Creature Feature: Chimpanzees Dine on Tortoise

Chimpanzees eat a wide range of meat as well as the usual mixed salads, from termites and ants up to small forest deer and monkeys.  Heretofore they have not been seen eating reptiles. Chimpanzees in Gabon have been observed dinning on tortoises by smashing open the hard shells.  Gabon chimpanzees have grown accustomed to seeing humans, who now have the opportunity to observe their wild cousins more closely. Use of percussion tools has been observed in other western chimpanzee communities to crack open nuts, but never before seen to obtain meat. Hunters collect the tortoises from the ground and share the meat with their family members.; The intelligent creatures crack open the tortoise shells on an available hard surface like a tree branch to reach what must be a delectable tidbit inside.

One Loango male chimp was seen storing his tortoise snack in a tree fork to which he later returned to consume it. Such "future oriented cognition" had been considered a uniquely human type of intelligence. Now, scientists consider some birds as well as apes have the capability to plan ahead--"I am not hungry now, but may be later". We also know that human intrusion into wild habitat destroys lives, but also leads to a decline in behavioral diversity.  If man looses the last great apes, a window into his own behavioral past will close forever.