Wild chimpanzees teach youngsters by handing them tools

Wild adult chimpanzees have been seen passing tools to youngsters to help them learn and then coaching them, supporting the idea that teaching helps immature chimps acquire technological skills.

“To actually catch it on film is important and was very surprising for us,” says R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar at the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Chimpanzees are known to make and use a variety of tools, from leaf or moss sponges that soak up water to sticks used to fish for army ants or algae, and even crafting simple spears for hunting. But how chimpanzees learn such skills is debated.

Advertisement

It is clear that the knowledge does get passed on. For example, one study showed an increase in the number of chimps in Uganda using moss as a sponge to soak up water from a pond. Work with captive chimps has also shown that the animals can pass on knowledge to others. The big question is whether individuals copy behaviour after observation, actively teach each other or independently come up with the same solutions to a task.

To see if they could answer that, Hernandez-Aguilar and her colleagues analysed 15 hours of footage from camera traps at the Jane Goodall Institute’s biological station in Dindefelo, Senegal, taken between 2017 and 2025. The cameras were placed near 14 sites in the area where wild western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) had previously been recorded using tools, including fishing for algae, army ants and termites.

Free newsletter

In total, the camera traps recorded 33 instances of tool transfer from one chimp to another: 19 when they were dipping for ants to eat, 10 during fishing for algae and four when fishing for termites. Generally, a chimp handed the key object to a close relative, and in 30 per cent of cases, this was from a mother to her offspring.

In one video, a mother, Soukki, inserted a dipping stick into an ant nest, then grabbed her baby daughter, Saïsaï, and led her to the tool. Saïsaï pulled the stick out and ate the ants clinging to it.

“We found support for the idea that tool transfers are a form of teaching that experienced chimpanzees may use to facilitate the learning of young individuals,” says team member Andreu Sánchez-Megías, also at the University of Barcelona.

The team also gathered 30 minutes of footage from cameras at 11 sites where chimpanzees pound hard-shelled baobab fruit against stones to crack them open. This is considered proto-tool use rather than tool use, because the stones are being used as an anvil rather than being directly held and manipulated.

In an example of this, a mother called Féré collected three baobab fruits and placed them near her infant son Fotti. A juvenile male – probably an older sibling – picked up a fruit and pounded it against some rocks while Fotti watched, then guided Fotti’s hand to a fruit. Fotti had a go himself, eventually managing to open up a fruit.  

The videos support the idea that other social mechanisms such as observation and supervised practice help youngsters learn to use tools, says Sánchez-Megías.

“Teaching events are quite rare and difficult to study because only so many learning attempts are needed until an individual learns a behaviour,” says Elliot Howard-Spink at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. “Showing across many forms of tool use that these tool transfers are indicative of a very simple form of teaching is very cool and nice.”

During the observed interactions, the researchers noted that the teacher was forgoing food for the learning youngster’s benefit.

“This is an important observation because it fits the criteria for teaching used in animal behaviour research – that the behaviour benefits the pupil’s opportunities to learn, and is done despite having a cost to the teacher,” says Andrew Whiten at the University of St Andrews, UK.

Frontiers in Psychology, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1868894