It always kills me when people argue that animals have no soul cos, you know, they don’t recognize death (elephants routinely mourn the dead), have smaller brains (both ants and dolphins have larger brain-to-bodymass ratios), communicate (what the hell is all that chirping then? and those cool whale-Barry-White imitations?…my ex-girlfriend the linguist would kill me for even mentioning that). One other myth people love to use to explain their general superiority to our hirsute earth companions is that we use tools. Well then, suckers, chew on this photo then…

This photo is the first evidence of an orangutan using a tool to hunt, taken on the island of Kaja in Borneo. Fittingly, “Orang hutan” means “forest man” in an Indonesian tongue, and our long-armed cousins do indeed show a remarkable ability to mimic our behaviour. Apparently, this smelly fella had seen locals fishing with spears on the Gohong River and decided to give it the ol’ college effort. Although he failed catching free fish, he was later able to catch fish already trapped in the locals’ fishing lines.

The image is part of a series taken for a new book, The Thinkers Of The Jungle, which also includes the first photograph of an orangutan swimming.