Call cultures in orang-utans?

ABSTRACT:

Background

Several studies suggested great ape cultures, arguing that human cumulative culture presumably evolved from such a foundation. These focused on conspicuous behaviours, and showed rich geographic variation, which could not be attributed to known ecological or genetic differences. Although geographic variation within call types (accents) has previously been reported for orang-utans and other primate species, we examine geographic variation in the presence/absence of discrete call types (dialects). Because orang-utans have been shown to have geographic variation that is not completely explicable by genetic or ecological factors we hypothesized that this will be similar in the call domain and predict that discrete call type variation between populations will be found.

Met

SUBMITTER: Wich SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3346723 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature