Loui, the juvenile male orangutan, uses the core as an active element to vertically strike on the concrete floor of the testing room. Image credit: Motes-Rodrigo“Given their resilience to destructive taphonomic processes, the most abundant hominin artifacts in the archaeological record are stone tools,” said lead authorfrom the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen and her colleagues.
“As a result, the production and use of stone tools elicited over time major changes in hominin dentition, hand morphology and brain size.” Both orangutans spontaneously hit the hammer against the walls and floor of their enclosure, but neither directed strikes towards the stone core. This study is the first to report spontaneous stone tool use without close direction in orangutans that have not been enculturated by humans.