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from the must-have-watched-'King-Kong' dept.
Cool. Calm. And oh, so calculated. That's how a chimpanzee living in the Royal Burgers' Zoo in the Netherlands set out to swat an aerial drone that was filming her group. In an article in the journal Primates² published by Springer, Jan van Hooff and Bas Lukkenaar explain it as yet another example of chimpanzees' make-do attitude to using whatever is on hand as tools.
The incident happened earlier this year, on 10 April, when a Dutch television crew was filming at the zoo in Arnhem. The idea was to use a drone to film the chimpanzees in their compound from different close-up angles. The drone already caught the chimpanzees' attention during a practice run. Some grabbed willow twigs off the ground, while four animals took these along when they climbed up scaffolding where the drone was hovering. This behavior is not frequently observed among these chimps.
Filming started when the next drone flew over. It zoomed in on two chimpanzees, the females Tushi and Raimee. They were still seated on the scaffolding holding on to twigs that were about 180 cm (ca. six feet) long. Tushi made two long sweeps with hers -- the second was successful in downing the drone and ultimately broke it. Before and during the strike, she grimaced. Although her face was tense and her teeth were bared, she showed no signs of fear. This suggests that she quite deliberately and forcefully struck at the drone, rather than fearfully or reflexively.
Fascinating. Evidence that drones do indeed provoke a response in the monkey ape brain, which could explain the drone antipathy felt by many humans. But what is it, a response to hovering insects or predatory birds?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday September 05 2015, @11:23PM
I think it's much more simple than that. Primates will swat at anything that pisses them off, using whatever they have available -- tools, nets or vines from which to swing, their own fists, etc.
Hell, primates are merry pranksters and will swat at things for the fuck of it -- you'd know if you've ever visited the zoo where primates (especially different species) are kept together and watched them slap each other with whatever's lying around before taking off running.
Being a primate in a zoo would actually be pretty cool. If only one could be in the body of a zoo primate for a day and spend the entire day masturbating, flinging poo at anything that moves, and being a hairy merry prankster swinging around like Tarzan and shit.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:22AM
But, Eth, this is what you do here on SoylentNews already!