Primatologist Jill Pruetz holding a “spear” fashioned and used by a Fongoli chimpanzee. To make the weapon, the chimps sharpen a stick with their teeth and use it to hunt nocturnal bush babies, small primates that sleep by day in tree hollows.

(Frans Lanting/National Geographic Stock)

Kanzi, a bonobo at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, proudly holds a photographic display of one successful linguistic task. When asked to make a toy dog bite a toy snake, Kanzi correctly placed the dog’s mouth on the snake. When asked to make the snake bite the dog, he correctly reversed their positions.

(Michael Nichols/National Geographic Stock)

Previously, humans had been thought to be the only species capable of making and using tools. In 1960, Jane Goodall first observed chimpanzees “termite fishing,” using straws, sticks, and vines to extract termites from termite mounds. As her project supporter Dr. Louis Leakey noted in a telegram, the discovery urged the scientific world to “… redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

(Frans Lanting/National Geographic Stock)

No ant is in charge in an ant colony. Not the queen, not the soldiers, not the workers. Instead, the colony functions as thousands of individuals informing one another of their surrounding conditions, a principle that humans have begun applying as potential solutions to complex business models.

(jokerpro/Shutterstock)

A queen bee surrounded by drones and workers. Despite her role as the only bee to always remain in the hive, it is not the queen who decides where their next home will be, but the colony as a whole. Scouting parties try to convince the majority of their fellow scouts by dancing to indicate the most suitable location.

(JSseng/Shutterstock)

Five swarm-bots communicate with one another during a test run. Equipped with sonar, cameras, and wireless Internet, the highly maneuverable robots were developed for such purposes as highly intelligent first-response units during house fires, military campaigns, or natural disasters.

(Mark Thiessen/National Geographic Stock)

Porcupine caribou migrate annually from Canada’s Yukon Territory to their traditional calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Herd instincts evolved over centuries have allowed the species to safely travel one of the longest migration routes of any land mammal, even under the threat of predators like wolves.

(Alaska Stock LLC/National Geographic Stock)