Ladies, does the sound of rustling leaves get you in the mood? Would it at least get your attention? For a specific colony of chimpanzees in Tanzania, this appears to be the goal. Apparently already sick of the new Maxwell album, for the first time in recorded history, male chimps have been seen ripping and crunching leaves in order to woo females for mating.
According to The New York Times, Dr. William C. McGrew witnessed this behavior, which he then wrote about for an article in the journal Science. In order to catch the eye (or really the ear) of a female, male chimpanzees will pluck and break leaves in front of their erections. The sound of crushing leaves, which might resemble crinkling paper, is enough to turn heads and allow the male to advertise what he has to offer. McGrew, a University of Cambridge professor and author of The Cultured Chimpanzee: Reflections on Cultural Primatology, explains, “sometimes he’ll do half a dozen leaves until she notices.”
Tool use by chimps was first documented over fifty years ago by primatologist Jane Goodall, who observed a chimp using a twig to go fishing for termites, a favorite snack. Since that time, tool use amongst chimpanzees — from using hammers to crack open nuts to using leaves to help them drink and build sleeping nests — has been widely recognized.
But does ripping up leaves really qualify as tool use? McGrew seems to think so. “He’s using a portable object to obtain a goal. In this case, the goal is not food but mating.”
This newest addition to the more or less twenty tools already kept in the chimpanzee toolbox might seem a bit uncouth, but hey, they don’t yet have access to cologne. And let’s hope flashers don’t hear about this idea. Just imagine the number of shredded newspapers flitting through bus depots and subway stations across the world.
Want to help orphaned chimps grow up to be leaf-shredding Romeos? Become a chimp guardian here.
Photo by Delphine Bruyere via Wikimedia Commons.