Final answer:
While there's no substantial evidence of chimpanzees regularly breaking stones to create sharp edges, they do use tools such as stones to crack nuts and sharpen sticks for hunting. These behaviors highlight their complex problem-solving skills and adaptability in tool use.
Step-by-step explanation:
Chimpanzees in the wild have displayed remarkable tool-making abilities, which includes the use of stones. Although the initial question refers to breaking stones to use sharp edges, the evidence primarily points to chimpanzees using stones more often as hammers to crack open nuts rather than as cutting tools. There is significant documentation of chimpanzees sharpening sticks, which they then use as spears for hunting.
Primate expert Jane Goodall's observations in 1960 led to the groundbreaking discovery that chimpanzees make and use tools, such as modified twigs to fish for termites. Insights from studying nonhuman primates, like those in Gombe National Park and Fongoli, offer a glimpse into the problem-solving capabilities of our closest living relatives and reflect on humanity's ancestral tool-using heritage.
While chimps in savannah habitats have been seen fashioning sticks into spears for hunting, they also utilize tools in various other intelligent ways, indicating their abilities to adapt their tool use to their environment and available resources.