Swedish Chimp Launches Opening Volley In Great Primate War

“After a visitor group had left the compound area, Santino went inside the enclosure and brought a good-sized heap of hay that he placed near the visitor’s section, and immediately after that he put stones under it. He also appeared to have placed projectiles behind, just before he went in after the hay. After this, he sat down beside the hay and waited. When the visitors came back, he waited until they were close by and, without any preceding display, he threw stones at the crowd. What makes this a bit special is that he actually had not experienced before what he seemed to anticipate. He, in a sense, produced a future outcome instead of just preparing for a scenario that had previously been re-occurring reliably.”
 — It begins. Mathias Osvath, scientific director of the Lund University Primate Research Station in Furuvik, Sweden, describes the cunning military tactics employed against humans by Santino, a chimpanzee at the Furuvik zoo. The act of pre-planned deception displays a level of intelligence previously thought to be beyond chimpanzees’ ken. But Santino does not like to touch his own feces, as many other primates do (that’s why he chooses rocks as projectiles), so he’s obviously pretty smart. He is also the dominant male in his troop, so we can expect other primates to follow his lead and an all-out war to ensue.