Wild Chimps Caught Teaching Young to Use Tools

Wild chimps aren't just watching and learning—they're literally handing down the tools of the trade. New camera footage from a Senegal reserve shows adult chimpanzees passing sticks and stone anvils to youngsters in ways researchers say meet the scientific definition of teaching. Analyzing nearly 15 hours of video from 2017 to 2025, scientists documented 33 tool handoffs while chimps fished for ants, algae, and termites, plus four fruit transfers as they cracked tough baobab shells. As Smithsonian reports, most tools moved between relatives, with mothers frequently giving up their gear to infants—often at a clear cost to themselves.

In one instance, a mother chimp demonstrated how to dip a stick in and out of an ant nest so as to eat the insects that crawled up the tool, then placed her daughter directly in front of the stick and nest, per the BBC. In another case, a juvenile appeared to show an infant chimp how to break open a baobab fruit by hitting it against a rock, "then guided Fotti's hand" to the fruit, per New Scientist. The infant later repeated the process with success. "Tool transfers thus appear to be a form of teaching, together with observation and supervised practice," says Andreu Sánchez-Megías, lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Psychology. The team now wants to know how widespread this behavior is and whether more complex tasks demand more instruction.