...Kanzi, the ape who HAS learned the secret of man's red fire and loves...a good fry-up

Daily Mail ^ | December 30, 2011 | David Derbyshire

[decimon]

Eagerly he collects wood from the ground, snaps the branches into small pieces and carefully balances them in a pile. Then, taking care not to burn himself, he gently strikes a match and gets ready for a fry-up.

Like all red-blooded males, Kanzi loves messing around with a barbecue. But then, as these extraordinary pictures show, Kanzi is no man. He is a bonobo - pygmy chimpanzee - and his love of fire is challenging the way that we think about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

For although bonobo apes and larger chimpanzees use twigs and leaves as tools, none has ever shown such skill for cooking food.

Dr Savage-Rumbaugh, of the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa, adds: ‘Kanzi makes fire because he wants to. He used to watch the film Quest For Fire when he was very young which was about early man struggling to control fire. He watched it spellbound over and over hundreds of times.’

[TigersEye]

I understand. Whenever I hear someone trying to equate a chimpanzee's use of a tool to human ingenuity I think "when you find a Parthenon built by chimps I'll be impressed."

I was just amused at the thought of humans figuring out how to make a fire. I suspect that 98% of Americans couldn't make a fire without a lighter or matches even though a good number of them probably have heard of the bow and drill method.