Just days after a poacher's snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas worked together Tuesday to find and destroy traps in their Rwandan forest home, according to conservationists on the scene.
"This is absolutely the first time that we've seen juveniles doing that ... I don't know of any other reports in the world of juveniles destroying snares," said Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund's Karisoke Research Center, located in the reserve where the event took place.
"We are the largest database and observer of wild gorillas ... so I would be very surprised if somebody else has seen that," Vecellio added.
For the first time, great apes have been observed making and using tools to hunt mammals, according to a new study. The discovery offers insight into the evolution of hunting behavior in early humans.
No fewer than 22 times, researchers documented wild chimpanzees on an African savanna fashioning sticks into "spears" to hunt small primates called lesser bush babies (bush baby photo).
In each case a chimpanzee modified a branch by breaking off one or two ends and, frequently, using its teeth to sharpen the stick. The ape then jabbed the spear into hollows in tree trunks where bush babies sleep.
When hunting in the hollows, "almost without fail, every time they would withdraw the tool, they would sniff it or lick it, and then proceed to stab it in there again," said Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist with Iowa State University who led the research in Senegal.
"And they did it so forcibly that our assumption is the bush babies would have been injured if there were always bush babies in the hollow," she continued.
Anthropologist and study co-author Paco Bertolani witnessed the single case in which a chimpanzee successfully extracted a bush baby with a spear. The ape subsequently tore apart and ate the smaller primate.