Chimps Deliberately Teach Offspring Tool Use Through Demonstration and Practice

At the Dindefelo Community Nature Reserve in southeastern Senegal, researchers spent eight years watching chimpanzees do something that looks deceptively simple: a mother dips a twig into an ant nest, pulls it out loaded with insects, and hands the tool to her infant. The young chimp takes it, mimics the motion, and eats. This is not accidental learning. It is deliberate instruction, and a new study published in Frontiers in Psychology documents how systematically chimpanzees teach their offspring to forage using tools.

Between 2017 and 2025, scientists analyzed nearly 15 hours of video footage from camera traps positioned across 14 locations at the reserve. What emerged was a clear pattern: adults—predominantly mothers—demonstrate a technique, then transfer the tool directly to a young chimp, who practices the motion under observation. The researchers identified 33 distinct instances of this behavior, plus three additional attempts where tools were offered and rejected or taken unsuccessfully. This is teaching in its most recognizable form: show, hand over, watch, correct.

Andreu Sánchez-Megías, a graduate student at the University of Barcelona and the Jane Goodall Institute Spain, explained that these transfers serve a specific purpose. When a young chimp receives both food and tools from an experienced individual, it gains access to knowledge about extracting foods that would otherwise be inaccessible. The process combines observation, direct practice, and supervised repetition—the same scaffolding humans use to teach children complex skills. Mothers emerged as the primary teachers in this system, though other adults and even older juveniles participated.

The data revealed distinct patterns in what was being taught. Fifty-eight percent of tool transfers involved ant-dipping, the technique of inserting a twig into a nest and withdrawing it coated with insects. Thirty percent involved algae fishing, and twelve percent involved termite fishing. In forty-two percent of cases, the recipient was an infant. Notably, in all but one instance, the young chimp initiated the transfer voluntarily—reaching for the tool or the food—suggesting the learner's own motivation drove the exchange.

Two case studies illustrate the mechanics. In February 2018, a mother named Soukki dipped a twig into an ant nest while her infant Saïsaï watched. Soukki left the loaded twig in place and brought her daughter over. Saïsaï pulled out the twig and consumed the ants. Later recordings showed Saïsaï performing the full sequence independently. In a second example from December 2021, a mother named Féré brought baobab fruits to a rocky outcrop where her infant Fotti attempted to crack one open by dragging it across the stone. A juvenile male arrived, took the fruit, demonstrated the proper pounding technique, and then physically guided Fotti's hand through the motion. Fotti watched intently, repeated the pounding, and eventually succeeded in breaking the fruit open.

This behavior challenges long-standing assumptions about what separates human cognition from that of other animals. When Charles Darwin observed chimpanzees cracking nuts with stones in 1871, tool use seemed a human monopoly. Jane Goodall's 1960 observation of a chimp named David Greybeard fashioning a twig to extract termites shifted that understanding entirely. Her mentor, Louis Leakey, responded with a question that reframed the entire debate: if chimpanzees use tools, then either the definition of tool, the definition of human, or both must change. Since then, researchers have documented chimps making leaf sponges to absorb liquids, shaping sticks to collect algae, and fashioning rudimentary spears for hunting.

What distinguishes the current research is its focus on the mechanism of transmission. Teaching, Sánchez-Megías noted, requires the teacher to actively modify their behavior to facilitate learning. It evolves when information becomes too complex to acquire through simple observation or individual trial-and-error. The deliberate hand-over of tools, the positioning of the learner, the repetition under guidance—these are not instinctive responses but learned strategies for knowledge transfer. The study suggests that chimpanzees possess not just the ability to use tools, but the cognitive architecture to deliberately instruct others in their use, a capacity once thought uniquely human.