Capuchin monkeys’ stone-tool use has evolved over 3,000 years
A Brazilian site shows the animals’ long history of selecting various types of pounding devices
By Bruce Bower
Excavations in Brazil have pounded out new insights into the handiness of ancient monkeys.
South American capuchin monkeys have not only hammered and dug with carefully chosen stones for the last 3,000 years, but also have selected pounding tools of varying sizes and weights along the way.
Capuchin stone implements recovered at a site in northeastern Brazil display signs of shifts during the last three millennia between a focus on dealing with either relatively small, soft foods or larger, hard-shelled edibles, researchers report. These discoveries, described online June 24 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, are the first evidence of changing patterns of stone-tool use in a nonhuman primate.