There is a deep hole in a tree trunk and within is a tasty dollop of sweet, nutritious honey. It's a worthwhile prize for any animal skilled or clever enough to reach it, and chimpanzees certainly have both of these qualities. But the solutions they find aren't always the same - they depend on cultural traditions.
Chimps from the Sonso community in Uganda are skilled at the use of sticks and unsurprisingly, they manufacture stick-based tools to reach the honey. Chimps from the Kanyawara community in a different part of Uganda have never been seen to use sticks in the wild. Instead, they bring their considerable leaf-based technology to the fore, using leaves a sponges to soak up the hidden honey.
This is hardly the first time that chimps have demonstrated cultural traditions. Chimps in different parts of Africa have their own peculiar styles of tool technology and these variations ...
