Are You Smarter Than a Female Monkey?

Watching Castaway for the thirteenth time last Sunday, I found myself daydreaming about my own heroic survival should I ever get stranded on a deserted island. I remember when I was a kid, I would pretend to be lost in my backyard (disclaimer: I was an only child) and would make fake tools from sticks and build forts with ferns. Of course when it came time to hunt, the best prey always ended up being my rather unimpressed fat cat. Evidently, he didn't think being carried like a hog on a stick was an ideal way to spend his afternoon.

But being both the chief and underlings of your own tribe can get pretty exhausting, and eventually the fun and games transferred into more grown-up things - like watching other people pretend to be stranded on an island in TV shows and movies. But what never ceased to amaze me was how easy those actors made it look to make fire (rubbing sticks together only ever gave me splinters and the occasional cat toy/tie), and the fact that the fat guy on Gilligan's Island never lost any weight. How, I wondered, do people actually survive when we humans have become so dependant on the splendors of technology? I mean really, I don't even know how to keep my indoor plants alive, let alone could I figure out which ones would kill me if I ate 'em. The answer to our great dilemma: follow a monkey.

In a recent Current Biology article written by science scholars Paco Bertolani and Jill Pruetz, chimpanzees from Senegal are aping the advancements of our human ancestors (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun). Four years of following these monkeys in the Fongoli sector of this African landscape showed scientists that chimps are learning how to hunt. Although the act of hunting has been observed my male chimps in other parts of the world (who gang up to kill smaller monkeys for sustenance), this is the first time that female monkeys are the primary breadwinners.

Carrying around a little monkey is something most human mothers can relate to, as are the demands of multitasking - like baking casserole while bottle-feding. In the monkey world however, the females are even smaller in comparison to the lumberous males. That means that resources are usually rewarded to the biggest and strongest of the bunch, leaving adolescent-guarding females to fend for themselves. Pruetz remarked that the youth and females "have to solve problems in a creative way because of the competition with the adult males.... That way may be a technology and not brute force or strength"¹. So what crafty invention have these chimps mustered up? Hunting spears!

Tombo was the first chimp to be seen exhibiting this uncanny behavior. To make her weapon, she broke a stick off a tree and sharpened the ends with here teeth, making a sharp stabbing device that she would forcibly jab into hollow tree branches where little nocturnal creatures named bushbabies lay tucked away in bed. Tombo thrust the spear with "multiple downward stabs - much the same way as a human might wield a dagger,"² and pulled out her freshly killed feast. After the hunt, these monkeys would sniff and lick their spears to examine the blood, as an early human might have done when contemplating the mystery of life and death. Or, much the same way I behave when wondering why my little ficus tree seems to shrink and wither, screaming "Help Me!" when I get too close to it.

This is also the first time the chimps have been observed dwelling in caves similar to the first human habitats, and according to researchers, are "using the shady interiors for socializing, taking siestas and picknicking"². We have yet to see the cave drawings.

If you're sick of the lame plot line that has become Lost, watch some smarter monkeys eat their successful kill. And although a successful stab and retrieve method has yet to be caught on film, you can see them search for suitable spear-sticks. What all of this research alludes to is that scientists are beginning to speculate that human females played a similar role in our technological advancements. Forget about the light bulb, ladies, we may very well have made such contraptions as the wheel or the water jug! (Take that Neanderthals!). Competing against a creature bigger than us in our evolution may very well have spurred the human capacity to get creative. Some online articles argue that the female researcher, Pruetz, had an agenda to make females look smarter, but remember that her partner, Paco, is a red-blooded (heterosexual, for those of you who have armed yet another excuse) male. In fact, both have agreed that their findings suggest that "the origins of human technology were with females"¹.

It is no surprise that ingenuity stems from the inability to perform certain functions. For example, when I couldn't get my cat to come when called, I bought a laser light to lure him into my stifling snuggle. And, being physically weaker than my male counterparts may have halted my NFL hopes, but it didn't stop me from winning candy for the highest math score in school. Sometimes all it takes is a little incentive to get inventive; if you don't believe me, take it from the monkeys.

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1298&id=295412007

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11234-spearwielding-chimps-snack-on-skewered-bushbabies.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/6387611.stm