How chimps teach their kids tool tricks

Chimpanzees are known to use rudimentary tools when foraging for food. According to a new paper in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, this learned behavior is passed down from adults to offspring through social learning. Specifically, adult chimps deliberately model the behavior, then turn their tools over to the youngsters so they can mimic the same motions. "Receiving food and tools from experienced individuals, which we call food or tool transfer, may help chimpanzees learn to use technology to extract foods that are difficult to access,” said co-author Andreu Sánchez-Megías, a graduate student at the University of Barcelona and the Jane Goodall Institute Spain in Senegal. “Tool transfers thus appear to be a form of teaching, together with observation…