Study suggests every day is a 'school day' for chimps

Just like young humans having to learn to use a pencil or cutlery, chimps have to learn to use "tools"

You might have heard an adult use the phrase, "every day is a school day".

It means we carry on learning about the world around us, even when we are grown-up.

A new study suggests the same is true for chimpanzees, who, according to researchers, continue to learn and improve their tool-using skills well into adulthood.

The team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, watched around 70 wild chimps in Ivory Coast and noticed they got better at using their stick 'tools' as they got older.

The researchers analysed video footage of the great apes, watching how they improved their ability to pluck food items from plants or other hard-to-reach spaces.

In the same way that when we are younger we learn how to hold a pen over time, the chimps start by gripping tools with their whole hand, then developing over time to be able to just use two or three fingers to control the sticks.

The team said its findings, in the journal Plos Biology, "support ideas that large brains across hominids (all modern and extinct Great Apes such as humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and their immediate ancestors) allow continued learning through the first two decades of life."

The animals continued to change their grip to suit different tasks and hadn't perfected the skill until they were around 15 years old, which is when a chimp is considered to be an adult.