We really shouldn’t wait until the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud, that is all I am saying:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals—the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees’ trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
[snip]
In one case, after repeated stabs, a chimpanzee removed the injured or dead animal and ate it, the researchers reported in yesterday’s online issue of the journal Current Biology.
“It was really alarming how forceful it was,” said lead researcher Jill D. Pruetz of Iowa State University, adding that it reminded her of the murderous shower scene in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Psycho.” “It was kind of scary.”
Why? Because we love monkeys and other primates here at Arms Control Wonk.
You can read the entire paper, “Savanna Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus, Hunt with Tools”, in the forthcoming issue of Current Biology.
(Hat tip: AT)