
In a first, chimpanzees seen smashing and eating tortoises - pseudolus
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/05/chimpanzees-eat-tortoises-smash-shells/
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WaitWaitWha
We have chimps and "chimps" using cell phone.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/b08v5...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/b08v5c/chimpanzee_scrolling_through_instagram/)

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.

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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.

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Barrin92
I'll second this anecdotally because I have no problem browsing hackernews all
day but yesterday I fought desperately trying to crack a coconut for half an
hour.

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xenospn
Smashing a turtle is far easier than cracking a coconut.

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throwaway5752
African or European turtle?

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sockpuppet999
Not trying to be overly pedantic but, turtles and tortoises are two very
different things

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warent
Tortoises are a species of turtle ("Testudinoidea")

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vbuwivbiu
they are apparently delicious
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreview...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jul/31/featuresreviews.guardianreview7)

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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...](https://www.livescience.com/27524-nut-cracking-monkeys-skilled-with-
tools.html)

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

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amanaplanacanal
I've seen crows drop walnuts in front of oncoming cars so they'll get run
over. Corvids are smart birds.

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fuzz4lyfe
I'll take that and raise you "casual understanding of water displacement by a
crow'

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04)

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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.

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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...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-to-eat-like-a-
chimpanzee/?redirect=1)

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Lowkeyloki
Well, this is terrible news on World Turtle Day.

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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.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_iguana#Feeding](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.

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dpflan
Cue _Also Sprach Zarathustra_

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

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Mikeb85
It's fascinating to see evolution unfold before our eyes that may replicate
our own evolution circa 5-10 million years ago.

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

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thrower123
I'm a little flabbergasted that the idea of animals using tools is so
groundbreaking. I've seen squirrels pick apples up off the ground, climb to
the top of a tree, and drop the apple over and over again to break it into
small convenient pieces. I've seen birds do the same thing too, with
shellfish. You see all kinds of stuff when you have your eyes open.

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nipponese
Wait until chimps figure out how to refine oil and use combustion engines.

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angstrom
When you consider the effort to get to that stage of locomotion it's amazing
that flying birds haven't advanced faster technologically.

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emmelaich
I guess birds (and most animals) have a hit a local minimum that they'll never
climb out of.

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Kye
Humans got lucky with figuring out fire. Fire simplifies everything.

