10 | NewScientist | 14 March 2009

A CHIMP that fashions discs of concrete to hurl at zoo visitors is being hailed as proof that chimpanzees plan for the future.

Santino – a 30-year-old chimp from Furuvik Zoo in Sweden – started throwing rocks as a teenager. He typically collects them from the bottom of the moat around his enclosure before the zoo opens, and piles them up on the side of the island that faces the zoo’s visitors. He also

knocks pieces of concrete off the artificial rocks at the centre of his enclosure, and transfers them to the piles. “These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” says Mathias Osvath of the University of Lund in Sweden, who reports the behaviour in Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.01.010).

“It implies they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of days to come.

I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behaviour.”

Although similar claims have been made about chimps using tools to collect food , what sets Santino apart is that his state of mind when collecting the rocks seems very different from when he launches his attacks. “The chimp has without exception been calm during gathering of the ammunition, in contrast to the typically aroused state when he throws the rocks,” says Osvath.

So, unlike previous claims, Santino’s planning doesn’t seem to be driven by an immediate emotional or physical drive like hunger or anger, but by anticipation of a later event.

“It is the first report on tool-making – i.e. the concrete disks – to achieve a future goal,” says Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “Future planning may turn out to be more widespread than initially thought.”

However, Nicolas Newton-Fisher of the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, cautions that it is difficult to generalise from observations of a single individual. “A sceptical reader might question whether there is a causal link between the caching and the throwing. The location of the caches may simply be a function of retrieving them from the water.” ■

Linda Geddes

–Don’t make me angry–

I’m planning to throw rocks at you

SOUNDBITES

“The only place where this alleged climate catastrophe is happening is in the virtual world of computer models.”

Mark Morano, spokesman on

environmental issues for Republican

Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

Morano is due to speak at a meeting of

climate sceptics in New York, focusing

on “Global warming: Was it ever a

crisis?” (The New York Times, 8 March)

“The science fiction writers are going to be challenged to imagine the diversity that we could expect to find.”

Debra Fischer of San Francisco

State University comments on the

capabilities of the Kepler space

telescope, which NASA launched on

6 March to seek out Earth-like alien

planets (FoxNews.com, 6 March)

“These products have no real detoxification effects.”

Edzard Ernst, professor of

complementary medicine at the

Peninsula Medical School in Exeter,

UK, criticising a “detox” artichoke and

dandelion tincture launched by Prince

Charles’s company Duchy Originals

(BBC News Online, 10 March)

“It behaves like some live object. It moves. It crashes onto free-floating particles and absorbs them.”

Alex Snezhko, a physicist at Argonne

National Laboratory in Illinois, who has

discovered that nickel particles can be

made to self-assemble into a moving,

snake-like structure. He hopes to

shed light on how life arose from the

primordial soup (Wired.com, 5 March)

“My initial thought, when I was half awake, was: it’s a lunatic ninja coming through the window.”

Beat Ettlin of Canberra, Australia,

on how it felt when a kangaroo came

crashing through his bedroom window

onto his bed. He wrestled the bleeding

animal and dragged it out the door

(Reuters , 9 March)

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THIS WEEK

Solar power to protect nature reserves

TWO great challenges of the

21st century – green energy and

wildlife conservation – could have

a symbiotic solution.

Michael McGuigan of the

Brookhaven National Laboratory

in Upton, New York, has suggested

that combining solar power

plants with nature reserves could

tackle both problems. A sanctuary

for 300 tigers, for example,

would cover a patch of land about

50 kilometres across. Surrounding

this with a 5-kilometre-wide ring

of solar panels would create a

power plant producing 60 gigawatts

of electricity ( www.arxiv.org/

abs/0902.4692 ).

Some of that power could be

used to electrify nearby villages.

That would reduce the need for rural

populations to forage for firewood,

removing a major source of conflict

between wild animals and villagers.

Asir Johnsingh, an expert on

tiger conservation and adviser

for WWF based in Bangalore, India,

agrees that where sanctuaries

border villages and cultivated land,

solar power plants would benefit the

local population. For example, poor

communities near the Kalakad

Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve in Tamil

Nadu, India, are supplied with gas

cylinders for their energy needs.

“But gas may become expensive,”

he says. Anil Ananthaswamy ■

“Surrounding a tiger sanctuary with a ring of solar cells would generate power for local villages”