An eclectic collection from my ResearchBlogging.org column this week, but all well worth the read: At EvoAnth, Adam Benton wonders whether human ancestors may have mastered tool use earlier than we think. He shares research (containing admittedly scant evidence) that includes a nice discussion of the challenges of this data. Sarah Jane Alger of The [...]

The chimpanzee’s clever use of sticks to fish for termites is fairly well known. In 1964, Jane Goodall announced her groundbreaking discovery to the world, writing in the journal Nature, “During three years in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanganyika, East Africa, I saw chimpanzees use natural objects as tools on many occasions. These [...]

A captive parrot in an Austrian research lab near Vienna has started using tools, adding to a complex story that began more than fifty years ago in the forests of Tanzania. “During three years in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanganyika, East Africa, I saw chimpanzees use natural objects as tools on many occasions,” [...]

A juvenile chimpanzee in the Ivory Coast’s Tai Forest watches as her mother carefully places a soft coula nut onto a hard, flat rock. In her other hand, mom has a chunk of hard wood. Mom smashes the nut with her makeshift hammer, once, twice, three times. Having broken the outer shell, she plucks out [...]

Sometime between fifteen and thirty thousand years ago, probably in the Middle East, the long, protracted process of domestication began to alter the genetic code of the wolf, eventually leaving us with the animals we know and love as domestic dogs. While there are several different theories as to exactly how dog domestication began, what [...]

Each morning, a nametag would turn up missing. They went missing at some point during the nights, when nobody was around to notice. Each time one went missing, of course, it would be replaced. Nametags were essential in Bradley Philip Smith’s place of business. Every time he replaced a lost nametag with a new one, [...]