Zambian Chimps - sticking grass and sticks in their butts as a fashion trend

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The chimps, Brooker says, "have potentially copied it from a human who was walking by the enclosure, or one of the caregivers who was just going about their daily lives.".

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Fifteen years after a female chimpanzee named Julie first stuck a blade of grass into her ear and started a hot new craze among her cohort at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage, an entirely new group of chimps at the refuge have started doing the same thing.
"We were even more shocked that they were doing their own spin on this by also inserting the grass and sticks in a different orifice
The chimps, he says, have been putting blades of grass and sticks into their ears and anuses, and simply letting them dangle there for no apparent reason.

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In this case, the team traced the "new quirk" to a male chimp named Juma, who seems to have originated the grass-in-butt variation.

From there, the study shows, it spread rapidly to most of his groupmates within a week.

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And as for Juma's grass-in-butt variation?

Teichroeb says it's possible they're doing it to make themselves more attractive to potential mates. Females, in particular, she noted, display a swelling on their rear ends to indicate when they're receptive to a little hanky panky.

"They spend a lot of time looking at each other's butts," she said. "So it's kind of not surprising maybe that they were innovating this way to sort of decorate their butts."

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Weird as this study was, Brooker says it's only the second most surprising behaviour he's observed in chimpanzees.

The most surprising, he says, was when he happened upon two male chimps engaging in "post-conflict fellatio."

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