New footage shows chimpanzees engaging in bizarre behaviour — which might be a form of sacred ritual that could show the beginnings of a kind of religious belief.

Chimpanzees in West Africa have been spotted banging and throwing rocks against trees and throwing them into gaps inside, leading to piles of rocks. Those rocks do not appear to be for any functional purpose — and might be an example of an early version of ritual behaviour.

The discovery might help researchers learn more about the basis of human religion and rituals, and how such activities formed in our own history.

The scientist described seeing the behaviour through cameras that were set up to watch the chimpanzees. They saw them assembling piles of stones — of a similar kind of the ritual cairns that have been found throughout human history.

Chimpanzees and other apes have long been known to use stones and other materials as tools, including their use as nutcrackers to get into food that is cased in a hard shell. But the new behaviour doesn’t seem to have the same functional purpose.

“This represents the first record of repeated observations of individual chimpanzees exhibiting stone tool use for a purpose other than extractive foraging at what appear to be targeted trees,” the researchers write in their abstract.

“The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artefacts at particular locations observed in chimpanzee accumulative stone throwing may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites.”

6 animals that act like humans Show all 6 1 /6 6 animals that act like humans 6 animals that act like humans Dog Think you have something up on the animal kingdom by getting behind the wheel and taking yourself from A to B? Think again. A canine driving school in New Zealand has been teaching dogs how to control the brakes, gears and steering wheel of a car. Remarkably, the country is somehow funding the initiative as a charity. 6 animals that act like humans Cat Turn to food in times of emotional turmoil? Looking for a fellow binge eater to commiserate life’s troubles with? Look no further than your pet cat, which also puts on weight in times of unhappiness - according to a recent study from California. 6 animals that act like humans Tamarin monkey Tamarin monkeys: you just can’t shut them up. According to a new study published in the journal of Zoo Biology, theses squirrel-like primates don’t just whisper to each other – they also have a range of calls including “whistles, chirps, squeaks, chevron chatters, and trills”. REX/Gerard Lacz 6 animals that act like humans Octopus “Meeting an octopus is like meeting an intelligent alien,” says Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith, a professor of philosophy and biology at the University of New York. He’s right. The list of intelligent attributes in cephalopods is long and impressive. Octopuses in captivity have been observed cleaning their own tanks, opening childproof jars and even remembering and responding to their own names. AFP/Getty Images 6 animals that act like humans Beluga whale Last year scientists were amazed when they discovered a captive beluga whale had made human noises in order to “reach out” to its captors. The sounds were so realistic that staff at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in California initially mistook them for a distant conversation between two people. Getty Images 6 animals that act like humans Dolphin “Are you talking to me?” Dolphins' ability to recognise themselves in the mirror shows such a sophisticated level of empathy that it previously led scientists to call for a rethink on rights for the super-intelligent animal. Dophins, as well as other ceteceans – whales and porpoises - have an incredibly advanced sense of individual self.

For humans, stone buildings and piles have symbolised a wide variety of things, which have seen them used in burials and shrines. Those examples are often among the earliest examples of religious behaviour in human history, and so the chimpanzee behaviour could represent a similar instinct.

The chimpanzee behaviour could also represent a direct connection with human religious rituals. Indigenous West African people also collect stones at sacred trees — and similar behaviour is seen elsewhere — in a way that looks “eerily similar to what we have discovered here”, one of the researchers wrote.

In a piece written around the findings, researcher Laura Kehoe described the experience of watching the chimp look around and then fling a rock at the tree trunk.

“Nothing like this had been seen before and it gave me goose bumps,” she wrote.

The discovery could offer insights into the way that humanity’s sacred rituals began, she wrote.