( as Breuer Mireille Ndoundou-Hockemba ...)Wild Gorillas Handy with a Stick

as Breuer, Mireille Ndoundou-Hockemba, and Vicki Fishlock reveal that gorillas are just as resourceful as the other great apes. From an observation platform at Mbeli Bai, a swampy forest clearing that gorillas frequently visit to forage, Breuer et al. observed an adult female gorilla named Leah (a member of a long-studied gorilla group) at the edge of a pool of water, “looking intently at the water in front of her.?Leah walked upright into the water, but stopped and returned to the edge when the water reached her waist. She then walked back into the water, grabbed a branch in front of her, detached it, and, grasping it firmly, repeatedly jabbed the water in front of her with the end of the branch, “apparently using it to test the water depth or substrate stability.?She continued walking across the pool, branch in hand, “using it as a walking stick for postural support.?/p>

In a separate incident, a second adult female named Efi (who belonged to a different group) emerged from the forest and broke off the thin, long trunk from a dead shrub with both hands. She then jammed the trunk into the ground and grasped it with her left hand while manipulating food with her right hand. Efi then placed the trunk on the swampy ground in front of her, and, walking upright, used it as a bridge to cross the muck.

That tool use was seen in lowland gorillas and not mountain gorillas—the most intensively studied gorillas—may reflect the different ecological challenges facing the two populations, supporting the notion that ecology influences the evolution of novel tool use. Though Mbeli Bai gorillas often use intact branches to help them get around, the authors explain, these are the first observations of wild gorillas using detached objects as tools. However the gorillas acquired their skills, these observations suggest that the intelligence required for tool use evolved before the gorilla lineage split off from humans and the other great apes—providing further evidence tha
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Source:PLoS Biology

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