[HN Gopher] Chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing materials t...
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Chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing materials to make tools
Author : docmechanic
Score : 85 points
Date : 2025-03-25 14:39 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| docmechanic wrote:
| 'Researchers have discovered that chimpanzees living in Gombe
| Stream National Park in Tanzania employ a degree of engineering
| when making their tools, deliberately choosing plants that
| provide materials that produce more flexible tools for termite
| fishing.'
| upghost wrote:
| I thought this would be more relatable, like, "chimpanzee
| engineers found pretending to managers about estimates,
| chimpanzee managers found pretending to listen".
| caseyy wrote:
| "Chimpanzee closes Jira ticket, with acceptance criteria met
| but product not functional."
| formerly_proven wrote:
| "Chimpanzee ticks unmet acceptance criteria and closes
| ticket, knowing those with power don't care and those who
| care don't have power."
| upghost wrote:
| "Chimpanzee vocalizations found to be inversely
| proportional to productivity and directly proportional to
| time spent in meetings about lack of productivity"
| yyyk wrote:
| These fellows have all the juicy (chimpanzee) office gossip:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181204052813/https://www.newte...
| jcims wrote:
| "Chimpanzees record their goals in four domains aligned with
| company values as part of a mandatory HR exercise."
| upghost wrote:
| "Chimpanzees stare into mirror and mistake reflection for
| AGI. Chimp Altman says we just need to invest 7 trillion
| bananas into a bigger mirror."
| caseyy wrote:
| "Student chimpanzee builds a tiny mirror for 6 bananas. It
| shows the same image."
| pishpash wrote:
| "Alpha chimpanzee goes apeshit and decks chimpanzees who
| exchange Giant Polished Units for bananas with student
| chimpanzee."
| KineticLensman wrote:
| fruits: lower, tastier, juicier. Choose two
| weard_beard wrote:
| The ones on the higher branches are for crows to pluck.
|
| Maybe a few of the best will fall when a storm comes but by and
| large these rot in the sun.
|
| It's strange how much animals love fruit. All fruit.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Fruit loves animals. That's why it makes itself so tasty,
| bright-coloured and so on.
| gridder wrote:
| The Oriental Persimmon tastes a lot worse if the seed is
| not good, the good ones are less bitter and more orange
| than yellow. Unlike other fruits this is not related to its
| level of ripeness.
| xandrius wrote:
| Lower and tastier, thank you!
| amelius wrote:
| Yes but they make a lot of fuzzy decisions, so they are better
| compared with e.g. alchemists or deep learning researchers.
| upghost wrote:
| > or deep learning researchers.
|
| Priceless XD
| dapperdrake wrote:
| The chimps or the other living beings involved in the study?
|
| Co-stochastic co-parrots is where it's at.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Here is an ape adjusting the recording camera on her own
|
| https://youtu.be/dHmRLpNQBJU&t=39s
|
| Also https://youtu.be/dHmRLpNQBJU&t=26s
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| "Adjusting" or just touching the thing she's seen the humans
| touch?
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Touche! though it might mean experimenters need to be
| nearly as careful with these apes as with human subjects.
| abridges6532 wrote:
| Homo sapiens also make a lot of fuzzy decisions.
| saghm wrote:
| Honestly that makes sense; they _are_ a lot fuzzier than humans
| generally. Maybe they might figure out how to use a tool to
| shave?
| weard_beard wrote:
| Let me know when a chimp publishes in science daily. Bonus points
| if it's written in feces.
| xandrius wrote:
| Why do we always try to use human metrics to judge other
| species?
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| If we don't use some metric we're no better than animals.
| weard_beard wrote:
| We aren't. We're worse. We're animals with nuclear bombs.
| You can say it it doesn't matter but you can't tell me it's
| not true.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| The bombs are real. We really are built on an animal
| substrate, at least.
|
| On the other hand I think very few 'nonhuman animals'
| could have the discussion we're having right now. Maybe
| none of them.
|
| Supposedly the Romans had some horrible bullshit about
| "half beast, half god." To me even that superstitious
| nonsense is better than the heuristics we have today for
| describing what a human is. I agree that we can be worse
| than animals. It also seems clear that we can be better
| than animals.
| weard_beard wrote:
| I want to answer the question of whether our pursuits are
| meaningful.
|
| I want to say yes, but with the caveat that we don't
| deserve the outcome as a sick society
|
| Creationists love to use the human eye as proof of a
| higher plan. A semi useless collection of structures
| independently but a powerful system.
