When Santino the chimpanzee started pelting zoo visitors with stones, his keepers were mystified.
Not that they were surprised by his displays of aggression — the 31-year-old chimp is, after all, a dominant male. But there was no obvious source of stones in his enclosure; so where was he finding all the missiles?
All became clear when they carried out a search and found his stockpiles of rocks. Santino had been fishing stones from the moat surrounding his enclosure – and, even more impressively, he had been shaping odd pieces of concrete into aerodynamic disc-shaped missiles. Then he had been stashing them away for future use.
…It seems chimpanzees, too, are capable of forward planning, and have a sophisticated understanding of past and future. The chimp is also furtive about his behaviour, almost as if he knows he is being sneaky.
“I’ve never been able to get a good picture of him collecting the stones,” said Mathias Osvath, of Lund University, who has made a study of Santino. “As soon as he sees you he stops.”
…“These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” Dr Osvath said.
“It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events.
Full story at the Times