Scientists are not monkeying around when they say research suggests that chimpanzees may believe in God.

Researchers at Humboldt University in Berlin say a new video shows a group of chimps engaging in what may be "spiritual practices," including throwing rocks into holes in trees, suggesting their belief in a higher power, London's Telegraph newspaper reports.

"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 wrote in a study.

"The ritualized behavioural display and collection of artifacts at particular locations … may have implications for the inferences that can be drawn from archaeological stone assemblages and the origins of ritual sites."

One of the scientists, Laura Kehoe, told the Telegraph: "Marking pathways and territories with signposts such as piles of stones is an important stage in human history."

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