Kanzi the bonobo has made headlines before, first for learning sign language, and then later when he made up “words” for everyday objects. His latest feat though, is nothing short of amazing. The industrious ape crafted rudimentary stone tools that are “on a par with the efforts of early humans”.

The 30-year-old great ape, along with a companion, was given a task of sorts, or rather an opportunity. Researchers of the University of Haifa, Israel, sealed food inside a log intended to replicate marrow trapped inside long bones, and left the apes to try and extract it. The two apes took distinctly different approaches.

Both had been taught to knap flint flakes in the 1990s, holding a stone core in one hand and using another as a hammer. Kanzi used the tools he created to come at the log in a variety of ways: inserting sticks into seams in the log, throwing projectiles at it, and employing stone flints as choppers, drills, and scrapers. In the end, he got food out of 24 logs, while his companion managed just two.

Although this is not the first time that Kanzi has made tools, these bear a remarkable resemblance to those created by early hominids, our distant ancestors. While the other bonobo also made tools, Kanzi’s are unique in that they met the criteria for both tool groups made by hominids, “wedges and choppers, and scrapers and drills.”

The impressive craftsmanship also raises questions about the species as a whole, and whether the ability is an inherent trait, and could randomly occur in nature, or a learned skill due to human interaction.

[Source: New Scientist]