SCIENCE LAB SCENICS : CRYSTAL LOVING CHIMPS

A TASTE for shiny things : Humans closest cousins are fussy about their rocks. Prices are set in bananas.

If you give a chimp a crystal, she might not give it back. Researchers have learned this the hard way. They give quartz, calcite and other crystals to chimpanzees in a rehabilitation center.

The apes responded with great interest, and the researchers ended up needing to trade large amounts of bananas and yogurt to get back the largest crystal. Others were never retrieved.

The crystal chimp study, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology was an attempt to understand what about the shimmering minerals is so attractive to the apes' closest cousins, us.

It was lead by Juan Manuel Garcia,-Ruiz, a crystallographer in Spain.

Discoveries of quartz and other crystals at archaeological sites suggest that predecessors of humans gathered these stones as far back as 200,000 years ago.

No evidence has been found that they were turned into tools, ornaments or anything else useful.

To discern what drew our ancestors to crystals, Dr. Garcia-Ruiz decided to show some to chimpanzees. He and his team worked with two groups that were housed separately at Rainfer Fundacion Chimpatia near Madrid, which helps chimps rescued from difficult situations.

This Publishing continues to Part [ 2 ]. The World Students Society thanks Cara Giaimo.