Dutch investigators have concluded a chimp planned a drone attack this spring, well before the device was even in view.
Two researchers who studied the videotape of the TV-drone takedown have reported in the journal Primate that the chimp responsible for delivering the devastating whack made preparations to do so in advance.
The camera-equipped drone first caught the attention of a group of inquisitive chimpanzees who live at a Dutch wildlife habitat called Royal Burgers Zoo last April.
So a female named Tushi armed herself and a couple of cohorts with big branches to take it down next time it performed a flyby in a particular area she’d seen it hovering in before.
Once she struck it to the ground, it continued filming of course -- the entire loop providing close-ups of her telltale “grimaces” which revealed the same kind of deliberateness and determination that human faces register when engaged in similar acts.
"The precise coincidence of the facial grimace with the [premeditated] strike suggests that it is a concomitant of an assertive and determined exertion of force homologous to what humans do in comparable situations,” the study’s authors stated.
“This episode adds to the indications that chimpanzees engage in forward planning of tool-use acts.”
Or at least that Tushi does, whenever something’s got her curious.
