Chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing materials to make tools | Hacker News Reader

Chimpanzees act as 'engineers', choosing materials to make tools

sciencedaily.com

93 pointsdocmechanic68 comments

Yes but they make a lot of fuzzy decisions, so they are better compared with e.g. alchemists or deep learning researchers.

Here is an ape adjusting the recording camera on her own

https://youtu.be/dHmRLpNQBJU&t=39s

Also https://youtu.be/dHmRLpNQBJU&t=26s

“Adjusting” or just touching the thing she’s seen the humans touch?

Touche! though it might mean experimenters need to be nearly as careful with these apes as with human subjects.

> or deep learning researchers.

Priceless XD

The chimps or the other living beings involved in the study?

Co-stochastic co-parrots is where it's at.

Honestly that makes sense; they _are_ a lot fuzzier than humans generally. Maybe they might figure out how to use a tool to shave?

Homo sapiens also make a lot of fuzzy decisions.

I thought this would be more relatable, like, "chimpanzee engineers found pretending to managers about estimates, chimpanzee managers found pretending to listen".

These fellows have all the juicy (chimpanzee) office gossip:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181204052813/https://www.newte...

In double-blind experiments across multiple companies, chimpanzee managers were found to be largely statistically indistinguishable from incumbent (presumably human) company managers, except in areas where the chimps exhibited superior skills and performance.

“Chimpanzee closes Jira ticket, with acceptance criteria met but product not functional.”

“Chimpanzee ticks unmet acceptance criteria and closes ticket, knowing those with power don’t care and those who care don’t have power.”

"Chimpanzee vocalizations found to be inversely proportional to productivity and directly proportional to time spent in meetings about lack of productivity"

"Chimpanzees record their goals in four domains aligned with company values as part of a mandatory HR exercise."

"Chimpanzees stare into mirror and mistake reflection for AGI. Chimp Altman says we just need to invest 7 trillion bananas into a bigger mirror."

"Student chimpanzee builds a tiny mirror for 6 bananas. It shows the same image."

"Alpha chimpanzee goes apeshit and decks chimpanzees who exchange Giant Polished Units for bananas with student chimpanzee."

Two overlooked aspect of the research:

First, an object of the research is pre-human ancestors' tool use:

> Physical evidence of early hominin perishable tools is scarce. However, it is reasonable to assume the mechanical constraints surrounding tool use and manufacture have remained somewhat constant. Using a functional framework to understand the technical capabilities of extant hominoid tool users presents a novel approach to predict the perishable tool-using capabilities of our earliest relatives.

Note that the Paleolithic, the first period of stone tools, started ~2.58 - 3.3 mya (million years ago); stone can be durable since X mya and we have lots of evidence of that. But our evolutionary line split from the chimps' line ~7 mya (though remember the 7 mya shared ancestor was not a chimpanzee; they evolved too). Before the Paleolithic, and even after it began, our ancestors at times likely used tools made from perishable materials - I cooked dinner with a wooden spoon, myself.

Also, there's the question of culture - something once thought unique to humans:

> Our findings provide insights into the technical skills associated with perishable artefact-making and raise questions about how this knowledge is learnt and culturally transmitted.

There are two ways to pass down traits: genetics, and culture. If you think culture is somehow weaker or secondary, look at the traditions or look at languages that have lasted thousands of years with no genetic basis. An advantage of the cultural method is flexibility - it can be changed today; biological evolution takes awhile.

> An advantage of the cultural method is flexibility - it can be changed today

And it can be changed deliberately. Biological evolution is inherently a random search guided by a fixed quality metric -- reproductive fitness. That is not necessarily what a sentient being wants to optimize for.

Damn we gotta ante up, if they're taking away my title of engineer and giving it to chimps, guess I'll just find a job where they can issue me "Doctor" job title. "Doctor and Principal Cybersecurity Engineer" sounds good.

Really coding is more about trying to reason about overly-complex systems that you don’t fully understand for the most part. Legacy cruft with non-obvious dependencies. Poor designs. So, “code doctors” sorta works. Or “code lawyers.”

I think you just need a PhD in hand drawing and you’re set for life.

More like a Prof.Art. in hand drawing.

There are no "they", it's all "we"

Yikes, I've been really slacking on my raises

First time?

This is prior art. Everybody knows that engineers and chimpanzees share a lot of behavior patterns.

throws faeces

Nonsense!

Source: Engineer

Up next, a story about how ants act as 'engineers' - choosing soft-enough-to-dig ground, that is not waterlogged, to build their nests.

After that, maybe a story about plant 'engineers', growing toward the sun.

All the while programmers are not engineers but craftsmen, because... we don't use slide rules or something.

I think it's more that we don't follow ethical rules or something

It's because there's no liability. In my country you need liability insurance to be an engineer.

In the US we have the concept of a Professional Engineering license, but most people who get engineering degrees don’t end up needing one. Around here is it more like… you need a license for your signature to mean anything while surveying land, or something like that.

In my country you can't promote yourself as an engineer unless you have a license. You also technically can't have a job title with engineer in it but that's not really enforced.

> A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the Jane Goodall Institute in Tanzania, the University of Algarve and the University of Porto in Portugal, and the University of Leipzig,

so, i have a question; do you think the team of researchers above have no idea what they're doing? these are the people that studied and published the posted research. Do their credentials mean nothing to you?

i so despise this kind of drive-by comments, that just react to the title without reading the article, without being curious at all, empty snarkiness just for a bit of extra karma points. And in the process casting doubt and derisiveness on the scientific process and on the people that dedicate their life to extending human knowledge.

In the researchers’ publication, they didn’t substantiate the claim that chimpanzees are doing engineering (actually they didn’t even define what engineering is or why it would be significant if the chimpanzees were doing it). They document some interesting tool-making behavior, that the chimpanzees are somewhat picky about the material properties of the sticks they use to catch ants.

am I taking crazy pills?

the researchers' publication[1] is literally called: "Engineering skills in the manufacture of tools by wild chimpanzees"

Literally "Engineering skills".

The graphical abstract:

https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112158/asset/0e...

> "Chimpanzees show a degree of engineering acumen in the selection of plant materials for toolmaking."

> engineering acumen

[1] https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)00419-5

Just because it's in the title, doesn't mean the paper supports it.

I just skimmed the summary, but didn't notice any proof of "engineering". How do we know that chimpanzees weren't just selecting materials that had a good outcome in the past via trial and error? Or know that "more flexible=more food"? I would say that true engineering requires an inate understanding of the concepts going into the design, and I didn't notice anything in the summary to support that claim.

First, 'proof' is the wrong word to use here. That aside...

Sure, let me read the paper for you, why not.

>Given the wide range of inter- and intra-species variation of plant structural and mechanical properties, and that such physical properties could influence the functionality of a constructed tool, we hypothesize that the structural and mechanical properties of plant material may be a selection criterion used by chimpanzees when making their tools.

>Our results indicate that the mechanics of plant tissues are a factor in selecting materials for the construction of termite fishing probes by Gombe chimpanzees, notably low EI and reduced E. The selection of tool materials based on specific physical properties has already been described in the use of stone tools by nonhuman primates.7,8,11,12,61 Our research therefore extends the technological knowhow of wild chimpanzees to their toolmaking behavior.

You'll forgive me if I don't paste the whole paper in here, it's pretty long, and full of math formulas.

'they didn’t even define what engineering is or why it would be significant if the chimpanzees were doing it'

Do you mean literally "I don't understand why it would be significant if animals were doing engineering." ...?

Well, it depends on what the definition of engineering is, whether we’re surprised to see animals do it, right?

“They document some interesting tool-making behavior, that the chimpanzees are somewhat picky about the material properties of the sticks they use to catch ants.”

