A few years ago, an anthropologist told me an amazing story about a wild chimpanzee she had observed in Senegal. A bushfire had ignited in the summer heat, and she saw a chimp stand upright on its hind legs, face the fire and perform "a really exaggerated slow-motion display."
The chimpanzee then started barking, apparently communicating with other chimps sheltering nearby. The anthropologist, Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University in Ames, said this kind of barking had never been heard in her roughly 2,000 hours of observations of chimps.
What was the chimpanzee doing? It appears it was monitoring the fire. The community of chimps retreated a short distance as the fire approached, but remained calm. Other animals panic and stampede when they encounter fire, but these chimps, perhaps because they have experienced bushfires in the past, apparently knew what it was — they understood the concept of fire.