Acquisition of a socially learned tool use sequence in chimpanzees: Implications for cumulative culture.

ABSTRACT: Cumulative culture underpins humanity's enormous success as a species. Claims that other animals are incapable of cultural ratcheting are prevalent, but are founded on just a handful of empirical studies. Whether cumulative culture is unique to humans thus remains a controversial and understudied question that has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the evolution of this phenomenon. We investigated whether one of human's two closest living primate relatives, chimpanzees, are capable of a degree of cultural ratcheting by exposing captive populations to a novel juice extraction task. We found that groups (N = 3) seeded with a model trained to perform a tool modification that built upon simpler, unmodified tool use developed the seeded tool method that allowed greater ju

SUBMITTER: Vale GL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5765995 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature