Chimpanzees teach tool skills by handing tools to young, study finds

Wild adult chimpanzees in Senegal deliberately hand tools to infants and guide their hands, a behaviour researchers call teaching. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests such transfers help youngsters master complex foraging skills like ant-dipping and baobab-pounding. The findings challenge the idea that teaching is uniquely human.

Bottom line — The study documents 33 tool transfers, with mothers the teachers in 30% of cases, per the University of Barcelona team.

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• Researchers analysed 15 hours of camera-trap footage from 14 sites in Senegal's Dindefelo region, per the Jane Goodall Institute Spain and University of Barcelona.
• Tool transfers occurred mainly during ant-dipping (58%), with algae fishing (30%) and termite fishing (12%) making up the rest, the paper reports.
• In one clip, mother Soukki placed a dipping stick in an ant nest, then led her daughter Saïsaï to it, according to the authors.
• A juvenile male was seen pounding baobab fruit against a rock, then guiding infant Fotti's hand to repeat the motion, per the study.
• Elliot Howard-Spink at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior called the finding 'very cool and nice', noting teaching events are rare and hard to study.
• Senior author R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar said open questions include whether more complex behaviours require more teaching and whether well-taught chimps become better teachers themselves.

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