Chimpanzees use a remarkable range of tools, from stone hammers and wooden anvils to carefully modified sticks, leaf sponges, and even insects applied to wounds. Researchers have documented dozens of distinct tool behaviors across wild populations in Africa, with some communities regularly using sets of three to five different tools in sequence for a single task.
Fishing Probes for Termites and Ants
One of the most well-known chimpanzee tools is the termite fishing probe. To make one, a chimpanzee gathers a stem from a plant near the termite mound, strips the large leaf from the end by pulling it off with a hand or mouth, then carries the stem to the nest. The real sophistication comes at the tip: chimpanzees modify the end into a brush by pulling the stem through their teeth, splitting it lengthwise, or biting apart the fibers. About 75% of these modifications involve fraying the end by pulling it through the teeth, creating a paintbrush-like tip that picks up far more termites per dip than an unmodified stick would.
These brush-tipped probes have been found across multiple sites in central Africa, and they share a striking similarity in form, suggesting that the technique is passed between generations through observation and practice rather than independently reinvented at each site.
Stone Hammers and Anvils for Cracking Nuts
Nut cracking is among the most physically demanding and technically complex tool behaviors in chimpanzees. It requires two tools used together: a hammer (usually a stone, sometimes wood) and an anvil (a flat stone surface or an exposed tree root). The chimpanzee places a nut on the anvil and strikes it with the hammer, a task that demands precise force control since too much pressure crushes the edible kernel inside.
The materials vary by region. At Djouroutou in Côte d’Ivoire, chimpanzees use hammerstones made of quartzite, granodiorite, metamorphosed granite, and occasionally laterite to crack open at least five species of nut, including coula, panda, and parinari. Their anvils are either semi-exposed boulders or living tree roots, often on the nut tree itself. At Bossou in Guinea, a smaller group uses ironstone and amphibolite hammers on stone anvils to crack oil palm nuts. These regional differences in both raw material and target nut species are a clear example of cultural variation between chimpanzee communities.
Archaeological excavations in Côte d’Ivoire have recovered chimpanzee stone tools with food residue still attached, dated to 4,300 years old. That means chimpanzees have been cracking nuts with stones for at least as long as some human civilizations have existed.
Spears for Hunting
At Fongoli in Senegal, chimpanzees living in a savannah habitat use sharpened sticks to hunt small primates called galagos (also known as bushbabies) hiding inside tree hollows. A chimpanzee fashions a stick, jabs it repeatedly into the cavity to injure or flush out the prey, then reaches in to grab it.
What makes this behavior especially interesting is who does it most. Females accounted for the majority of tool-assisted hunts, with 175 recorded events compared to 130 for males. When broken down further, adolescent males hunted most frequently (65 events), followed closely by juvenile and infant females (62 events) and adult females (56 events). Adult males hunted with tools the least often (45 events). One explanation is that females and younger individuals, who are less likely to succeed in the high-speed group hunts that adult males favor, rely on tools to level the playing field.
Leaf and Moss Sponges for Drinking
When water collects in a tree hollow or other spot too awkward for direct drinking, chimpanzees manufacture sponges. They crumple or fold a wad of leaves, dip it into the water, then squeeze the liquid into their mouths. Some populations also use moss, either alone or mixed with leaves, for the same purpose.
Moss sponges are significantly more effective. In natural conditions, a moss sponge absorbs an average of 13.1 milliliters of water per dip, compared to just 8.4 milliliters for a leaf sponge. Moss sponges are also faster to make (about 7 seconds versus 11 seconds for leaf sponges) and faster to deploy. Chimpanzees appear to recognize this advantage. Researchers found that they actively select moss when it’s available, suggesting they evaluate tool materials based on efficiency rather than simply grabbing the nearest option. Common materials include leaves from plants like Acalypha and Lasiodiscus species and moss from Orthostichella welwitschii, a species that hangs from tree branches.
Multi-Tool Sets for Honey Extraction
Extracting honey from a bee hive is not a one-tool job. Chimpanzees at Loango National Park in Gabon regularly use sets of three to five different tools in sequence to access honey from different bee species. The process can involve pounding tools to break open a hive entrance, thinner sticks to enlarge the hole, and flexible dipping tools to scoop out honey. Some of these are multi-function tools showing wear patterns from two distinct uses.
One of the most impressive variations involves underground bee nests. Because these nests aren’t visible from the surface, chimpanzees use ground-perforating tools to probe the soil and locate the nest chambers before beginning extraction. Sequential tool use like this, where each step depends on the one before it, was once considered uniquely human. Its presence in chimpanzees suggests the cognitive foundations for complex, multi-step planning run deeper in our shared evolutionary history than previously thought.
Insects Applied to Wounds
A more recently documented behavior involves chimpanzees catching flying insects and pressing them directly onto open wounds. First reported in a community at Loango National Park in Gabon, researchers observed 19 cases of chimpanzees applying insects to their own wounds and three cases of applying them to the wounds of other group members over a 15-month period. The insects were immobilized, pressed onto the exposed wound surface with the fingers, sometimes moved across it using fingers or lips, then removed and discarded.
This behavior has since been observed in a completely separate population of eastern chimpanzees at Ngogo in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, where six individuals were recorded applying flying insects to wounds between November 2021 and July 2022. In one case, an adolescent male caught an insect and applied it to a wound on his inner calf, re-applying it twice. Whether this behavior has genuine medicinal properties (some insects produce antimicrobial compounds) or serves another function remains an open question, but the fact that chimpanzees do it for others, including non-relatives, makes it especially notable.
How These Skills Are Learned
Chimpanzees don’t figure out most of these behaviors on their own. Tool skills spread through social learning: young chimpanzees watch their mothers and other group members, then practice for years. A 2024 study tracking 70 wild chimpanzees of various ages at Taï National Park found that certain advanced skills, like extracting insects from hard-to-reach places or adjusting grip for different tasks, weren’t fully developed until around age 15. That’s a remarkably long learning period, stretching well into adulthood, and it mirrors the extended skill development seen in humans mastering complex manual tasks.
This reliance on social learning also explains the strong regional differences in tool use. Populations separated by rivers or large distances often have entirely different tool traditions, not because of differences in available materials or food sources, but because different innovations arose in different communities and were passed down locally. Some researchers describe these patterns as chimpanzee cultures, distinct traditions maintained through generations of observation and imitation rather than genetic inheritance.