A: Once upon a time, not so long ago, members of the scientific community thought they had the whole evolution thing figured out. Simply put, humans were smarter than primates because humans made tools. Apparently, a few chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania didn’t get the memo.

In 1960, then-fledgling primatologist Jane Goodall was studying Gombe’s wild chimps when she came across an adult male “fishing” for termites by dipping a twig into a hole and feasting on the bugs that clung to the stick. She named him David Greybeard and began to track him, eventually finding that he (and other males) used such tools regularly.

In addition, the chimps would customize their termite twigs by stripping off the leaves and bark layers to help fit the sticks into specific feeding holes. This was the first documented case of a non-human manufacturing a tool, and it turned the scientific community upside down. Just how shocking was it? As eminent anthropologist Louis Leakey put it, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”