Discovering the great hairless ape

The February 2010 edition of National Geographic contains a short piece on chimpanzees of a reote area of the Congo rain forest that seem to have had no contact with humans until recently, so recent that the author, Joshua Foer, actually explains to the reader what is was like "watching them watch us watching them" both with immense curiosity. Like any National Geographic, the article is loaded with photos of the apes, the rainforest, and maps so we don't get lost along the trail of the tale. There's one photo showing primatologists laying out sticks that the apes had used tools onto a white sheet for examination and no doubt the collection of various metrics. One of the sentences that jump off the page is how the scientists mat have been collecting data, "but it was the chimps how were behaving as if they'd made a discovery." All of these things together just seem odd to me - why can't a chimp make a discovery; is anything they experience less important simply because humans view it as a petty achievement? The photos allowing us to experience the rainforest when there's two feet of snow outside, the map that shows me a representation of where the subjects of the story are at - despite our thinking that the map shows us where they're at. And finally the analysis that the scientists conduct over the sheet - All thanks to Descartes. Back to the discovery thing: since the mind/soul-body split this mode of thinking is to be expected. Soulless apes surely must lack curiosity, imagination, language... thought. Rene's instilled sense of doubt makes us wonder otherwise, well, maybe not the author of the piece so much, but the fact that we can imagine other possibilities and not feel like we are complete idiots all thanks to Descartes.