Tool use in Chimpanzees AKA the perils of interspecies dating. NSFW.

Lots of attention has been paid to the capacity of great apes to use objects as tools. Well, here we have an example of a chimpanzee at the Honolulu Zoo using a toad as a "marital aide". I feel bad for the poor toad, it certainly doesn't deserve to be treated like an object.

There's not more I can say about the subject, frankly I'm still simultaneously trying to process it and scrub it from my brain. Again, not safe for work viewing.

More like this

Madeline Holler at Salon has a rather cute essay about her failures at becoming a radical homemaker. On my first quick skim through it (it was sent to me by several readers, so thanks!), I was inclined to give it a total pass, because I found myself rather liking Holler, and sympathizing to an…
Everyone says "encourage your daughters to stick with math and science". And you want to do it. You're proud of your daughter, you want her to have every option in the world open to her. But what do you do when she resists? A worried dad recently wrote with just such a dilemma: Slightly off-…
Today is the official release date for the paperback edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I wanted to write up something cool about quantum physics to mark the occasion. I looked around the house for inspiration, and most of what we have lying around the house is SteelyKid's toys. Thus,…
Last year, in a paper published in the journal Current Biology, Jill Pruetz and Paco Bertolani reported on their observation of ten different chimpanzees thrusting wooden "spears" into holes in trees 22 times over the course of more than a year, presumably to stun bush babies that sleep in the…

I loled so hard when I saw this-- the 'related videos' at YouTube are also pure gold.

heeeeeeehehehehe! Where do they get all these toads??

I found this blog on a list of top 100 neuro/psych sites. This is the first post I saw of Neurotopia - perfect maiden voyage. I'm going to go drill a hole in my brain now...

(still a great site though ;)

"I feel bad for the poor toad, it certainly doesn't deserve to be treated like an object."

That's not fair, we don't know the whole story- he might have taken the toad out for Chinese food and cocktails for all we know.

Oh. My. I hope that toad is REALLY good at controlling its gag reflex.

This is the first time I've ever felt sympathetic to my grandfather's assertion that you shouldn't go outside your own class for these things.