Bear with us. We’re well aware that what follows might seem a little far-fetched.
After footage emerged of some chimpanzees engaging in some bizarre behaviour, scientists now reckon that it could be evidence that the animals have some form of religious belief, reports The Independent.
Recorded in West Africa, the animals are seen banging rocks against trees and forming piles of stones inside hollowed out parts of their trunks.
While this hardly equates to them attending Sunday mass, it’s thought that this might be an early version of ritual behaviour.
‘This represents the first record of repeated observations of individual chimpanzees exhibiting stone tool use for a purpose other than extractive foraging at what appear to be targeted trees,’ the researchers write.
‘The ritualised behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites.’
Now we appreciate that many of you will be thinking: ‘This just looks like a bunch of chimps lobbing a few rocks around…’
However, it is interesting that one of the other researchers suggests that it could represent a direct connection with human religious rituals – noting that indigenous West African people also collect stones at sacred trees – in a way that is “eerily similar” to what is seen in the video below.
https://youtu.be/_W_VGnp-4bg
