Monkeys Found to have Used Stone Tools more than 700 Years

According to scientists at the University of Oxford, capuchin monkeys have been opening cashews using sophisticated and effective tools for at least seven years. What's more surprising is, the primates may have been using them for longer than that.


The study was published in the journal Current Biology and was authored by Lydia V. Luncz. According to her, as told to the Washington Post, the layers of soil the radiocarbon-dated only went back to 1266 A.D., but they expect that the behavior began way before that.

The Oxford paper suggests that human behavior may have changed based on our observation of the primate. The authors believe European arrivals to the New World may have first become aware that cashews were edible because monkeys eat them.

Cashews grow inside a shell that's too hard to open with bare hands and are covered with acidic fluid toxic enough to make fluid sick.

Capuchins place the cashews on flat pieces of stone, lifting heavy hammer stones and bringing them down hard against the cashew to break its shell. The stones are often left under cashew trees, only to be picked up by the next monkey.



In the Brazilian state of Piaui, capuchins place the nuts on an anvil-like surface, then bash them open using a stone they're able to hold in their cute little monkey hands.

While this is not the first archaeological evidence of monkey tool use, it is the oldest.

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