We already knew chimpanzees were smart – but new research shows their engineering prowess exceeds all imagination

Chimpanzees act as engineers in their daily tasks, new research shows. A team of researchers have discovered that chimpanzees are able to choose materials to make tools based on their structural and mechanical properties.

The chimpanzees studied are living in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, and are shown to deliberately choose plants that make more flexible tools for termite fishing.

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This allows the chimpanzees to probe the termites out of their mounds of winding tunnels – a much better approach than using rigid sticks. The study found that the materials ignored by chimpanzees were 175 per cent more rigid than their preferred materials.

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These findings show us the technical abilities associated with the making of perishable tools, which remains a mysterious and unknown element of human technological evolution.

Wild chimpanzees therefore show an innate comprehension of material properties that helps them choose the best tools for the job, rather than simply using any stick or plant that is available.

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The multidisciplinary team of researchers are from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania, the University of Algarve and the University of Porto in Portugal, and the University of Leipzig. The findings are published in the journal iScience.

"This finding has important implications for understanding how humans might have evolved their remarkable tool-using abilities," says Adam van Casteren from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "While perishable materials like wood rarely survive in the archaeological record, the mechanical principles behind effective tool construction and use remain constant across species and time.'

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Top image: A Gombe chimpanzee using a termite fishing tool to fish termites (credit: Alejandra Pascual-Garrido)