Chimpanzees plan breakfast the night before: research

Dutch researcher Karline Janmaat noticed that chimpanzees look for a place to sleep close to trees and shrubs with food, so that they can have breakfast first thing in the morning. The chimps will even get up extra early so that they can get to the food before the other animals who also eat the fruit, nuts and leaves. These findings were published today in the prestigious magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Janmaat and her team observed five chimpanzees in a National Park in Ivory Coast in the summers of 2008 to 2011. "The apes do not only view other chimps as competitors, but also smaller monkeys and birds. The chimpanzee mother therefore goes along with her children to gather breakfast before sunrise" says the researcher, "Thus chimpanzees can plan ahead." Janmaat works for the German Max Planck Institute and studied at the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht, among others.