Chimpanzees Actively Teach Young to Master Complex Tool Use

In 1960, Jane Goodall watched a chimpanzee named David Greybeard strip a twig and use it to fish for termites—a moment that upended what science thought it knew about tool use and human uniqueness. Nearly seventy years later, researchers working in the same tradition have documented something even more deliberate: adult chimpanzees in Senegal actively handing tools to their young, teaching them the intricate work of extracting food from places their small hands cannot yet reach.

The discovery emerged from patient observation. Between 2017 and 2025, scientists from the Jane Goodall Institute Spain and the University of Barcelona installed camera traps at 25 locations across the savanna site of Dindefelo in Senegal—14 spots where chimpanzees were known to fish for algae, ants, and termites, and 11 where they pound baobab fruit against stone anvils. Over nearly 15 hours of footage, they recorded 33 instances of one chimpanzee handing a tool or food to another. The pattern was unmistakable: skilled individuals, most often mothers, were deliberately passing objects to inexperienced ones, mostly infants. Fifty-eight percent of these transfers happened during ant dipping, thirty percent during algae fishing, and twelve percent while fishing for termites.

Two videos captured the behavior with striking clarity. In one from 2018, a mother named Soukki inserted a dipping stick into an ant colony, then physically guided her daughter Saïsaï to the tool. The young chimpanzee pulled it from the nest and ate the ants clinging to it. In another from 2021, a juvenile male picked up a baobab fruit and repeatedly pounded it against a rock, then guided a younger individual's hand to the fruit. The footage shows the learner watching intently, then attempting the technique himself until he succeeded. These were not accidents of proximity. They were deliberate acts of instruction.

Andreu Sánchez-Megías, the study's lead author, framed the finding in terms that reframe what teaching means among animals. Tool transfer, he explained, functions as a form of teaching alongside observation and supervised practice—a mechanism that allows chimpanzees to transmit information too complex to acquire through watching alone. The majority of transfers occurred between relatives, with thirty percent flowing from mother to offspring. Most happened at the recipient's initiative, though some objects were simply taken, occasionally prompting the original owner to strike back or reclaim what was taken.

The research raises questions that extend beyond the specific behaviors documented. Sixty percent of the original tool owners were adults, particularly females. Forty-two percent of recipients were infants rather than older juveniles or adults. The data suggests a deliberate investment in early learning—that chimpanzees recognize a window when young individuals are ready to acquire skills and actively work to open that window. R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar, the study's senior author, posed the next questions plainly: Does teaching contribute more to technological transmission in great apes than previously thought? Do more complex behaviors require more teaching? And do individuals who receive more instruction become better teachers themselves?

What makes this work significant is not that chimpanzees use tools—that has been known since Darwin noted it in 1871. It is that they appear to recognize teaching as a distinct strategy, separate from mere observation, and deploy it deliberately to pass difficult skills to the next generation. The behaviors documented at Dindefelo—algae fishing and baobab pounding—are found only among western chimpanzees in Senegal, Mali, and Guinea, suggesting these are learned traditions, not instincts, and that the teaching mechanisms observed here may be how such traditions persist and spread.