In a first, chimpanzees seen smashing and eating tortoises

[WaitWaitWha]

We have chimps and "chimps" using cell phone. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/b08v5...

Turtle smashing mental level requirements are not much higher than social media surfing, but there are plenty of examples they can learn complex sequence of steps and pass it on.

[sachdevap]

"Turtle smashing mental level requirements are not much higher than social media surfing" -- what leads you to this conclusion? It is not clear to me that this is a trivial statement.

[empath75]

The chimp using Instagram is amazing. Wow.

[anthuman]

Chimps have been shown to use tools and pass on the knowledge to their offspring.

https://phys.org/news/2016-10-wild-chimpanzee-mothers-young-...

[vbuwivbiu]

they are apparently delicious https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreview...

[oh_sigh]

This is cool, but percussive techniques are not limited to chimps. e.g. bearded capuchins use what is essentially a hammer and anvil to break nuts: https://www.livescience.com/27524-nut-cracking-monkeys-skill...

[TheSpiceIsLife]

If I call correctly sone birds do this too, using stones to break nuts. Was probably some kind of corvid.

[RenRav]

They've never been documented eating any reptiles? Not even something trivial like lizards? That seems so odd, I don't know why but I assumed they ate just about everything.

[Aromasin]

As far as my brief reading has got me, despite what was my general understanding until now they generally eat very little meat at all [1]. I guess it makes sense in this case that they're never been found eating reptiles.

[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-eat-l...

[toomanybeersies]

The've been documented eating monkeys: http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150728-chimps-nearly-wiped-...

I think that the lede is more that they're using problem solving to eat the turtles by breaking their shell.

[Causality1]

That was my reaction as well. Small palm-sized lizards are so common I'm amazed no one has observed a chimp snatching and eating one.

[Lowkeyloki]

Well, this is terrible news on World Turtle Day.

[winchling]

I'm fascinated that tortoises are in fact reptilian since I'd previously thought that reptiles were a strictly meat-eating class. Also that an ancient battle formation was named after them.

[delhanty]

Marine iguanas, found on Galapagos, are another counter-example to reptiles being strictly meat-eating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana#Feeding

>The marine iguana forages almost exclusively on red and green algae in the inter- and subtidal zones.

[sockpuppet999]

Tortoises are mostly vegetarian although I've seen them eat garden snails. Turtles however are cold blooded predators that eat meat all the time

[dpflan]

Cue Also Sprach Zarathustra

[southerndrift]

>You're in a desert and you're walking along in the sand and all of a sudden you look down and...

[Mikeb85]

It's fascinating to see evolution unfold before our eyes that may replicate our own evolution circa 5-10 million years ago.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Why is this evolution? I imagine this is nothing new, we just hadn't seen it before.