Chimps show skill in termite fishing.Video cameras recording activity at six termite termite or white ant, common name for a soft-bodied social insect of the order Isoptera. Termites are easily distinguished from ants by comparison of the base of the abdomen, which is broadly joined to the thorax in termites; in ants, there is nests in a central-African forest have revealed how local chimpanzees snag the insects for snacks. Tapes from a recent 6-month period show chimps making and wielding one set of termite-fishing tools at aboveground nests and a different type at subterranean nests. These chimps, residents of the Republic of Congo's Goualougo Triangle The Goualougo Triangle, is a 100-square-mile region on the southern end of the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park, located in the Republic of Congo, in Central Africa. The northern Congo lowland forest ecosystem of the park is one of the most intact fauna habitats of its type in Africa. , use termite-extracting tools and techniques that differ from those reported for chimps in eastern and western Africa, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the new study, led by Crickette Sanz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is a research institute for evolutionary anthropology based in Leipzig, Germany founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Institute network. The Institute currently employs three-hundred and thirty-four people. in Leipzig, Germany. The Congo chimps' tool use represents a cultural behavior Cultural behavior is behavior exhibited by humans (and, some would argue, by other species as well, though to a much lesser degree) that is extrasomatic or extragenetic, in other words, learned. Learned Behaviour There is a species of ant that builds nests made of leaves. , the researchers conclude in the November American Naturalist. Unattended cameras, which had never been used to study chimps, focused on termite nests frequented by a 54-member Congo-chimp community. At dirt mounds made by termites, adult chimps push a short twig TWIG - Tree-Walking Instruction Generator. A code generator language. ML-Twig is an SML/NJ variant. ["Twig Language Manual", S.W.K. Tijang, CS TR 120, Bell Labs, 1986]. or branch into the soil at various spots to create narrow tunnels. They then insert flexible stems of a particular local plant into the tunnels and swiftly pull them out. Termites crawling on these "fishing probes" are quickly scooped up by hand or mouth, the researchers note. To make the stems into more-effective termite catchers, chimps often fray the forward ends of these probes with their teeth. At subterranean nests, the chimps use long sticks to dig tunnels into the ground before inserting fishing probes. |
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