• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Using Stones And Sticks Helps Capuchin Monkeys Find Underground Food

May 15, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

In the animal world the search for food can be one of life’s biggest struggles. Whether chasing down prey, carefully setting traps, or lying in wait, the creatures of Earth have come up with a multitude of ways to get their dinner. Now, research has looked closely at bearded capuchins and found they’ve taken to using tools to get access to some tasty underground snacks. 

Advertisement

Bearded capuchins (Sapajus libidinosus) in Ubajara National Park, Brazil were observed using both their hands and stone-digging techniques for getting access to two types of food: trapdoor spiders and underground storage organs (USOs). 

Advertisement

Previous research has seen stone-digging used in a capuchin population that lives in a dry savannah habitat, whereas this population lives in a far wetter area. Male capuchins were also seen to use sticks and stones to capture spiders. These monkeys are already known to use hammerstones to crack palm nuts. 

The team followed a group of 31 monkeys for 21 months. They recorded 214 digging moments, including digging with and without the tools. The monkeys regularly extracted USOs, which are tuberous roots that are then peeled and eaten. These were excavated 49 percent of the time while spider burrows made up 19 percent of the excavations. 

In about half of the instances where the monkeys were seen to dig, they did so with stone tools. The “stone-digging” technique involved the monkeys pounding in the stone against the soil to loosen it, either helping them extract the USOs or shortening the spider burrows. The stone digging tools were used more frequently when digging on the hills compared to on riverbanks. The stone tools were also much more likely to be used by male monkeys. 



Advertisement

Stick tools were observed in only male adult and subadult male capuchins. They were used more on the riverbanks than on the hills and were seen being used 40 times. On almost half of these occasions the monkeys were seen using more than one stick. 

In total, four techniques were used to capture and consume trapdoor spiders. These included both hands only and stone-digging, as well as stick-probing. The final technique is a combination known as “stone-stick” whereby the monkeys used both stones and sticks to extract the spider, and the last tool used was always the stick. 

Trapdoor spider burrow. The

A trapdoor spider burrow. Monkeys used tools to forage for the spider and the egg mass inside.

Image courtesy of Tatiane Valença

The team found that the use of the tools did not increase the overall success of getting either a USO or a trapdoor spider. They suggest that the use of different tools could be related to the soil conditions, or could make the time looking for underground food shorter. 

The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. ARK Invest’s Wood expects market rotation back to growth stocks
  2. Tennis-Sabalenka tests positive for COVID-19, out of Indian Wells
  3. NASA Opens Lid Of Asteroid Sample Capsule, Preserved Proteins Found After Millions Of Years In Dinosaur Feather, And Much More This Week
  4. New Species May Be The Largest Snake To Have Ever Lived

Source Link: Using Stones And Sticks Helps Capuchin Monkeys Find Underground Food

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Polar Vortex Patterns Explain Winter Cold Snaps Against Background Warming Trend
  • Scientists Tracked An Olm For 2,569 Days And It Did Not Move An Inch
  • Look Out For “Fireballs”: The Best Meteor Shower Of 2025 Is About To Commence, According To NASA
  • Why Do Many Large Language Models Give The Same Answer To This “Random” Number Query?
  • Adidas Jabulani: The World Cup Football So Bad NASA Decided To Study It
  • Beluga Whales Shake Their Blob-Like Melons To Say Hello And Even Woo A Mate, But How?
  • Gravitational Wave Detected From Largest Black Hole Merger Yet: “It Presents A Real Challenge To Our Understanding Of Black Hole Formation”
  • At Over 100 Years Of Age, The World’s Oldest Elephant Passes Away In India
  • Ancient Human DNA Reveals Earliest Zoonotic Diseases Appeared 6,500 Years Ago
  • Boys Are Better At Math? That Could Be Because School Favors Them Over Girls
  • Looptail G: Most People Can’t Recognize A Letter You Have Seen Millions Of Times
  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version