Some Chimps Treat Crystals As Precious Items, Showing How Our Roots for Aesthetics Run Deep

Can chimpanzees assign special value to beautiful objects? Experiments led by Professor Juan Manuel García-Ruiz found that some chimpanzees treated crystals as precious items: they selected them from ordinary stones, examined them for hours and carried them away for safekeeping. As reported by Discover Magazine, this behaviour suggests that the foundations of aesthetic appreciation may extend deep into our evolutionary past.