By Mwiga Mambo – Tracker, Greystoke MahaleChimpanzees, like humans, are skilled in their ability to select and use tools. At Mahale chimpanzees are commonly seen using leaves, grasses, sticks, and rocks as tools for a variety of purposes, but mainly to get food and drink.
It was around 7:15 AM on 29th November 2008 when I was in the forest tracking the chimpanzees. I heard the pant-hoot calls of the chimpanzees about 500 m to the south of me.
I traced the calls until I found eight chimpanzees from the M-community at a locationknown as J4. There were six adult females and two adult males seated on the path grooming one other. I then spotted Ichiro, an 8 year old juvenile male sitting alone in the fork of a big dead tree. As I watched him he climbed to the top of the tree, reached out for a nearby branch, and grabbed a handful of green leaves. He selected some of the more mature leaves and crushed them into pulp to create a ‘sponge’. He then climbed down to the fork where he was originally sitting, and skillfully poked the sponge into a hole in the trunk of the tree. Once his sponge was fully saturated with water he removed it and sucked the water! He repeated this process four or five times before his sister, Imani, an adolescence female, distracted him by tempting him to play. Ichiro quickly dropped his drinking tool and they began chasing each other from branch to branch.
Photo Dominiek Timmermans
