Female chimps invent spears

An interesting recent study is in the news. Apparently female chimpanzees invented spears in order to hunt and kill. That's right, females, and not males, invented and use this weapon. This makes sense as it goes with the common belief that females are smarter than males. I believe 57% (and rising) of U.S. higher education graduates are female. Females would more likely have the intelligence needed in order to create a weapon.

Evolutionists believe chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor. The study mentions we should rethink the traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in the human race. I wonder, could it be that human females invented the first weapons and started the arms/weapons race?

When Teddy Roosevelt said, "Talk softly and carry a big stick", was this stick one his wife invented?

Hunting chimps may change view of human evolution

Science News
February 22, 2007

Chimpanzees have been seen using spears to hunt bush babies, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that demonstrates a whole new level of tool use and planning by our closest living relatives.

Perhaps even more intriguing, it was only the females who fashioned and used the wooden spears, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani of Iowa State University reported.

Bertolani saw an adolescent female chimp use a spear to stab a bush baby as it slept in a tree hollow, pull it out and eat it.

Chimpanzees are genetically the closest living relatives to human beings, sharing more than 98 percent of our DNA. Scientists believe the precursors to chimps and humans split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago.

Pruetz thought it was a fluke when Bertolani saw the adolescent female hunt and kill the bush baby, a tiny nocturnal primate. But then she saw almost the same thing. "I saw the behavior over the course of 19 days almost daily," she said.

The chimps choose a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, trim it down to a stable size and then chew the ends to a point. Then they use it to stab into holes where bush babies might be sleeping.

This group of chimps is shy of humans, and the females, who seem to do most of this type of hunting, are especially wary. "I am willing to bet the females do it even more than we have seen," she said.

Pruetz noted that male chimps never used the spears. She believes the males use their greater strength and size to grab food and kill prey more easily, so the females must come up with other methods.

Maybe females invented weapons for hunting, Pruetz said.

"The observation that individuals hunting with tools include females and immature chimpanzees suggests that we should rethink traditional explanations for the evolution of such behavior in our own lineage," she concluded in her paper.