ONLY a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. And gorillas are no fools, it seems. This lowland gorilla is using a metre-long stick to cautiously test the depth of water as she wades into a swampy pool.
“It was exactly how you or I might have tested the depth of the water,” says Thomas Breuer of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society. Breuer has been studying the gorillas in the Republic of the Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park since 1995.
While gorillas in captivity have been spotted throwing objects and using sticks to extract food, it…
