In what could be the ominous, hairy shape of things to come for us soft, weak human-things, In an experiment that could shed light on the early origins of human culture, a bonobo named Kanzi has learned to use stone tools.
The clever creature had already been taught to make the tools by a group of Israeli scientists who have apparently never seen any science fiction movie ever in the history of the world and have now brought doom upon us all. Caesar Kanzi demonstrated that he knew how to use his tools in an experiment that required him to split open a human skull a log to get to the quivering brain goo delicious food sealed inside. In no way will we remember this as the seemingly innocent foreshadowing of a primate-dominated future of misery and pain.
Via Primate Propaganda Periodical New Scientist:
Eviatar Nevo of the University of Haifa in Israel and his colleagues sealed food inside a log to mimic marrow locked inside long bones, and watched Kanzi, a 30-year-old male bonobo chimp, try to extract it. While a companion bonobo attempted the problem a handful of times, and succeeded only by smashing the log on the ground, Kanzi took a longer and arguably more sophisticated approach.
Both had been taught to knap flint flakes in the 1990s, holding a stone core in one hand and using another as a hammer. Kanzi used the tools he created to come at the log in a variety of ways: inserting sticks into seams in the log, throwing projectiles at it, and employing stone flints as choppers, drills, and scrapers. In the end, he got food out of 24 logs, while his companion managed just two.
Kanzi’s alarming surprising genius isn’t limited to making and using primitive tools. The bonobo also knows how to communicate his dread secret strategy to his monkey lieutenants use sign language.
