Study shows tool use declines in ageing chimpanzees

Credit: Tetsuro Matsuzawa.

Dr Katarina Almeida‑Warren, Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, was part of an Oxford team that has published a striking new study in eLife examining how ageing impacts tool use in wild chimpanzees. Dr Almeida‑Warren’s expertise in primate archaeology and ethology helped deepen the study’s analysis of the chimpanzee’s tool use.

By analysing video footage, focusing on five chimpanzees aged between approximately 39–44 and 56–61 over a 17‑year span, the team found elderly individuals visited the nut‑cracking site less often and performed the task less efficiently, with slower tool selection, more hammer strikes, and prolonged cracking times. Significantly, while some older chimpanzees showed marked declines, others retained high performance, mirroring the varied aging trajectories seen in humans

This compelling evidence provides the first systematic analysis of how aging impairs technical foraging skills in wild apes. While the behavioural changes that occur with aging have been widely studied in humans and some captive primates, exceptionally little is known about how growing older affects the lives of elderly wild apes. This includes how the capacity to address technical, real-world tasks changes as chimpanzees become progressively older.

Elsewhere, Dr Almeida‑Warren was also featured in the “Dare to Explore” segment of the National Geographic Kids June/July 2025 edition, where she shared insights on tracking chimpanzee in Guinea to study their behaviour – bringing science to young readers around the globe.