First Report of Habitual Stone Tool Use by Cebus Monkeys | Hacker News Reader

First Report of Habitual Stone Tool Use by Cebus Monkeys

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40 pointsnewman8r14 comments

Pretty cool but also sad to see so much garbage in the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8navgU8-tw0&t=126s

Too sad. Imo the only garbage in the world is plastic (and other man made, use once materials). It's time we stop treat food waste and human waste as garbage, they are manure and treat plastics separately like we treat heavy metals.

Why don't we spend our time, money and effort to fix the plastic problem asap instead of trying to settle in mars is beyond my imagination. May be it's not as cool a problem to solve.

Certainly we (as in all humans) can work on both things at once.

Not when nationalism is king, and "make <whatever> great again" is the priority. That tends to lead to focusing on one thing, and doing it very terribly.

I don't think even the worst nationalists only focus one one thing. But to be honest, I'd be okay with ignoring plastic for another decade if we'd make settling Mars the only topic anybody is allowed to work on.

I hate nationalism but i i don't think it is any better any worse as far as the environment is concerned than any other ideology.

Although yes the current wave of it seems to be particularly bad for the environment.

Environment protection is basically homeland protection.

The plastic waste researchers may not be inclined to solving problems of space propulsion. Likewise, rocket scientists won't be pushing the field of plastic microbe decomposition or whatever. Luckily there are some of each here on the earth at the moment.

Video needs 2001 music

I've always wondered how society would've developed if there were multiple species that were as intelligent (or close to) as homo sapiens, like if Neanderthals didn't go extinct.

Unfortunately, I think that they would've either been wiped out via genocide or used as slaves, given how willing we are to do that to fellow humans.

Neanderthals are the same species, Homo, hence why they could crossbreed with early homo-sapiens. If they were still around today, we'd probably see them as just another race. They didn't look too different:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#/media/File:Skelet...

Though it would be cool to imagine a completely different intelligent species, like some sort of bird or octopus.

Oh I've definitely toyed with the fantasy of dolphin or octopus evolving in near parallel with humanity to the point of advanced technology (or having evolved to the point where they saw the innate flaws in advanced technology as inferior to an improved understanding of their innate biology and instead developed philosophically or spiritually, if you will).

Might make a good story or two.

How is this a 'first report'? Just google 'capuchin tool use' and you'll see loads of videos of cebus monkeys using stone tools.

Maybe the "habitual" is the diferentiator? I am not really sure what does the word mean in this context and how it would differentiate from non-habitual use.

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