Gorillas and tools?

Evolutionists go “ape” over old news

September 30, 2005

Some evolutionary scientists are so determined to promote their worldview that they use old news in convincing the media to report on their findings.

Case in point is the BBC News and other media outlets which have been circulating an Associated Press article that states that gorillas in the wild have been observed using tools.

“What’s fascinating is the similarity between what these creatures have done and what we do,” Thomas Breuer, from the Wildlife Conservation Society, who heads the study team in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said in the BBC News article (September 30).

So, what exactly did these gorillas do that so impressed the observers?

A female gorilla crossed a pool of water by using a detached stick to test the water depth and then trying to use it as a walking stick. The second case involved another female gorilla who picked up a dead shrub and used it to lean on while looking for food in a swamp. According to the BBC report, she then placed the trunk down on the swampy ground and used it as a bridge.

Actually, gorillas in captivity have long been observed using tools, so this observation should not be surprising or startling. When it comes to animals displaying “intelligent” behavior such as the use of tools, crows even “out-tool” chimps as reported in New Scientist (March 15, 2003) which stated that crows make “step-by-step improvements to their tools,” throwing a “monkey wrench” in expected evolutionary advancement.

Nevertheless, this has given evolutionists another opportunity to try to demonstrate a link between man and apes. Whether it’s intelligent behavior (innate, learned or imitated) in apes or the similarity in DNA sequences between man and apes (see Chimp genome sequence very different from man), man was made in the image of God, clearly distinct from animals and birds (Genesis 1:27). One example of this distinction is the human use of grammar and syntax (necessary for a linguist's definition of “true” language) which no animal has exhibited (see Has an ape learned to talk?).

Recommended resources

Did Neanderthals and Modern Humans Share a Common Gene Pool? Who were the Neandertals? Their existence is a challenge to evolutionists and progressive creationists. But geneticist Dr. David DeWitt shows that Neandertals were our brothers, descended from the same gene pool as Adam’s other descendants.

Lucy—She’s No Lady! Confused about the discovery of Lucy, a “missing link” between chimps and humans? Anatomist Dr. Menton leaves no doubt that the famous “Lucy” fossils belong to a knuckle-walking, apelike creature, who was not a lady!

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