Chimps Aren't Fooled

From the BBC:

Across Africa, people often lay snare traps to catch bushmeat, killing or injuring chimps and other wildlife.

But a few chimps living in the rainforests of Guinea have learnt to recognise these snare traps laid by human hunters, researchers have found.

More astonishing, the chimps actively seek out and intentionally deactivate the traps, setting them off without being harmed. . . .

In the journal Primates, the researchers describe six separate cases where chimps were observed trying to deactivate snares. Mostly, the chimps grasped the snare stick with their hands, shaking it violently until the trap broke. Sometimes a chimp lightly knocked the sapling that holds the snare, before grasping it to break the trap.

But in all cases, they avoided touching the dangerous part, the wire loop.