![]() ![]() McGrew & Tutin reported how chimpanzees cleaned and even extracted their own and each other’s teeth – an unprecedented behavioural phenomenon in non-human animals that the authors related to the chimpanzees’ experience with object manipulation and their intimate social relationships 2. The records of social tool use in animals are limited to McGrew & Tutin’s 1, 2 descriptions of dental cleaning in live chimpanzees. First and foremost, to date, this behaviour has never been reported in chimpanzees or any other non-human animal species. We consider the cleaning of a corpse’s teeth by Noel noteworthy for several reasons. Soon thereafter, Noel engaged in cleaning Thomas’ teeth with the same piece of grass a second time (at least for 5 sec, until the caretakers requested for the recording to end – see Methods), tasting the debris once more (see Figs 1 and 2, and Supplementary Videos 1 and 2). After 26 sec of teeth cleaning with the grass, Noel brought the grass to her mouth and inspected the grass orally, seemingly tasting debris removed from Thomas’ mouth. During this time, Noel kept her face within 10 cm of Thomas’ face, never deflecting her gaze from his mouth. After 3 sec, she took the grass out of her mouth with her right hand, while maintaining focused grip on Thomas’ mouth with her left hand, and started to meticulously poke the grass in the same dental area as where her thumbs had been. Then she wrapped her fingers around Thomas’ chin and jaw, and used her thumbs to explore his teeth. Noel approached Thomas’ body, sat down close to his head, turned her upper body sideways to select a hard piece of grass, put the grass in her mouth, and opened Thomas’ mouth with both of her hands. In more detail, this unique event consisted of the following actions. Nina, her adolescent daughter, stayed at her side and observed the cleaning efforts of her mother. The majority of the group visited Thomas’ body at least once 7, but when most chimpanzees were lured away with highly attractive food, Noel remained at his body and cleaned his teeth with a grass tool. Autopsy revealed that Thomas had most likely died from a combination of a viral and bacterial lung infection (for more details, see ref. She was brought to Chimfunshi when she was 14 years old, after spending most of her life at a private home in former Zaïre. At the time of the reported observations, Noel was 33 years old. Noel, a wild-born female chimpanzee living at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia, attended the dead body of Thomas, a nine-year-old male whom she adopted ( sensu 6) when his mother died four years earlier. Here, we report a new case of social tool use in chimpanzees in a very unusual context: grass tool use for dental corpse cleaning. ![]() Apart from an early report by McGrew & Tutin 1, 2, all accounts of non-human animal tool use are in the context of individual activities (e.g. Social tool use is virtually absent in the animal kingdom. ![]()
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