Wild adult chimpanzees have been filmed handing tools to younger group members and guiding them through their first attempts at using them, in what researchers describe as a simple form of teaching. The behavior was captured by camera traps at the Jane Goodall Institute's biological station in Dindefelo, Senegal, and analyzed by a team at the University of Barcelona.
The footage, recorded between 2017 and 2025, documents 33 instances in which one chimpanzee passed a tool to another. Nineteen of those transfers occurred while the animals were dipping for army ants, ten during algae fishing, and four during termite fishing. In most cases the tool changed hands between close relatives, and roughly 30 percent of the transfers were from a mother to her offspring.
One sequence shows a mother named Soukki inserting a dipping stick into an ant nest, then grabbing her infant daughter, Saïsaï, and leading her to the tool. The young chimp pulled the stick out and ate the ants clinging to it. In another clip, a mother called Féré collected three baobab fruits and placed them near her infant son, Fotti. A juvenile male, probably an older sibling, pounded one fruit against rocks while Fotti watched, then guided the infant's hand to a fruit. Fotti eventually managed to crack one open himself.
The baobab episodes are considered proto-tool use rather than full tool use, because the stones serve as an anvil rather than being held and manipulated directly. The team gathered about 30 minutes of footage from cameras at 11 sites where chimpanzees pound the hard-shelled fruit.
Chimpanzees are known to make and use a wide range of tools, from leaf and moss sponges that soak up water to sticks used to fish for army ants or algae, and even simple spears for hunting. How they acquire those skills has been debated. Knowledge clearly passes between individuals: one study documented a rise in the number of chimps in Uganda using moss as a sponge, and work with captive animals has shown that they can transmit knowledge to others. The open question has been whether individuals simply copy behavior after watching, actively teach one another, or independently arrive at the same solutions.
«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 of the University of Barcelona. R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar, also at the University of Barcelona, said catching the behavior on film was important and very surprising for the team.
The researchers note that during the observed interactions the teacher gave up food that the learning youngster could have eaten. That detail matters because it fits the criteria for teaching used in animal behavior research: the behavior benefits the pupil's chances to learn and comes at a cost to the teacher, according to Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews in the UK.
Elliot Howard-Spink of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany said teaching events are rare and difficult to study, because only so many learning attempts are needed before an individual masters a behavior. He called it very cool and nice that the study shows across many forms of tool use that these transfers are indicative of a very simple form of teaching.
The videos also support the idea that other social mechanisms, such as observation and supervised practice, help youngsters learn to use tools, Sánchez-Megías says. The findings were published in Frontiers in Psychology.
