[marsh2]

Monkeys do strip bark and leaves from small branches and stick them down anthills where the ants adhere to them. Then the monkeys eat them. Is that a manufactured tool? It is a modification of a natural object to be used to achieve some separate aim...

[Richard Kimball]

Yeah, and that example is where you get into my point about a continuum and at some point you just make an arbitrary decision. Is using a found object a tool? is stripping the bark manufacturing? Yeah, maybe, but we'd never confuse it with taking a vine and binding a sharp rock to a stick to make an ax, where you take several different objects and combine them to create a new function. In terms of "tools" I think bird nests and beaver dams show significantly more environmental manipulation for benefit than anything monkeys or chimps do. At least as far as I'm aware, never having hung out with Jane Goodall or anything.

Same thing for ant nests and bee hives. There's an incredible amount of deliberate manipulation of the environment specifically for the purpose of making it more hospitable.