WASHINGTON, Sept 29: Two female gorillas have been photographed using sticks as tools to get through swampy areas, the first time the apes have been seen doing so in the wild, researchers reported on Thursday.

“This is a truly astounding discovery,” said Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who led the study.

The findings can help shed light on how human beings came to use tools, and also broaden the understanding of how animals use them.

“Although there are reports of tool use by captive gorillas, including object throwing and use of tools in feeding, there has been to our knowledge no reported case of tool use in by wild gorillas, despite decades of field research,” they wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science Biology.—Reuters