In the dry grasslands of Dindefelo, Senegal, chimpanzees have mastered an ancient art of survival that reveals far more than just clever feeding behavior—it opens a window into how our own ancestors adapted to harsh African savannas. Researchers at the University of Barcelona and the Jane Goodall Institute Spain have discovered that savanna chimpanzees use specialized stick tools stripped of bark or frayed at the ends to safely extract and consume army ants, one of the most protein-rich foods available in their unforgiving landscape.
Army ants, also called marabunta, form the largest insect colonies on Earth, making them a crucial nutritional resource across Africa. Yet extracting them is a painful endeavor; the ants deliver vicious bites that would overwhelm any creature foolish enough to grab them barehanded. Over five years of observation from 2018 to 2022, researchers documented 156 separate feeding events where chimpanzees employed tools crafted from eight different plant species—predominantly lianas—to safely access these underground nests. The primates cut these tools with their teeth, fashioning implements with deliberate precision.
What makes this discovery particularly striking is the sophistication embedded in plant selection. One of the eight plant species contains chemical compounds with reported calming properties, leading researchers to hypothesize that chimpanzees may be deliberately choosing plants for their medicinal benefits. They appear to be using chemistry as a shield against pain—a strategy that hints at ecological knowledge passed down through generations and learned slowly over years of practice.
"Studying chimpanzees in savanna habitats has important implications for understanding human evolution, since the first hominin species that would eventually give rise to our lineage evolved in similar habitats," explains Adriana Hernández-Aguilar, a Serra Hunter professor at the University of Barcelona and supervisor of the study published in Scientific Reports. The research team, which included experts from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Copenhagen, analyzed how chimpanzees adapt their foraging strategies based on the aggressiveness of different army ant species. Surprisingly, the study found that savanna chimpanzees don't use fundamentally different extraction techniques than their forest-dwelling cousins—they simply apply the same knowledge under harder circumstances.
The research also revealed something unprecedented: chimpanzees in this region revisit specific ant nests across multiple years, demonstrating a spatial memory and planning ability that suggests deeper ecological understanding than previously documented. In a savanna where food, water, and shelter become scarce during the long dry season, this targeted foraging represents a survival strategy honed by necessity.
Today, West African chimpanzees face critical endangerment, making this research urgently important. Understanding how these primates survive in harsh habitats—where resources are scattered and unpredictable—offers insights not only into their resilience but into the adaptive ingenuity that allowed early humans to thrive in similar landscapes. As chimpanzee populations dwindle, the knowledge they carry about living on savannas becomes increasingly precious.