Comments on: Chimps Invent Improved Stick Technology to Catch More Termites

By: Fintan

Fintan — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:16:51 +0000

Chimps are smart, after all we are the third chimpanzee, the naked ape.
Some other species show intelligence that is in at least some ways similar to us apes. The african grey parrott has been shown to have basic but true language abilities. African greys perform better in communication than all other animals excluding man. Ravens and other corvid species show remarkable operational intelligence, in tool making and problem solving ability,even fashioning tools to make other tools.
Small mammals such as squirrels show prodigeous memory skills ,remembering thousands of spots where they buried nuts. Matriarch elephants have mental maps of their often massive ranges that few if any humans could equal even if they lived their whole life in the same range,elephant brains are 6-8 larger than human brains.
I don’t want to give the impression that I believe other animal species can equal humans general mental capacities, but other species do have intelligences that we need to study in order to better understand our own remarkable brains.

By: max

max — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 14:27:23 +0000

I have noticed for some time that cats teach each other tricks, and one cat can influence the behavior of the other cats in the family. When we adopted Shopska, a calico, we soon discovered that she could open the latch-style doors in the house. Soon, she taught our male cat, Wolfie, to open them. Now, our newest kitty, Bandit, is attempting to open the doors using the same technique as the other two, but he doesn’t weigh enough.

When we got Shopska, she was already a full grown, two-year-old cat. Her fur was dull, greasy and not particularly clean. Wolfie, on the other hand, was nearly a year old and was obsessively clean. Within six months Shopska was spending more time grooming and looked like a different cat. We had a similar experience when we adopted Bandit; he, too, became a cleaner, better groomed cat. I cannot attribute the increased cleanliness in Shopska to being groomed by Wolfie, as the two of them have never been pals.

This was the first experience I’ve had living with more than one animal, and it has certainly been interesting.

By: Abu Rayyan

Abu Rayyan — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 05:29:55 +0000

This is interesting, but it has long been known that other species of animals are capable of learning from one another. For decades, no one has thought of higher animals as being total genetic automatons. The only reason all this is being breathlessly described as “culture” and “complex tools” is that chimps are closely related to us – therefore all this is supposed to have momentous implications for “our place in nature.” In fact, however, people did not evolve from chimps, and all this has nothing to do with human evolution. If you want to know about real culture, examine the Middle Stone Age and Upper Paleolithic archeological record–chimps can’t hold a candle to that, or even to Acheulean culture for that matter–and even if they could, it would mean nothing for human evolution. Under all this is a cultural, not a scientific, agenda–the desire to minimize the differences between people and other species, and to create an amoral animal-like view of humanity.

By: jimmy

jimmy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:16:54 +0000

is there even such a thing as anti-chimp technology??? if there is i’ve never heard of it

By: bobby

bobby — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:13:46 +0000

i think they have a ways to go before they take over the world so you shouldn’t worry but everyone should have all ready known that

By: jonny

jonny — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:59:28 +0000

wow the chimps are gonna out smart us and take over the world next

By: jhouder

jhouder — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:57:38 +0000

Oh, God. They’re learning! Invest in cattle prods and anti-chimp technology, people. This is the beginning of the end for humanity.

By: cacs

cacs — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:14:42 +0000

Love the BBC video! I wonder if female chimps are more adept than males at fashioning the tools, since the girl dolphins were more into crafting sponge tools than their boy friends. Maybe there’s no gender difference here and hunger drives both sexes equally. What clever creatures! Scoop up those termites! A new, “organic” form of pest remediation.