Link: Archaeology of nonhuman tool use
Scientific American is previewing an article by Michael Haslam from their March issue, “The Other Tool Users”. The article focuses on the use of archaeologic...
All posts tagged with tool use
Tracing the users of chimpanzee tools by their DNA fingerprints
A new paper by Fiona Stewart and coworkers does a bit of forensic DNA analysis on tools made and used by chimpanzees: “DNA recovery from wild chimpanzee tool...
Incidental capuchin flake manufacture
This is a nice article by Ed Yong about Michael Haslam’s research documenting how capuchin monkeys incidentally make stone flakes as a side effect of their n...
Link: Female chimpanzee hunting at Fongoli
James Gorman of the New York Times has an article today about the long-term field research on hunting by the chimpanzees at Fongoli, Senegal.
Primate extractive foraging and tool use
An important difference among some primate species is their ability to get foods that are hidden or protected by natural defenses. A little cleverness may yi...
Mailbag: The capuchin australopithecines
Re: australopithecine tools:
Chimpanzee mating tools
John Tierney riffs on a short review paper by William McGrew, a brief tour of chimpanzee technology. In a pool of academese, he finds a salacious bubble:
High-tech honey extraction, chimpanzee-style
Most people know that hunter-gatherer men hunt meat. Fewer people know the major secondary target for male foraging in many hunter-gatherer societies: honey....
Army ant chimpanzee toolkits
A nice story about Crickette Sanz’ and David Morgan’s work with chimpanzees of the Goualango Triangle, and the tools they use to forage for army ants:
Rooks, tools, and "domain general" cognition
Christopher Bird and Nathan Emery (2009) performed a number of tool use experiments on rooks – birds related to crows (corvids) that do not use tools in the ...
Monkeys pick rocks
The NY Times reports on Elisabetta Visalberghi and colleages’ work demonstrating that capuchin monkeys pick the right size rock for nutcracking: