Primate's Premeditated Pitching

A friend of mine first brought my attention to this story about a week ago. He described the incident to me. Basically an old chimp was witnessed stock-piling rocks in anticipation of zoo visitors. He then used his arsenal of rocks to retaliate against visitors that laughed at or mocked him. I was trying to decided if this was a correlation or a real premeditated attack.

I found the article in question at MSNBC's website, "Zoo Chimp Plots Stone Throwing Attacks." According to the article Santino, the chimp, has a routine which includes gathering stones from the water surrounding his exhibit and placing them into piles. This was first observed in 1997 by the staff of the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. In 1998 he added breaking off pieces of concrete from his exhibit to arsenal. Santino specifically engineered throw-able sized pieces of concrete and shaped them into discs for better distance throwing. His piles were in specific places around the perimeter of his exhibit to make them easily accessible during zoo visiting hours.

According to a Scientific American article entitled, "Planning of the Apes", every day around 11:00 A.M. Santino would put on a show of dominance which involved yelling, running, etc. When zoo visitors laughed at him they found themselves on the receiving end of one of Santino's rock attacks.

The MSNBC article stated that the new evidence was published in an issue of Current Biology by Mathias Osvath. In the abstract of his article called, "Spontaneous Planning for Future Stone Throwing by a Male Chimpanzee," he makes a point that anecdotal evidence is scarce and there are very few controlled demonstrations of planning for the future in animals. He says, "This dearth of observations is arguably the main reason for not ascribing cognitive foresight to nonhuman animals."

Osvath goes on to say:

"Over the years, Santino's operation has become increasingly sophisticated, Osvath says, progressing from simple gathering to fabrication. He has been observed chipping away at the concrete rocks on the island with his hands to sculpt dessert plate–size discs to launch at zoo visitors. In the past decade, zoo workers have witnessed him throwing stones on about 50 separate occasions. Santino has managed to hit a handful of gawkers during his assaults but, happily, none have been injured."

It was observed that Santino is extremely calm when restocking his arsenal and becomes very agitated when throwing the rocks. From Mathias Osvath's study he has concluded that chimps "can diligently take actions that will prepare [them] for future events."