By Rebecca Morelle, BBC News, 3/18/2009Cameras have revealed how "armed" chimpanzees raid beehives to gorge on sweet honey.
Scientists in the Republic of Congo found that the wild primates crafted large clubs from branches to pound the nests until they broke open.
The team said some chimps would also use a "toolkit" of different wooden implements in a bid to access the honey and satisfy their sweet tooth.
The study is published in the International Journal of Primatology.
Crickette Sanz, from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said: "The nutritional returns don't seem to be that great.
"But their excitement when they've succeeded is incredible, you can see how much they are enjoying tasting the honey."…
Perhaps for obvious reasons, the chimps avoided bee species that sting, targeting the hives of stingless bees instead…
No comments:
Post a Comment