Exactly. Mentioned briefly in the article (e.g., the habituation of chimpanzees to researchers), but the idea of non-human "culture" has been strange to/dismissed by researchers for some time, only because we did not have enough data to understand the diversity of their behavior. This is almost certainly an example of researchers simply getting new (and interesting!) data.
I'm a little flabbergasted that the idea of animals using tools is so groundbreaking. I've seen squirrels pick apples up off the ground, climb to the top of a tree, and drop the apple over and over again to break it into small convenient pieces. I've seen birds do the same thing too, with shellfish. You see all kinds of stuff when you have your eyes open.
Wait until chimps figure out how to refine oil and use combustion engines.
When you consider the effort to get to that stage of locomotion it's amazing that flying birds haven't advanced faster technologically.
I guess birds (and most animals) have a hit a local minimum that they'll never climb out of.
Humans got lucky with figuring out fire. Fire simplifies everything.
I don't think it's the tool use, its the specific tool use - they are observing a new behaviour. It's not that they assumed they couldn't (I mean, look up "Chimps using tools" on youtube), it's just a novel behaviour, which is neat to see. It's not something groundbreaking, it's just notable.
Wow, my brain can't process that. How do the squirrels climb if they're holding the apple at the same time?
True, they've probably been doing this for a million years. But they're our closest relatives, and we have living examples of primates that are at various points of eating vegetation/meat, using tools and not, etc...
Seeing a primate eating meat and using tools despite being built to eat vegetation suggests a link to our own past.