I assume the researchers know perfectly well what they're doing...but "what they're doing" is much closer to "padding their publication counts" than it is to "making non-trivial scientific discoveries", or "responsible use of limited research funding". Anyone even slightly familiar with the arboreal habits of chimpanzees would realize that those alone would require them to have excellent judgement for the flexibility and strength of long, thin parts of plants. Otherwise, they'd often trust a too-weak branch, and be injured or killed in falls.

In a human world where the validity and value of science are sadly controversial, neither arguments from authority, nor 'how dare you cast doubt' objections, seem compatible with the long term well-being of science.

It's not an argument from authority fallacy if the authority is an authority in the respective argument.

'How dare you cast doubt' is pretty valid when you're an anonymous poster on HN casting doubt on tenured professors from some of the most prestigious universities in the world.

ok, here is something like that I watch my horse, choose to roll,in rub over, and generaly luxurate in bayberry shrubs, which are very aromatic,and pay by bieng reduced to kindling other surviving bayberry bushes, that were used by early european's in Canada for the wax coating of the "berrys" in candle making, are used by birds as food, the berrys ripen in late fall.....just before the song birds migrate, all of the berrys vanishing over 2 days, the high energy wax coating, providing a strong start to an arduous trip, and a free long range dispersment for the long suffering bayberrys......which I have used the self same leaves as flavoring in food everything is working a "plan" man, all part of a vast,ancient,intricate,fusion powered, network, we and all we do is just a side hussle for nature and here in Canada, the term "engineer" is legaly exclusive to the guys with the iron rings, or the few with the stripy hats

Actual study: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)00419-5

fruits: lower, tastier, juicier. Choose two

The ones on the higher branches are for crows to pluck.

Maybe a few of the best will fall when a storm comes but by and large these rot in the sun.

It’s strange how much animals love fruit. All fruit.

Fruit loves animals. That's why it makes itself so tasty, bright-coloured and so on.

The Oriental Persimmon tastes a lot worse if the seed is not good, the good ones are less bitter and more orange than yellow. Unlike other fruits this is not related to its level of ripeness.

I assumed it was the fructose. (*not an animal/fruit/love expert)

Lower and tastier, thank you!

Next trend in linkedin ads "we are looking for a 10x chimpanzee".

Great at material science, shit flinging and attacking your face!

I always say I'm only here because i'm "smarter than a monkey and cheaper than a robot" and boy has that value proposition changed recently.

Tool use by non-humans > Primates > Chimpanzees and bonobos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_non-humans#Chimpan...

Let me know when a chimp publishes in science daily. Bonus points if it’s written in feces.

Why do we always try to use human metrics to judge other species?

If we don't use some metric we're no better than animals.

We aren’t. We’re worse. We’re animals with nuclear bombs. You can say it it doesn’t matter but you can’t tell me it’s not true.

The bombs are real. We really are built on an animal substrate, at least.

On the other hand I think very few 'nonhuman animals' could have the discussion we're having right now. Maybe none of them.

Supposedly the Romans had some horrible bullshit about "half beast, half god." To me even that superstitious nonsense is better than the heuristics we have today for describing what a human is. I agree that we can be worse than animals. It also seems clear that we can be better than animals.

I want to answer the question of whether our pursuits are meaningful.

I want to say yes, but with the caveat that we don’t deserve the outcome as a sick society

Creationists love to use the human eye as proof of a higher plan. A semi useless collection of structures independently but a powerful system.

I see the same in all of us. Let’s make an eye.

Chimp as Engineer=> Human as Ueberingenieur

(English: Over-engineer)

https://youtu.be/OWFq3ykkwP0

(Also :Shermanic <= Surmanic :()

https://archive.is/SNMLR

The original code monkeys!

Hmm like a lot of animals with large brains. Sounds familiar.

Atrocious clickbait title. Chimps were found to prefer flexible stick sources to get ants. That's it.

'Researchers have discovered that chimpanzees living in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania employ a degree of engineering when making their tools, deliberately choosing plants that provide materials that produce more flexible tools for termite fishing.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com