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Once upon a time, it was thought that only human beings made and used tools. Today, as readers of Dragonfly magazine know, we are more humble. We now realize that many animals, including birds, make and use tools. Of all the other animals known to use tools, the chimpanzee is perhaps the most interesting. Jane Goodall and Wolfgang Kohler are two scientists who studied tool making and use among chimps. Here are their stories.
Wolfgang Kohler was a psychologist
who studied learning
and thinking among animals. In the 1920s, many
scientists thought that
animals could only learn through trial and error.
They thought that when
an animal faced a problem, such as finding food, it
would stumble around
until it hit upon the right answer by trying different
actions until it
got lucky. But Kohler believed that animals, especially
chimps, were much
smarter than most people imagined. He believed that
chimpanzees were capable
of intelligence, and even insight. To test his ideas
he did several experiments.
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Kohler worked with four chimps named Chica, Grande, Konsul, and Sultan. Kohler's basic experiment was to place a chimp in an enclosed play area. Somewhere out of reach he placed a prize, such as a bunch of bananas.
To
get the bananas, the
chimp would have to use an object as a tool. The objects
in the play area
included sticks of different lengths and wooden boxes.
He discovered that
chimpanzees were very good at using tools. They used
sticks as rakes to pull
in bananas places out of reach. And they also used sticks as
clubs to
bring down fruit hung overhead.
Sometimes they stood long sticks on end
and quickly climbed up the 7 meters
and grabbed the bananas before the
stick fell over. The chimpanzees also
learned to use boxes as step ladders,
dragging them under the hung bananas
and even stacking several boxes on
top of one another.
Kohler's chimps were able to do more than use tools, he actually observed chimps building tools. For example, he observed chimps breaking off branches from a tree to make a "rake." One of the smartest chimps, Sultan, was given a very difficult problem. Kohler placed a bunch of bananas outside Sultan's cage and two bamboo sticks inside the cage. However, neither of the sticks was long enough to reach the bananas. Sultan pushed the thinner stick into the hollow of the thicker one, and created a stick long enough to pull in the bananas (see the picture of Sultan doing this at the top).
Other chimps have been observed using a short stick to bring in a long stick, and then using the long stick to bring in a bunch of bananas. Kohler believed that these chimps showed insight -- acting as if they "saw" the solution before carrying out the actions. However, not all scientists agree with this idea. What do you think?
Wolfgang Kohler
observed chimps creating and using tools
in captivity. Jane Goodall discovered
that chimpanzees make and use tools
"in the wilderness." Since she
was a little girl, Jane
Goodall dreamed of studying animals in Africa.
Although her family did
not have much money, she was encouraged by her family
to follow her dreams.
Her mother once told her, "Jane, if you really want
something, and
if you work hard, take advantage of opportunities, and never
give up, you
will somehow find a way." As a young woman, she was working
as a secretary
when a letter came inviting her to stay with a friend in Kenya,
Africa.
At first, she worked as a secretary in Kenya too. When she learned
that
a scientist named Louis Leakey was working at the natural history museum
nearby, Goodall set off to meet him. Louis Leakey was famous for his studies
of our human ancestors. Leakey took her around the museum and asked all
sorts
of questions. Because she had never given up her dream of Africa,
and had
continued to read books about the continent and its wildlife, she
could answer
many of them. Jane Goodall made quite a good impression on
Leakey, and he
gave her a job as his assistant. In that job, Jane Goodall
made one of the most
exciting scientific discoveries of all.
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Louis Leakey decided she was the person he'd been looking
for
to go to Lake Tanganyika to study chimpanzee behavior. But she had
to
overcome a major problem. At that time, the country of Tanganyika (now
called Tanzania) was under Britain's rule. The British authorities were
horrified at the thought of a young, untrained girl going into the bush.
In
those days, people -- especially women -- did not go trekking off to
work with
wild animals. But finally the authorities agreed that she could
go, provided
she had a companion. It was her mother, who had always encouraged
her, who
served as her companion.
A few months after
Jane Goodall began her study, she observed
a chimp she called David Greybeard
pick a blade of grass and carefully
trim the edges. He stuck the grass into a
termite mound, left it there
for a moment, and pulled it out. Termites swarmed
over the blade of grass.
He then ate the termites clinging to the grass blade.
David Greybeard had
made a tool -- a "fishing rod" for termites.
This was the first
report of chimpanzees making and using tools in the wild.
It
shocked the scientific world! Until then, humans were thought to be the
only
animals to make tools in nature. In fact, tool-making was part of
some
scientists' definition of "human." If tool-making was only
a human
trait, then were chimps human? Jane Goodall's discovery opened
a new debate
about what it meant to be a human being. Do you still think
that only people
use tools? How would you investigate whether or not a
pet is capable of using
tools?
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Photos courtesy of the Jane Goodall Institute, Ken Regan, TE LeVere, and Wolfegang Kohler's (1927) The Mentality of Apes Routledge and Kegan Paul, LTD.: London.
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Nov. 19, 1997.
This document was last modified on
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 11:51:36