Adult chimpanzees in Senegal hand tools to juveniles, study finds

Researchers studying chimpanzee communities in Senegal have documented a behavior that mirrors a landmark observation made by Jane Goodall more than sixty years ago. Goodall famously recorded a male chimp named “David Greybeard” shaping a twig into a fishing rod to extract termites, highlighting the species’ capacity for tool manufacture. The new fieldwork, conducted by a team from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, shows that adult chimpanzees now not only create such tools but also actively pass them to younger members of the group.

The study, based on several months of video surveillance and direct observation, recorded adult females handing pre‑shaped termite‑fishing sticks to juveniles during feeding bouts. Researchers noted that the transferred tools were already trimmed to the appropriate length and tip shape, allowing the youngsters to practice termite extraction without first learning the manufacturing steps. This form of direct teaching suggests a more sophisticated cultural transmission mechanism than previously documented in wild chimpanzee populations, expanding our understanding of how tool‑use skills are maintained and spread across generations.