Skip to footer

How Tushi the chimp foiled a television crew

A chimp at the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands surprised a television crew by swatting a camera-laden drone out of the air. A new study looks at how she did it.

|
Courtesy of Royal Burger's Zoo
A female chimpanzee named Tushi uses a stick to 'attack' the drone. Behind her Raimee is sitting also with a long stick.

Scientists dive to the bottom of the ocean to study fish, photographers stick huge lenses in lions’ faces, and webcams broadcast eaglets hatching across the world.

But can human technology get too close?

Tushi the chimpanzee might say camera-laden drones cross the line.

In April, Tushi used a willow stick to knock just such a flier out of the air.

But the female chimpanzee did not simply swing at an annoyance, like someone might swat at a pesky mosquito. Tushi’s actions were calculated, according to a study released Thursday in the journal Primates.

“The use of the stick as a weapon in this context was a unique action,” study co-author Jan van Hooff said in a news release. “It seemed deliberate, given the decision to collect it and carry it to a place where the drone might be attacked.”

Furthermore, when the researchers studied the video captured by the drone, they noticed that although Tushi grimaced from physical exertion, they could not detect fear in her expression.

Tushi encountered the aerial drone when a television crew set about filming the chimps at the Royal Burgers’ Zoo in the Netherlands. The crew hoped to get a closer look at the animals by using the drone.

The chimpanzees first reacted to the strange flying device during a test run. That’s when they began collecting willow branches. Some climbed up scaffolding to get closer to the drone.

When the next drone entered the enclosure, already filming, the chimpanzees were ready. Tushi swung her stick, which was about six feet long, at the device. She took it down on her second swing.

The chimpanzees examined the foreign object until they had satisfied their curiosity.

Chimpanzees aren’t the only animals to attack a drone. A Hawk attacked a drone filming fall foliage in October 2014 in Cambridge, Mass. In August, The Christian Science Monitor reported that a wedge-eailed eagle also disabled a drone. 

Birds may be most likely to encounter the aerial devices, but camera probes into the deep blue sea encounter animals as well. Great white sharks tried to chomp on underwater cameras in a compilation video released on the Discovery Channel’s website in August 2014.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to How Tushi the chimp foiled a television crew
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0904/How-Tushi-the-chimp-foiled-a-television-crew
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe