Female Fongoli chimpanzees are those that make hunting spears and utilize them for preying gathering foods, the Royal Society Open Science published today. The same chimpanzee family made headlines in 2007 for using hand tools in hunting vertebrate prey, making the species the first animals to execute the same hunting method that humans perform, the National Geographic reported.
The researchers were able to discover that the females of the Fongolis chimpanzees accounted for at least 60% of the spear-using capabilities. Jill Pruetz, the lead author of the study speculated that those were the same females that first created hunting spears.
"In a number of primate species, females are the innovators and more frequent tool users," Pruetz told the Discovery News.
The females of the species' crafty works are not surprising, adds Pruetz. With less power, not to mention the infants that are riding on their bellies or back, the females are forced to make use of their brains to innovate the tools to make hunting food easier.
Pruetz explained, "The tools (spears) are made from living tree branches that are detected and then modified by removing all side branches and leaves, as well as the flimsy terminal end of the branch."
"There are those who choose to trim their tools' tips with the use of their teeth," he adds.
Apes make use of the tools in stabbing favored prey. Through the years, researchers were able to record 308 Fongoli hunting events.
Scientists have believed that the "hunting technique" of Fongoli chimpanzees originated in the same ancestor that humans have descended from, implying that the earliest members of modern humans hunted in the same way.