Chimp's religion?

[Fake Messiah]

Primatologists have observed that some chimpanzees are filling hollow trees with rocks. Why they would do this has few explanations, like maybe they are marking their territory, but other is that they are building shrines out of hollow trees and filling them with rocks to, in a way, worship trees.

From an article:

But what we discovered during our now-published study wasn’t a random, one-off event, it was a repeated activity with no clear link to gaining food or status – it could be a ritual. We searched the area and found many more sites where trees had similar markings and in many places piles of rocks had accumulated inside hollow tree trunks – reminiscent of the piles of rocks archaeologists have uncovered in human history.
Videos poured in. Other groups working in our project began searching for trees with tell-tale markings. We found the same mysterious behavior in small pockets of Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire but nothing east of this, despite searching across the entire chimp range from the western coasts of Guinea all the way to Tanzania.
[…]
maybe we found the first evidence of chimpanzees creating a kind of shrine that could indicate sacred trees. Indigenous West African people have stone collections at “sacred” trees and such man-made stone collections are commonly observed across the world and look eerily similar to what we have discovered here.
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/nat...e-religion

Video

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

A couple of other possible explanations spring to mind:

1. The article mentions that this behaviour by chimps occurs in essentially the same areas where humans do the same thing. Primates are imitative by nature, so it's at least plausible that the chimps are putting stones in trees for no other reason that they've seen stones piled in trees.

2. Chimps are known to use tools as well as having an ability to plan ahead, so this could possibly be a case of them storing stones for future use.

Boru

[zwanzig]

A couple of other possible explanations spring to mind:

1. The article mentions that this behaviour by chimps occurs in essentially the same areas where humans do the same thing. Primates are imitative by nature, so it's at least plausible that the chimps are putting stones in trees for no other reason that they've seen stones piled in trees.

2. Chimps are known to use tools as well as having an ability to plan ahead, so this could possibly be a case of them storing stones for future use.

Boru

Agree, those are much more plausible. It seems a big leap to see an animal doing something we perceive as useless and jump to "they must be worshipping!"

The prospect of chimps or other apes evolving as our ancient ancestors did and catching up to us is an exciting thought. I think some people are a little too excited about it to do the due diligence scientific study requires.

[brewer]

It could be a game, the chimps version of horseshoes, curling or yard darts.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, religion isn't useless, imitation is a huge portion of human religious behavior, and games are ever present. That some animal would engage in ritual behaviors to mark out an item or location or event it deems to be special or important, and that in a social species these behaviors could spread, isn't beyond the pale.

It's not really an issue of "catching up" - that's an anthropocentric conceit, as are most of our offhand rejections of the idea that other animals might do some of the things that another animal does, particularly closely related ones. I think that it's interesting that if we were to find cairns anywhere else, we'd suspect humans did it, and did it for religious reasons - but because we know that chimps are doing it..we think "not that".

I'd be super interested to know whether the chimps ever take rocks away from the piles, as that might suggest whether there's a personal compulsion to add rocks, or a social taboo against their removal.

[Fake Messiah]

I'd be super interested to know whether the chimps ever take rocks away from the piles, as that might suggest whether there's a personal compulsion to add rocks, or a social taboo against their removal.

At 1:20 a female chimp seems to be taking out some rocks from the tree.

[vulcanlogician]

What do you call it when chimps put rocks in a tree?

Religion.

What do you call it when they throw their own feces?

Fundamentalism.

[ignoramus]

If I could talk to the apes, I would say: Don't bother evolving! You're wasting your fucking time.

[Sal]

What do you call it when chimps put rocks in a tree?

Religion.

What do you call it when they throw their own feces?

Fundamentalism.

You can't spell 'fundamentalism' without 'fun'.

[The Grand Nudger]

If I could talk to the apes, I would say: Don't bother evolving! You're wasting your fucking time.

Well, they are just as evolved as we are, and all it got them is a pile of rocks and a spot on the endangered species list.