In the Goualougo Triangle of the Republic of Congo, a chimpanzee is hungry for termites. Its prey lives within fortress-like nests, but the chimp knows how to infiltrate these. It plucks the stem from a nearby arrowroot plant and clips any leaves away with its teeth, leaving behind a trimmed, flexible stick that it uses to "fish" for termites.
Many chimps throughout Africa have learned to build these fishing-sticks. They insert them into termite nests as bait, and pull out any soldier termites that bite onto it. But the Goualougo chimps do something special. They deliberately fray the ends of their fishing sticks by running them through their teeth or pulling away separate fibres - just watch the chimp on the right in the video below.
The result is a stick with a brush-like tip, which is far more effective at gathering termites than the standard model. This population of ...
