2022 | LuiKotale, DRC

Bonobo (Pan paniscus) water scooping

Step right up, I’ve got a real scoop for you today! It’s the brand new tale of the bonobo and the seed pod—coming to you fresh and literally dripping wet from the rainforests of central Africa.

We’ve looked before at wild bonobo tool use, and the inevitable comparisons that come from them having two technologically promiscuous relatives: chimpanzees and humans. Bonobos don’t seem to have the same urge to explore all the possibilities of tools as their close cousins, and when they do, they spend time on self-care, socialisation and play. It seems that the foraging tools of chimpanzees—for ant dipping, nut cracking, pestle pounding, termite fishing and more—either haven’t caught the attention of the modern bonobo, or haven’t caught the attention of a researcher hanging out with said bonobo.

Until now.

Cooler with Cola

Today’s post is a step-by-step look at a new report from the LuiKotale field site in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It comes to us from Sonya Pashchevskaya of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, and her colleagues Barbara Fruth and Gottfried Hohmann. We’re spending more time on one incident than we normally would, because (a) the tool use only happened once, and (b) the researchers raise a valid point about how many things needed to coincide for this behaviour to be seen at all.

On 28 January 2022, Sonia was following members of the Bompusa West bonobo community as they ranged through the forest. She’d been doing that since 5.30am, and by 2pm the apes had roamed into a swampy area to search for roots and mushrooms. There were 10 in the group, and adult female Uma had collected a pod of Cola chlamydantha seeds to munch beside a small stream. Her infant daughter Ubalda played close by.

Quick background botany: Cola chlamydantha pods grow as a cluster of fruits—red when ripe—directly from the tree trunk or branches. Each pod contains a clear, viscous liquid and a number of tasty seeds that the LuiKotale bonobos were known to consume 3-4 times a month. This is what we’re talking about:

If you noticed that the opened seed pod looks like it might make a handy little container or cup, you’re not alone, but you’re also getting ahead of the story.

Back to Uma, who just after 2pm is resting by the stream while the others forage and mess about around her. Ubalda is ankle-deep in the water, holding her mother’s hand. The seed pod is done with, dropped into the stream, and floats between the two bonobos, seemingly forgotten. It’s one of those serene and touching scenes of family togetherness that permeate primatology and remind us of our deep kinship with other animals:

I’ve circled the pod in yellow. Note Uma’s ultra-coolness, resting on her left elbow with her right foot against the tree opposite. We should all be more like Uma.

From that point, the action was swift. In a single, languid motion, Uma dropped her daughter’s hand, picked up the discarded seed pod where it lay half-sunk in the stream, and drank from it. The whole incident took about six seconds.

The research team provided a video as part of their publication, which you can view online here (scroll down to the bottom of the page). I’ve extracted and narrowed in on some frames from it so we can break it down. First, the grab:

Uma doesn’t dip the pod into the water, she just lifts it up with whatever it had already collected between the two connected halves. That’s still a decent amount, as we see when water pours out on the way up to her mouth:

It could be that she’s inspecting the pod, or perhaps after an errant final seed. But no, as it nears her mouth she’s getting ready to drink. And Ubalda is getting ready to leap up with a splash and shake the overhead branch, in an effort to distract attention from this important scientific discovery, but she’s a little too late:

Uma drinks for only a second or two, from the part of the pod near the join where the water is best contained. She then casually drops her tool back in the stream, and wipes her hand across her mouth and face. One small sip for a bonobo, one giant gulp for bonobo-kind?

Lucky dip?

By any definition, Uma used the pod as a tool. My own favoured minimal defintion—that tools are enabling objects—fits just as well as more complex criteria that talk about control and intent. But as with any one-off event, the question that looms large is whether we should or can draw any larger implications from what happened that January afternoon. Do these six seconds change anything?

The scientific consensus is that bonobos don’t regularly use tools for foraging, including for water. If we are to expand our preconceived notions, it is extremely important that we record this kind of activity, and the researchers have done an excellent job of that. Aside from anything else, it shows just how natural and nonchalant tool use can be, when it’s part of the every day cycle of nourishment or play. It doesn’t mean that somehow this is a widespread behaviour that has been missed for decades. It could be the first time a bonobo has ever used a water scoop, or the first time since 1000 BC, at which time all bonobos might have done this every day. We just don’t know.

Refreshingly, the authors don’t overplay the meaning of their observation, unlike some anecdotal reports we’ve seen before, including the case of the puffin that touched itself with a stick. They say:

The main obstacle to observing this type of tool use is the low likelihood of all the relevant conditions to coincide: in our report, bonobos stopped by a stream, Uma obtained the pods, her last discarded pod landed in the water whilst she remained resting by the stream. Perhaps the majority of such inventions will never be observed by human researchers, unless it spreads to other group members and becomes part of the behavioural repertoire…In our footage, Uma appears to be relaxed and not particularly interested in drinking, nor does she appear to purposefully manipulate the object prior to using it, but when she sees the opportunity, she acts upon it.

The way that animal behaviours get reported influences how we see them. It is easy to imagine that if one bonobo did something, then others must be doing it too—it is part of their behavioural repertoire or ‘ethogram’. But the reality may be that animals dip into and out of various tool-use activities essentially at random, when the conditions align as they did for Uma. There need be no greater message about how that species thinks about the world, let alone related species (all apes or all primates, for example). In the effectively infinite world of small actions, sometimes things happen.

Perhaps Uma will repeat her scoop, or her daughter will follow suit. That would tell us interesting things about how information flows through a bonobo society. But in the end probably the essential part of this observation is the simplest: Uma was temporarily thirsty, and then she wasn’t, thanks to her ability to extend her actions into a complex world. Animals are amazing.

Sources: Pashchevskaya, S., Fruth, B. and Hohmann, G. (2024) Water scooping: tool use by a wild bonobo (Pan paniscus) at LuiKotale, a case report. Primates DOI:10.1007/s10329-024-01121-z.

Main image credit: Pashchevskaya et al. (2024) Supplementary Video 1 || Second image credit: nikahause; https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/65726400 || Third image credit: Carel Jongkind; https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/87880277 || Fourth and subsequent image credits: Pashchevskaya et al. (2024) Supplementary Video 1