No monkeying around: toddlers as inventive as wild apes at using tools

Whether digging for insects or cracking nuts, children, like apes, work out how to use tools to solve problems without learning from others, research showsThey smash insects with sticks, scoop algae from ponds and use leaves to hoick termites from mounds. But wild apes are not alone in their deft use of tools: toddlers are just as inventive, researchers say.The findings emerge from a study that set two and three-year-olds the sorts of challenges that great apes are known to face in the wild. In