Santino the chimp would calmly collect stones and fashion discs made out of concrete even when the zoo was closed, to throw at visitors when they returned.
Scientists believe his behaviour is the strongest proof yet that humans are not the only creatures which can make plans for the future. Although he was clearly agitated and distressed when pitching his ammunition, the scientists found that Santino was always calm whenever collecting or crafting the stones.
This cool behaviour proves that he was not driven by his immediate circumstances or need, according to a new study in the journal Current Biology. Born in Munich Zoo in 1978 Santino, a male chimpanzee, was transferred to Furuvik Zoo in Sweden when he was five years old.
Telegraph (Thanks Katherine)
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That’s pretty awesome. From the research and “what we don’t know” perspective. Not too good for the chimp I guess, if he feels the need to throw rocks. Whenever I watched any videos or read articles about such subjects, the thing they emphasized as the difference between humans and other apes was our ability to plan, visualize and have abstract thoughts, ideas. Unless he is special, we might have been a bit wrong.
It always interests me what other animals think of the world.
Like, what do they think about the inevitability of death? Do they even know the inevitability of death?
What do they think about the afterlife?
Do they have emotion-based thoughts of their own other than their survival instincts?
It is quite intriguing to ask these questions. Maybe the chimp can learn, unlearn and relearn according to beliefs just like the rest of us. Is it the same for all life, too?
And does that make us any different from other creatures and their survival instincts?
Interesting..
yup…i pity the day when roles become reversed…80
This might also prove that we shouldn’t really hunt chimps and put them in cages for our amusement… Santino didn’t seem too happy about it in any case!
I don’t care about the chimp….where did you get that pic? I want of those!!!!!!
correction: I WANT ONE OF THOSE!
rock star!
That picture will haunt my nightmares… It’s like a possessed loris.
I wonder if the Zoo gave visitors safety helmets on arrival! lol. xxx
They have culture, too:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3321022/Chimpanzees-need-role-models.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3300772/These-chimps-are-fishing-for-ants…-but-does-this-ritual-make-them-cultured.html
Isn’t it funny how freaked out some people get at the idea we might not be completely different from other species?
That’s fascinating. I wish we had some confident grasp of what actually went on in other animals’ heads. In an empathetic kinda way. It’s so hard to make any judgements about them without that basic comprehension.
ps. “we shouldn’t really hunt chimps and put them in cages for our amusement”
I don’t think we need evidence like this to prove that fact!
No to paraphrase uui, but I’d always heard or read that not only was our imagination the difference between humans and animals, it was also the survival trait that put us ahead of neanderthal man (the ability to conserve food for leaner times, etc.).
Perhaps it’s not any more imagination of (and planning for) the future than simple pattern recognition, no more than ‘lunch comes at this time of day’.
Very interesting stuff.
Some in the zoo just keep filling their mouth with spit for the same reason and wait for you to be friendly with them …
It probably got fed up with those who threw stones at him to get some response. Or gets fed up with those staring creatures .. Or he could not return the food tokens people threw at them and therefore he throws these things … a way to communicate .. well, it is a way to communicate ofcourse. People are a bit dum, they quite often don’t understand their own real language anymore so they learn about this inside theirselve by studying animals.
He may not have collected them for the same purpose though, that’s not been proven at all. People are not really known all the time either for being that rational/logic either, so why would that one be? It does still not say that they are not intelligent. I mean .. intelligence is just a human focus on things, created by those who wanted it to see it their way ofcourse.