Behavioral repertoire of tool use in the wild chimpanzees at Bossou

Abstract

Since Goodall (1963a,b) reported with photos and her detailed descriptions that wild chimpanzees fished for termites with a grass stalk, tool use has been the focus of intensive investigations at wild chimpanzee study sites across Africa.As long-term studies on wild chimpanzees have been carried out, many differences in behavioral repertoires have been found between subspecies (only the West African subspecies, Pan troglodytes verus, crack open a nut with a pair of stones as a hummer and anvil; Biro et al. 2003; Boesch et al. 1994; Sugiyama 1993; and only the Central African subspecies, Pan troglodytes troglodytes, use a tool set composed of stout sticks and slender fishing probes to extract termites from their nests; Sabater Pi 1974; Sanz et al. 2004) and even between adjacent communities (Mahale chimpanzees have never been observed to dip for commonly found driver ants, although Gombe chimpanzees, 170 km to the north, regularly do so; McGrew 1974; Nishida 1987).