Evolution: Chimps Have an Innate Ability to Employ Tools

Chimps and bonobos are closely related, but one may be better at tools than the other. Scientists have found that chimpanzees innately know how to use tools while bonobos don't.

Using tools is a key part of human evolution. In fact, the origins of human tool mastery could lie in the gulf between tool use in chimpanzees and bonobos.

In this latest study, the researchers tracked communities of wild chimpanzees and bonobos in Uganda and the Congo for months. They catalogued tool use and potential for tool use in terms of the different environments and the different amounts of social time that the animals spent. The researchers also examined the propensity for young apes to engage in object manipulation, whether or not the object was used as a tool or a toy.

It turns out that environmental and social opportunities didn't explain the difference in tool use. What was interesting, though, was that immature chimps manipulated and played a lot more with objects than bonobos. In fact, chimps played with objects on their own. This, in particular, hints at an innate ability to use tools.

"Chimpanzees are object-oriented in a way that bonobos are not," said Kathelijne Koops, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Given the close evolutionary relationship between these two species and humans, insights into the tool use difference between chimpanzees and bonobos can help us identify the conditions that drove the evolution of human technology."

The findings reveal a bit more about chimpanzee tool use, and also about evolution. It's apparent that there's an innate predisposition for tool use, which probably means that this key factor had a major role in human evolution.

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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