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A CHIMP that fashions discs of concrete to hurl at zoo visitors is being hailed as proof that chimpanzees plan for the future.

Santino – a 30-year-old chimp from Furuvik Zoo in Sweden – started throwing rocks as a teenager. He typically collects them from the bottom of the moat around his enclosure before the zoo opens, and piles them up on the side of the island that faces the zoo’s visitors. He also knocks pieces of concrete off the artificial rocks at the centre of his enclosure, and transfers them to the piles. “These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” says Mathias Osvath of the University of Lund in Sweden, who reports the behaviour in ().

“It implies they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of days to come. I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behaviour.”

Although similar claims have been made about chimps using tools to collect food, what sets Santino apart is that his state of mind when collecting the rocks seems very different from when he launches his attacks. “The chimp has without exception been calm during gathering of the ammunition, in contrast to the typically aroused state when he throws the rocks,” says Osvath.

So, unlike previous claims, Santino’s planning doesn’t seem to be driven by an immediate emotional or physical drive like hunger or anger, but by anticipation of a later event.

“It is the first report on tool-making – i.e. the concrete disks – to achieve a future goal,” says of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “Future planning may turn out to be more widespread than initially thought.”

However, of the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, cautions that it is difficult to generalise from observations of a single individual. “A sceptical reader might question whether there is a causal link between the caching and the throwing. The location of the caches may simply be a function of retrieving them from the water.”