<Article> A Wild Chimpanzee Uses a Stick to Disable a Snare at Bossou, Guinea

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Using sticks as a tool is common among wild chimpanzees1. Chimpanzees in their natural habitat use stick tools to serve a variety of purposes, for example termite fishing2, ant dipping3, pestle pounding4, algae scooping5, honey dipping6, probing and exploring tree holes for animal prey or water. The majority of these tool-use behaviors are targeted at food resources, i.e. social insects or their products. But sticks are also sometimes used in defense; they may be brandished as clubs7 or hurled as missiles8 at snakes, predators or humans. We describe here an episode whereby a young adult male chimpanzee employed a stick to disable the trap mechanism of a self-locking wire snare. This case supplements other examples of stick-tool in the context of defense which principally involve aimed or unaimed throwing of a stick towards a threatening life form. This episode reflects the flexible ability of wild chimpanzees to respond to threatening inanimate human-made object.