Past Their Prime? Tool Use Declines with Age in Wild Chimpanzees

Past their prime? Tool use declines with age in wild chimpanzees

New research led by University of Oxford researchers has found that old age likely impacts the habitual tool-use behaviors of some wild chimpanzees—although the extent to which different individuals are affected appears to be highly variable. The findings have been published today in the journal eLife.

Old age variably impacts chimpanzee engagement and efficiency in stone tool use

We know vanishingly little about how long-lived apes experience senescence in the wild, particularly with respect to their foraging behaviors. Chimpanzees use tools during foraging, and given the cognitive and physical challenges presented by tool use, tool-use behaviors are potentially at a heightened risk of senescence, though this has never been investigated in wild individuals. Accordingly, we sampled data from a longitudinal video archive t…