|
| I see the same in all of us. Let's make an eye.
| alecco wrote:
| Atrocious clickbait title. Chimps were found to prefer flexible
| stick sources to get ants. That's it.
| mofunnyman wrote:
| https://archive.is/SNMLR
| bell-cot wrote:
| Up next, a story about how ants act as 'engineers' - choosing
| soft-enough-to-dig ground, that is not waterlogged, to build
| their nests.
|
| After that, maybe a story about plant 'engineers', growing toward
| the sun.
| lucianbr wrote:
| All the while programmers are not engineers but craftsmen,
| because... we don't use slide rules or something.
| Avicebron wrote:
| I think it's more that we don't follow ethical rules or
| something
| bobsmooth wrote:
| It's because there's no liability. In my country you need
| liability insurance to be an engineer.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In the US we have the concept of a Professional
| Engineering license, but most people who get engineering
| degrees don't end up needing one. Around here is it more
| like... you need a license for your signature to mean
| anything while surveying land, or something like that.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| In my country you can't promote yourself as an engineer
| unless you have a license. You also technically can't
| have a job title with engineer in it but that's not
| really enforced.
| metalman wrote:
| ok, here is something like that I watch my horse, choose to
| roll,in rub over, and generaly luxurate in bayberry shrubs,
| which are very aromatic,and pay by bieng reduced to kindling
| other surviving bayberry bushes, that were used by early
| european's in Canada for the wax coating of the "berrys" in
| candle making, are used by birds as food, the berrys ripen in
| late fall.....just before the song birds migrate, all of the
| berrys vanishing over 2 days, the high energy wax coating,
| providing a strong start to an arduous trip, and a free long
| range dispersment for the long suffering bayberrys......which I
| have used the self same leaves as flavoring in food everything
| is working a "plan" man, all part of a
| vast,ancient,intricate,fusion powered, network, we and all we
| do is just a side hussle for nature and here in Canada, the
| term "engineer" is legaly exclusive to the guys with the iron
| rings, or the few with the stripy hats
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the School of
| Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of
| Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,
| the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania, the University of
| Algarve and the University of Porto in Portugal, and the
| University of Leipzig,
|
| so, i have a question; do you think the team of researchers
| above have no idea what they're doing? these are the people
| that studied and published the posted research. Do their
| credentials mean nothing to you?
|
| i so despise this kind of drive-by comments, that just react to
| the title without reading the article, without being curious at
| all, empty snarkiness just for a bit of extra karma points. And
| in the process casting doubt and derisiveness on the scientific
| process and on the people that dedicate their life to extending
| human knowledge.
| bee_rider wrote:
| In the researchers' publication, they didn't substantiate the
| claim that chimpanzees are doing engineering (actually they
| didn't even define what engineering is or why it would be
| significant if the chimpanzees were doing it). They document
| some interesting tool-making behavior, that the chimpanzees
| are somewhat picky about the material properties of the
| sticks they use to catch ants.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| am I taking crazy pills?
|
| the researchers' publication[1] is literally called:
| "Engineering skills in the manufacture of tools by wild
| chimpanzees"
|
| Literally "Engineering skills".
|
| The graphical abstract:
|
| https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112158/asset/0
| e...
|
| > "Chimpanzees show a degree of engineering acumen in the
| selection of plant materials for toolmaking."
|
| > engineering acumen
|
| [1] https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)00
| 419-5
| Hobadee wrote:
| Just because it's in the title, doesn't mean the paper
| supports it.
|
| I just skimmed the summary, but didn't notice any proof
| of "engineering". How do we know that chimpanzees weren't
| just selecting materials that had a good outcome in the
| past via trial and error? Or know that "more
| flexible=more food"? I would say that true engineering
| requires an inate understanding of the concepts going
| into the design, and I didn't notice anything in the
| summary to support that claim.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| First, 'proof' is the wrong word to use here. That
| aside...
|
| Sure, let me read the paper for you, why not.
|
| >Given the wide range of inter- and intra-species
| variation of plant structural and mechanical properties,
| and that such physical properties could influence the
| functionality of a constructed tool, we hypothesize that
| the structural and mechanical properties of plant
| material may be a selection criterion used by chimpanzees
| when making their tools.
|
| >Our results indicate that the mechanics of plant tissues
| are a factor in selecting materials for the construction
| of termite fishing probes by Gombe chimpanzees, notably
| low EI and reduced E. The selection of tool materials
| based on specific physical properties has already been
| described in the use of stone tools by nonhuman
| primates.7,8,11,12,61 Our research therefore extends the
| technological knowhow of wild chimpanzees to their
| toolmaking behavior.
