In Mike's case, he would perform this ritual while charging full tilt at the present group of male chimps, all the while dragging the empty kerosene cans instead of a tree branch. Male chimpanzees, generally when they are excited or to show their dominance, conduct this ritual which involves a great deal of pant-hooting, a sound that Jane Goodall describes as shouting mixed with grunting, on the part of the male in question, combined with the dragging of the largest tree branch which the male can find, and the hurling of rocks, all of which is done while running back and forth. What Mike would do, whenever he saw a group of higher-ranking males around, would be to conduct, for lack of better way of describing it, a chimpanzee dance of ferociousness. The chimpanzee known as Mike was at first fairly low on the social ladder, however, after discovering that the kerosene cans that were strewn all over Jane Goodall's camp made a huge amount of racket when dragged across the forest floor, his social status began to rise. Sponge-making:Īlthough not necessarily an example of explicit toolmaking on the part of a chimpanzee, the case of Mike and the kerosene cans does demonstrate a surprising level of ingenuity, as well as the ability to adapt one's environment to suit one's own needs.

Moreover, whenever a chimp goes to get a blade of grass to continue their termiting, they will always return with several, so that they will have many to use before they are forced to go and obtain more (Goodall 35-27). Chimpanzees can remain termiting for several hours at a time, and when their blade of grass becomes unusable, they will go up to fifteen yards away to find another one, passing up many to find the one most suitable for their purposes. The chimp will then pick off the termites and eat them one by one, before starting over once again. When they remove it, a minute or so later, they will also remove several termites, which will have grabbed onto the blade of grass in the intermittent time with their pincers, and who will not let go.

Then, the chimp will take a stiff, long blade of grass and insert it in the opening made with the stick. First, the chimp will take a stick and poke it into the damp and structurally less stable part of a termite nest, where a tunnel to the surface connects the rest of the underground nest to the outside world. The process of termiting, which has been studied extensively by Jane Goodall and her team, involves one of the first documented use of tools by a chimpanzee.

In the shadow of man goodall