Online Video Guide

A visit with an engaging if unruly bunch of cousins that we formally broke up with about 6 or 7 million years ago - with whom we share almost all of our genes but not a lot of our lifestyle. Why the difference? Maybe it's in how we learn. Alan visits a troupe of seven chimpanzees at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and learns from them how to go fishing in an artificial termite mound - not for termites, but for ketchup. Just how the chimps themselves learn to deftly insert sticks into the mound is what fascinates primatologist Elizabeth Lonsdorf, who first watched chimps termite fishing in Africa. Alan sees for himself what Elizabeth discovered in her studies of wild chimps: that there are big differences between how boy and girl chimps learn. The young females in the Lincoln Park Zoo quickly picked up the skills of fashioning appropriate tools and fishing out the ketchup from holes.