Zoologists have for the first time filmed endangered capuchins of the species Sapajus flavius using rocks as a foraging tool in the dry forests of Brazil, putting them on a par with crab-eating macaques and western chimpanzees, which use rocks as tools.
When an animal wants to grab tasty leaves, fruit, or other treats but they’re too high up, it uses a stick or other tool to reach the treats. Not all animals do this, and the list of tasks where tools can be useful is much broader. Elephants swat away pesky flies with sticks, for example, and wild Sumatran orangutans know how to place a leaf pad in their palms to eat the leaves of a thorny tree without damaging their paws.
In this case, the tool is an extension of the animal’s body. Sometimes they too turn to stone.
For example, sea otters swimming on their backs put a stone on their chests and use it to break open mussel shells or crab shells, thereby extracting meat. Five different taxa had previously been found among stone-using monkeys: two species of capuchin—black-banded (Sapajus libidinosus) And Cebus imitatorAs well as western chimpanzees (Pan primitive people verus) and two subspecies of crab-eating macaques.
The other day, Brazilian zoologists documented for the first time several cases of how rare a capuchin species is. Sapajus flavius It uses stones as tools to crack nuts and obtain food. Scientists set up four camera traps in Brazil’s Caatinga forests, South America’s largest dry forest, and one of the four stations included a corn feeder. Observations took place from September 2022 to March 2023, and it was possible to photograph capuchins using stones near the San Francisco River. Video footage and report were published in the magazine Primates.
Types of capuchins sapajus flaviusAccording to 2020 data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, it is on the verge of extinction – only 500 individuals were counted at the time. These monkeys live only in the eastern part of Brazil, on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s interesting how it was recorded before S.flavius Use sticks to hunt termites.
This was the first time Capuchins were caught splitting food with stones. Monkeys place hazelnuts or other hard fruits on the anvil stone and hit them with hammer stones. In total, scientists recorded eight cases of the use of such a tool. In one place, the Capuchins used pieces of concrete as an anvil while people built houses nearby. As the researchers noted, the capuchins studied were the sixth primate to use stones as tools.
It is also noteworthy that the habitat itself forces the monkeys to resort to such means. The thing is that in the Brazilian Atlantic forest you can eat ripe fruit almost all year round – the diet of the already mentioned black-striped capuchins is very wide: they feed on 35 different types of fruits, climbing higher on the trees.
But kaatinga forests are dry and hot, and only nine types of different fruits can be found in the dump. He also doesn’t get enough food for eight or nine months of the year. Therefore Capuchins S. flavius In such a lush area, it is necessary to feed on dry fruits such as hazelnuts. To obtain food, you must resort to stone tools.
Source: Port Altele
