*only* humans make weapons...

"In attempting to interpret vegetarianism from the dominant perspective, historians often explain it away rather than explain it. ... Historians have suggested that vegetarians were attempting to subdue their animal nature and disown their (feared) bestiality by their focus on the cruelty of meat eatiung. They neglect to discuss the uniquely human inventions of meat eating for which there are no animal parallels: the use of implements to kill and butcher the animal, the cooking and seasoning of meat." (taken from Sexual Politics of Meat, p. 150)

Humans are not the only animals who use implements to kill other animals...

For First Time, Chimps Seen Making Weapons

"Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.

The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.

The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day.

In one case, after repeated stabs, a chimpanzee removed the injured or dead animal and ate it, the researchers reported in yesterday's online issue of the journal Current Biology."

However, the article uses this as tacit evidence that humans were meat eaters, whereas Adams insists that humans are built for vegetarianism. "[A]nthropological sources indicate that our earliest hominid ancestors had vegetarian bodies. In these records of their bones, dental impressions, and tools, these anonymous ancestors reveal the fact that meat, as a substantial part of the diet, became a fixture in human's life only recently -- in the past 40,000 years. Indeed, it was not until the past two hundred years that most people in the Western world had the opportunity to consume meat daily." (p. 148).

I'm not sure whether hominid ancestors ate meat or not, but an interesting tid-bit pointed out by the article -- the female chimps are the ones fashioning and using the spears! "Eventually the researchers documented 22 instances of spearmaking and use, two-thirds of them involving females."

So, now I'm curious -- what is this article really evidence of? Simply hominid ancestor meat-eating? Creativity inspiring violence?