Chimpanzees show engineering skills when designing tools according to their flexibility
They have strength to leave nuts with a stone and ability to slide through trees at full speed, but the most surprising is how they think. For years it was assumed that Chimpanzees used tools basicallywithout applying complex technical criteria. An incomplete vision for a species that shares almost 99 % of DNA with humans.
However, that idea has begun to stagger. The engineering It is not exclusive to those who design bridges or airplanes. In the middle of the jungle select materials for their flexibility or rigidity To solve practical problems. What seemed instinct is to have much more technical knowledge of what was thought.
Choosing a branch is not a matter of luck, but of criteria
In a recent investigation, an international team led by Alejandra Pascual-Garrido studied how the chimpanzees of the Gombe National ParkIn Tanzania, they select certain materials to make utensils with which to catch Termites. They do not choose any plant. They analyze, compare and opt for those that best fit the irregular tunnels of the termites. Those offered by fair resistance without breaking. That is, they apply a logic very similar to that supported by engineering.
The study data, published in the magazine iscienceThey showed that chimpanzees avoid too rigid branches, although they belong to the same species as others that they do. In fact, according to the authors, “the implements derived from plant species not used by chimpanzees were more rigid in 175 % than those of preferred species.”
And the most interesting is not only what they choose, but how they do it: after trying more than 500 plant samples, it was found that the selected sticks combined a lowest EI index and a minor elastic moduletwo essential indicators to measure the Flexion capacity without breakage.
Learning looking: this is how knowledge is transmitted between chimpanzees
It is certainly not an instinctive impulse or automatic action. The choice responds to specific criteria that are learned by observing others. Young people spend how their mothers and other group members handle these tools.
Often they reuse them, or even take them in full task. This active observation is what allows knowledge to pass from one generation to another, which fits with what researchers define as cultural transmission.
One of the most surprising details is the repetition of elections even long distance. Plants like the Grewia Forbesii They are used to manufacture these tools in chimpanzees communities separated by more than 5,000 kilometers. This suggests that decisions do not respond solely to local availability, but to shared functional criteria.
According to the article, the “selection of tools for tools based on specific physical properties has already been described in the use of stone tools for non -human primates.”
No footprints or fossils, but with technical logic
This type of findings contributes clues about how the First human technologiessince it reveals that chimpanzees are capable of manufacturing functional tools from soft materials that leave no archaeological remains. If they apply technical criteria to select adequate branches, our ancestors may also do so, although those tools have not been preserved.
The conclusion is simple, although nothing obvious: there is no need for a forge to demonstrate technical knowledge. Sometimes, just choose a branch well.
