Wild Chimpanzees Rely on Cultural Knowledge to Solve an Experimental Honey Acquisition Task
Thibaud Gruber, Martin N. N. Muller, Pontus Strimling, Richard W. Wrangham & Klaus Zuberbühler
| Résumé |
Population and group-specific behavioral differences have been taken
as evidence for animal cultures [1-10], a notion that remains
controversial. Skeptics argue that ecological or genetic factors,
rather than social learning, provide a more parsimonious
explanation [11-14]. Work with captive chimpanzees has addressed
this criticism by showing that experimentally created traditions
can be transmitted through social learning [15-17]. Recent
fieldwork further suggests that ecological and genetic factors are
insufficient to explain the behavioral differences seen between
communities, but the data are only observational [18, 19]. Here, we
present the results of a field experiment [20, 21] that compared the
performance of chimpanzees (P. t. schwein-furthii) from two Ugandan
communities, Kanyawara and Sonso, on an identical task in the
physical domain-extracting honey from holes drilled into horizontal
logs. Kanyawara chimpanzees, who occasionally use sticks to acquire
honey [4], spontaneously manufactured sticks to extract the
experimentally provided honey. In contrast, Sonso chimpanzees, who
possess a considerable leaf technology but no food-related stick
use [4, 22], relied on their fingers, but some also produced leaf
sponges to access the honey. Our results indicate that, when
genetic and environmental factors are controlled, wild chimpanzees
rely on their cultural knowledge to solve a novel task. |
| Citation | Gruber, T., Muller, M. N. N., Strimling, P., Wrangham, R. W., & Zuberbühler, K. (2009). Wild Chimpanzees Rely on Cultural Knowledge to Solve an Experimental Honey Acquisition Task. Current Biology, 19(21), 1806-1810. |
| Type | Article de périodique (Anglais) |
| Date de publication | 2009 |
| Nom du périodique | Current Biology |
| Volume | 19 |
| Numéro | 21 |
| Pages | 1806-1810 |