The #1 source for news about monkeys and apes

["Adam Thorsell" <athorsell AT meditech.com>]

>From the Great Falls Tribune/AP

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUTCRACKING_GORILLA?SITE=MTGRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Scientists Study Gorilla Who Uses Tools

By ANJAN SUNDARAM
Associated Press Writer

GOMA, Congo (AP) -- An infant gorilla in a Congo sanctuary is smashing palm 
nuts between two rocks to extract oil, surprising and intriguing scientists 
who say they have much to learn about what gorillas can do - and about what 
that says about evolution.

It had been thought that the premeditated use of stones and sticks to 
accomplish a task like cracking nuts was restricted to humans and the 
smaller, more agile chimpanzees. Then in late September, keepers at a Dian 
Fossey Gorilla Fund International sanctuary in this eastern Congo city saw 2 
1/2-year-old female gorilla Itebero smashing palm nuts between rocks in the 
"hammer and anvil" technique, considered among the most complex tool use 
behaviors.

"This is a surprising finding, given what we know about tool use in 
gorillas," Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund primatologist Patrick Mehlman said 
earlier this month at his Goma office.

Mehlman said that the finding indicates that complex tool use may not be a 
trait developed only by humans and chimpanzees, and could have its origins 
earlier in the evolutionary chain, among ancestors common to both humans and 
our closest relatives the great apes.

Gottfried Hohmann, an expert on primates at the Max Planck Institute in 
Leipzig, Germany, told The Associated Press by phone that Itebero's behavior 
"means that gorillas have a higher level of understanding of their 
environment than we thought."

Itebero has been living in the sanctuary for a year, ever since she was 
confiscated by local authorities from poachers who had been trying to sell 
her. Mehlman said he believed Itebero, named for a place near where she was 
found, started cracking nuts spontaneously and had not been influenced by the 
time she has spent among humans.

Alecia Lilly, a primatologist in Rwanda who worked for over a decade with a 
colony of captive gorillas in South Carolina and has seen Itebero at work, 
said most learning among gorillas occurs through imitation. But Itebero had 
no instructor, alone in her sanctuary with her keeper.

"Itebero is remarkably proficient at cracking nuts," Lilly told The 
Associated Press by phone. "It takes most chimpanzees many years to reach 
similar levels of proficiency."

Itebero's actions led some scientists to believe that gorillas in the wild 
might exhibit complex tool use as well - though no one has ever reported such 
behavior. Earlier this year, researchers reported observing gorillas in the 
wild in the neighboring Republic of Congo's rain forests using simple tools, 
according to a team led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society 
at the Bronx Zoo.

In an e-mail message Monday from the Republic of Congo's Nouabale-Ndoki 
National Park, Breuer said that in 10 years of observation, his team had seen 
only two instances of tool use among gorillas - in one a stick was used to 
test the depth of a pond and in another a small tree trunk was used for 
support and as a bridge.

Breuer said it was difficult to compare the behaviors his team had seen in 
the wild with the more complex behavior exhibited by Itebero, who had had 
contact with humans. But Breuer said Itebero's action "clearly shows that 
gorillas have the capability to use sophisticated tools even if they do not - 
or rarely - do this.

"Very often the use of tools is triggered by certain needs and it seems that 
gorillas have only little needs to use tools in the wild," Breuer said.

In Goma, Mehlman said scientists have not observed gorillas in wild settings 
for as long as they have chimpanzees.

Breuer said more research was important, but "what we really need to do is to 
better protect the gorillas and chimps in Central Africa."

"Everybody is excited about such spectacular observations but we should hurry 
up with our efforts to guarantee them a future," Breuer added. "Certainly 
many people are impressed by their intelligence and similarities with our own 
species but there are still a lot of people who eat the apes. We should do 
everything to stop this.

Scientists estimate that as few as 5,000 Grauer's gorillas, also called 
eastern lowland gorillas, may remain in the wild, although no comprehensive 
census of their population has been conducted since the end of Congo's civil 
war in 2002.

Conflict in Congo saw the decline of many wild species, as thousands of armed 
groups from Congo, Rwanda and Burundi ran amok in the forests and killed 
animals for food.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be 
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our 
Privacy Policy.





Adam Thorsell, Supervisor, 781-774-3174
Medical Information Technology, Inc.
Mailstop: C3S114W, MEDITECH Circle, Westwood, MA  02090