Cracking chimpanzee culture

Date:
January 24, 2022
Source:
University of Zurich
Summary:
Chimpanzees don't automatically know what to do when they come
across nuts and stones. Researchers have now used field experiments
to show that chimpanzees thus do not simply invent nut cracking
with tools, but need to learn such complex cultural behaviors from
others. Their culture is therefore more similar to human culture
than often assumed.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Chimpanzees don't automatically know what to do when they come across
nuts and stones. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now used
field experiments to show that chimpanzees thus do not simply invent nut cracking with tools, but need to learn such complex cultural behaviors
from others. Their culture is therefore more similar to human culture
than often assumed.


========================================================================== Humans have a complex culture that enables them to copy behaviors
from others.

As such, human culture is cumulative, since skills and technologies
accumulate over generations and become increasingly efficient or
complex. According to the zone of latent solutions hypothesis in
Anthropology, chimpanzees do not learn in this way, but can reinvent
cultural behaviors individually. UZH professor in the department of Anthropology Kathelijne Koops has now carried out novel field experiments
in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea to show that this may not be the case.

Four experiments with wild chimpanzees The primatologist investigated
whether wild chimpanzees can in fact invent a complex behavior like nut cracking independently. The chimpanzees were presented with a series of
four experiments. First, the chimps were presented with oil palm nuts
and stones. Next, the researches added a palm fruit to the experimental
setup. In the third experiment, the nuts were cracked open and placed on
top of the stones. And finally, the chimps were presented with another, easier-to-crack species of nuts (Coula) together with stones.

The chimpanzees visited the nut cracking experiments and explored the
nuts and stones, yet they did not crack any nuts, even after more than
a year of exposure to the materials. A total of 35 chimpanzee parties
(or sub-groups) visited the experiments, of which 11 parties closely investigated the experimental items. The chimpanzees were more likely
to explore the experiments when visiting in bigger parties. Only one
female chimpanzee was observed eating from the palm fruit, but on no
occasion did the chimpanzees crack or eat either oil palm or Coula nuts.

Shared evolutionary origin of cumulative culture "Our findings suggest
that chimpanzees acquire cultural behaviors more like humans and do
not simply invent a complex tool use behavior like nut cracking on
their own," says Koops. The presence of a model from whom to learn
appears to be the missing piece. "Our findings on wild chimpanzees,
our closest living relatives, help to shed light on what it is (and
isn't!) that makes human culture unique. Specifically, they suggest
greater continuity between chimpanzee and human cultural evolution
than is normally assumed and that the human capacity for cumulative
culture may have a shared evolutionary origin with chimpanzees." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Zurich. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Kathelijne Koops, Aly Gaspard Soumah, Kelly L. van Leeuwen,
Henry Didier
Camara, Tetsuro Matsuzawa. Field experiments find no evidence that
chimpanzee nut cracking can be independently innovated. Nature
Human Behaviour, 2022; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01272-9 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220124115024.htm

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