Does New Evidence Show Chimpanzees Are “Engineers”?

So what is the observational evidence the researchers discovered? Well, they found that chimpanzees select plant material that is more flexible, heavily preferring it over stiffer material, when it comes to pulling termites out of their mounds.

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While an interesting example of the intelligence and instinct God has given to the creatures he’s created, this find hardly warrants the term “engineering”—there are certainly much more jaw-dropping examples of more precise “engineering” in the animal world: beavers, weaver birds, or even ants immediately come to mind. But what about their claim that “this finding has important implications for understanding how humans might have evolved their remarkable tool using abilities”?

Well, that’s where the historical science comes in. Chimpanzees in the present using flexible plants to catch insects tell us absolutely nothing about how humans supposedly stumbled across tools in the unobserved past. That’s an interpretation of the evidence based on an evolutionary (fairy-tale) starting point that says humans and chimps shared a common ancestor.

Rather than telling a story of our distant past, this study points to the One who intelligently designed each kind—including the ape kind—to do exactly what he designed them to do.

There’s nothing about the actual study itself that suggests humans were once apelike creatures and must have stumbled upon tools through use of “folk physics.” That’s simply evolutionary storytelling added on to the study about living apes (apes that are fully apes and always will be apes!). Rather than telling a story of our distant past, this study points to the One who intelligently designed each kind—including the ape kind—to do exactly what he designed them to do. Oh, the foolishness man stoops to in the attempt to explain life without God.

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This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Dr. Tim Chaffey, Patricia Engler, and Avery Foley. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Evolution changes . . . again.
• “7,000-year-old” algae comes back to life.
• Archaeology confirms another Old Testament account.
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.