Research into chimpanzee ‘engineers’ has implications for understanding human technological evolution

A multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Dr Alejandra Pascual-Garrido, Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, have discovered that chimpanzees living in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania employ a degree of engineering when making their tools, deliberately choosing plants that provide materials that produce more flexible tools for termite fishing.