzled over data that didn't make any sense to them for a long time before realizing that to a lion, killing that smaller mammal is like opening a box of cereal. That you really have to look at lion-on-lion violence to study aggression.

thret2• 11 years ago

Do you remember where you read this? I have been looking for a source without success.

peteretep2• 11 years ago

I would be interested to see testosterone distribution between male/females in other species of our monkeylike cousins.

I feel like I've seen many anecdotes by women who have transitioned to men (or are mid-process) who suddenly "get" many male behaviours once they start supplementing testosterone.

Frondo• 11 years ago

You once made a friend so angry she could barely speak, as a way of having fun?

I suspect you didn't really mean to connect those two, but it sounds kinda mean-spirited.

mbrock5• 11 years ago

Gender relations are interesting that way. I wonder what evolutionary psychology theory explains this particular kind of behavior.

dang• 11 years ago

This subthread detached from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9397270 and marked off-topic. A pity, because there are some substantive comments in it too.

gamblorrr• 11 years ago

So, might this not indicate that chimps are slowly but surely evolving toward a higher intellect, as a harsh environment selects against the dumb?

If there were no matriarchs capable of grasping a concept like hunting with weapons, instead of bare hands, 100 years ago, does that mean that they might unravel stone sharpening in 500 years?

The idea that human civilization might witness the true, literal evolution and flourishing of a second earthly intellect in species outside of humans is really exciting.

Maybe it's not evolution in action. Maybe chimpanzees of today are no smarter than 100 years ago. Maybe it takes 50 years of trial and error amongst social groups to learn such a skill, and then retain it across generations by teaching. Maybe tools like this have been invented and lost many times by various chimpanzee social groups over the past few centuries.

But it would still be really cool if this were representative of the emergence of a generation of apes, palpably smarter than those of, say, the 19th century.

resdirector• 11 years ago

I wonder if humans could, or should, help this evolutionary process along.

seanmcdirmid• 11 years ago

We've probably hindered it multiple times in the past. We weren't the only apes to master tool making, we were just really good at it and out competed others that tried filling the same niche.

KamiCrit• 11 years ago

Well one line of chimps seemed to grasp the tool making concept and you can see how they tuned out. Who's to say it can't happen twice?

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

With the speed we are wrecking the planet they won't have enough time :(

charlieflowers• 11 years ago

The article says they think female chimps invented first ever spear. So these scientists think chimps have been doing this a long time.

hyperpallium• 11 years ago

\tangents Are these chimps evolving intelligence? What conditions caused humans to evolve intelligence? Was it a rare, unusual event, or was it inevitable? I want to guard against the {anthro,ego,geo}centric-like view that we are the pinnacle of creation.

For our intelligence to evolve, there must have been an advantage to it, each step of the way, that offset the costs of gestating, growing, training and fuelling a larger brain. Looking at other animals, especially higher mammals, greater brain size and intelligence can have survival advantages. Although, considering the whole of life, most of it is not highly intelligent - bacteria, insects, fish etc still thrive as the majority.

There's a fascinating speculation applying Moore's law to the increasing complexity of life (see graph here http://io9.com/moores-law-predicts-life-originated-billions-...). This shows that it takes longer to evolve more complexity, though not that more complexity is necessarily better. I think it's fair to claim that humans are the most complex animals that have evolved so far... and that we are the ones to speculate on it because we just happened to be first (as in the Fermi paradox and fine-tuned universe). Therefore, we should expect other intelligent life to evolve on earth (perhaps from corvids, cetaceans - or even arachnids, some having extraordinary brain/body ratios); but it might take several million years, as that's what it took us. Complexity takes time.

Another view is that another intelligent species would have been the most dangerous threat to us possible. Humans certainly seem to have no problem killing other humans. We may have eradicated neanderthals, and other species in the human evolutionary line are also curiously missing today. Possibly, mammoths and mega-fauna were also increasing in intelligence? Perhaps we also set out to kill the most cunning and therefore most dangerous wild animals in general? Thus, delaying intelligence in competing species.

venomsnake2• 11 years ago

I should start writing the script of "skynet vs the planet of the apes" with the last day's news.

On a serious note - a recent theory that in a heat sink ocean and energy source life evolving is inevitable, and we have multiple species able to get to intelligence ... the fermi paradox becomes more urgent to be solved.

vladtaltos• 11 years ago

I wonder what would happen if a 'village' of chimps attack humans with spears :) hellfire ? or automated drone strikes on them ?

marcosdumay• 11 years ago

Guns, probably.

fredrivett• 11 years ago

Am I the only one expecting to see photos rather than '6 Shocking Things About Chimps'?

chisleu• 11 years ago

I've read of theories that ancient man's brain development came so quickly because we learned to throw spears at prey. We nearly doubled our brain size in a very short time period (anthropologically speaking.)

It was thought that it resulted from developing a sense of lay calculus by throwing the spears. One anthropologist I heard speak said he thought that would mean major league pitchers are the pinnacle of human evolution. :)

Of course, that gentleman consumed more psychedelics than anyone I've ever known, so I'm not so sure.

More to the point, what if this is the beginning of a very fast evolutionary change?

humanarity• 11 years ago

For some reason this reminded me of female primates using violence to get male interest and sex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82GUjPConiE

The Bonobo society also exhibits female alphas and uses extensive sexual activities (including hetero/homo and "group") to maintain social bonds.

However, even despite the apparent "similarities" I question our anthropomorphic instinct to assign to or infer too much meaning from the behaviour of our primate genetic relatives.

One reason contributing to that choice is because how humans behave in societies is shaped by centuries of social, cultural and political discourse on the ways in which we behave.

Female Chimps Seen Making, Wielding Spears

Related Stories