Female chimps use spears to join hunt, may have invented them

Chimpanzees have long been noted as using tools - yet the Savannah Chimpanzees of Fongoli are noted as the only population that routinely uses tools to hunt vertebrate prey.

According to research published in the Royal Society Open Science, normally adult male chimps are the main hunters - catching their prey by hand.

Fongoli's chimps are also unusual in that they allow females to come along on their hunts, which brings in the tool use.

"In a number of primate species, females are the innovators and more frequent tool users, so I think it is possible that a female invented this technique," lead author Jill Pruetz told Discovery News.

While males still account for about 70% of the pray caught by the troop - it is the females that are most likely to use tools.

"The tools (spears) are made from living tree branches that are detached and then modified by removing all the side branches and leaves, as well as the flimsy terminal end of the branch," Pruetz said

"Some individuals further trim the tip of the tool with their teeth."

"We propose that social tolerance at Fongoli, along with the tool-assisted hunting method, permits individuals other than adult males to capture and retain control of prey, which is uncommon for chimpanzees. We assert that tool-assisted hunting could have similarly been important for early hominins," the researchers wrote.

In other words, relative gender justice may have started the ball rolling on human technology.