Five piece toolkit made by wild chimps

By at 12:18 pm Wednesday, Jun 3

Chimptool

Chimps built a 5-piece toolkit to help them extract honey from underground bee colonies.

The tools consist of pounders, enlargers, collectors, perforators and swabbers. Chimps, suspended in acrobatic positions on branches, might first pull out a thick stick pounder to break open beehive entrances. They then reach for another stick, the enlarger, to perforate and widen different honeybee hive compartments. Next comes the collector, used to dip or scoop out honey.

Different tools and methods are needed to obtain underground bee honey. The chimps wield a perforator to penetrate the ground, locate a honey chamber and dig into the soil. They then pull off strips of bark to "dip and spoon the honey out of the opened beehive."

Obtaining honey from an underground hive isn't easy. Aside from dealing with angry, stinging bees, the chimps must dig narrow sideways tunnels, maintain perfect aim and prevent soil from falling into, and ruining, their desired sweet reward.

The honey extraction toolkit has been licensed by Home Depot and will be available later this fall, says one of the chimps.

Chimpanzee toolkit

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Mark Frauenfelder

My latest book, Made by Hand, now in paperback. Follow me on Twitter.

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