|
| You'll forgive me if I don't paste the whole paper in
| here, it's pretty long, and full of math formulas.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| 'they didn't even define what engineering is or why it
| would be significant if the chimpanzees were doing it'
|
| Do you mean literally "I don't understand why it would be
| significant if animals were doing engineering." ...?
| bell-cot wrote:
| I assume the researchers know perfectly well what they're
| doing...but "what they're doing" is much closer to "padding
| their publication counts" than it is to "making non-trivial
| scientific discoveries", or "responsible use of limited
| research funding". Anyone even slightly familiar with the
| arboreal habits of chimpanzees would realize that those alone
| would require them to have excellent judgement for the
| flexibility and strength of long, thin parts of plants.
| Otherwise, they'd often trust a too-weak branch, and be
| injured or killed in falls.
|
| In a human world where the validity and value of science are
| sadly controversial, neither arguments from authority, nor
| 'how dare you cast doubt' objections, seem compatible with
| the long term well-being of science.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| It's not an argument from authority fallacy if the
| authority is an authority in the respective argument.
|
| 'How dare you cast doubt' is pretty valid when you're an
| anonymous poster on HN casting doubt on tenured professors
| from some of the most prestigious universities in the
| world.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Damn we gotta ante up, if they're taking away my title of
| engineer and giving it to chimps, guess I'll just find a job
| where they can issue me "Doctor" job title. "Doctor and Principal
| Cybersecurity Engineer" sounds good.
| HPsquared wrote:
| First time?
| Aperocky wrote:
| There are no "they", it's all "we"
| Avicebron wrote:
| Yikes, I've been really slacking on my raises
| bee_rider wrote:
| Really coding is more about trying to reason about overly-
| complex systems that you don't fully understand for the most
| part. Legacy cruft with non-obvious dependencies. Poor designs.
| So, "code doctors" sorta works. Or "code lawyers."
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I think you just need a PhD in hand drawing and you're set
| for life.
| ggambetta wrote:
| The original code monkeys!
| gostsamo wrote:
| Next trend in linkedin ads "we are looking for a 10x chimpanzee".
| nurettin wrote:
| Great at material science, shit flinging and attacking your
| face!
| 3np wrote:
| Actual study:
| https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)00419-5
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| This is prior art. Everybody knows that engineers and chimpanzees
| share a lot of behavior patterns.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| _throws faeces_
|
| Nonsense!
|
| Source: Engineer
| mmooss wrote:
| Two overlooked aspect of the research:
|
| First, an object of the research is pre-human ancestors' tool
| use:
|
| > Physical evidence of early hominin perishable tools is scarce.
| However, it is reasonable to assume the mechanical constraints
| surrounding tool use and manufacture have remained somewhat
| constant. Using a functional framework to understand the
| technical capabilities of extant hominoid tool users presents a
| novel approach to predict the perishable tool-using capabilities
| of our earliest relatives.
|
| Note that the Paleolithic, the first period of stone tools,
| started ~2.58 - 3.3 mya (million years ago); stone can be durable
| since X mya and we have lots of evidence of that. But our
| evolutionary line split from the chimps' line ~7 mya (though
| remember the 7 mya shared ancestor was not a chimpanzee; they
| evolved too). Before the Paleolithic, and even after it began,
| our ancestors at times likely used tools made from perishable
| materials - I cooked dinner with a wooden spoon, myself.
|
| Also, there's the question of _culture_ - something once thought
| unique to humans:
|
| > Our findings provide insights into the technical skills
| associated with perishable artefact-making and raise questions
| about how this knowledge is learnt and culturally transmitted.
|
| There are two ways to pass down traits: genetics, and _culture_.
| If you think culture is somehow weaker or secondary, look at the
| traditions or look at languages that have lasted thousands of
| years with no genetic basis. An advantage of the cultural method
| is flexibility - it can be changed today; biological evolution
| takes awhile.
| lisper wrote:
| > An advantage of the cultural method is flexibility - it can
| be changed today
|
| And it can be changed _deliberately_. Biological evolution is
| inherently a random search guided by a fixed quality metric --
| reproductive fitness. That is not necessarily what a sentient
| being wants to optimize for.
| westurner wrote:
| Tool use by non-humans > Primates > Chimpanzees and bonobos:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-humans#Chimpan...
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