CONGO: Scientists have caught chimpanzees on camera using a "tool kit" to break into a termite mound. The remarkable film shows one chimp using its feet to push a thick stick into the termite nest, like a gardener digging up potatoes.
Then the same animal takes another tool, a slender stem with a frayed end, and inserts it into the hole to fish out the insects.
Chimps have been observed before cracking nuts with stones and catching ants and termites with twigs and leaves, but this is the first recorded example of the apes going equipped with multiple tools.
The video footage, which has just been brought back from Africa, was taken by a team of scientists in the Congo using a hidden camera.
It shows a group of chimps approaching a termite mound, where they had previously left a number of stout thick sticks.
One chimp, carrying a stem in its mouth, picks up one of the sticks and starts driving it into the mound using its hands and feet.
Termite fishing is already well known in many chimpanzee groups, but Prof Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews told a meeting: "Here you've got an extra technique that hasn't spread yet."
The human-like antics of the chimpanzees is the latest example of what scientists call "culture" in animals. Culture is defined as a traditional behaviour that is learned within a group and passed between individuals and down the generations.
More than 40 examples of cultural behaviour have been observed in chimpanzees, our closest animal relative. Recently, scientists have been able to show that zoo populations of gorillas also exhibit culture.
The new findings suggest that culture is a common to all great apes and probably already existed when humans first appeared on Earth.
Scientists think culture goes hand in hand with social living and is both a product of intelligence and its spur.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in St Louis, Missouri, Prof Whiten said: "We've come to a really exciting stage in our understanding and knowledge of great apes, which has built up over the last 40 years.
"What we're doing now is pooling that information for the first time to get the big picture of ape culture."
Dr Whiten said some chimp cultural traditions were known to have lasted three or four generations. Others resembled short-lived human "fads".
Prof Carel van Schaik from the University of Zurich said the fact that apes had culture had implications for human evolution.
"It helps us take some of the mystery out of the cultural evolution of humans," he told the meeting. "We forget that most of our intelligence is learned. You're not born smart."