The spread of a novel behavior in wild chimpanzees: New insights into the ape cultural mind

Gruber, Thibaud and Poisot, Timothée and Zuberbühler, Klaus and Hoppitt, William J. E. and Hobaiter, Catherine (2015) The spread of a novel behavior in wild chimpanzees: New insights into the ape cultural mind. Communicative and Integrative Biology, 8 (2). e1017164. ISSN 1942-0889

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Abstract

For years, the animal culture debate has been dominated by the puzzling absence of direct evidence for social transmission of behavioral innovations in the flagship species of animal culture, the common chimpanzee. Although social learning of novel behaviors has been documented in captivity, critics argue that these findings lack ecological validity and therefore may not be relevant for understanding the evolution of culture. For the wild, it is possible that group-specific behavioral differences emerge because group members respond individually to unspecified environmental differences, rather than learning from each other. In a recent paper, we used social network analyses in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) to provide direct evidence for social transmission of a behavioral innovation, moss-sponging, to extract water from a tree hole. Here, we discuss the implications of our findings and how our new methodological approach could help future studies of social learning and culture in wild apes.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Keywords:	chimpanzee culture, evolution of culture, mental representations, Pan troglodytes, social network, tool use
Faculty:	ARCHIVED Faculty of Science & Technology (until September 2018)
Depositing User:	Lisa Blanshard
Date Deposited:	03 Jul 2019 16:02
Last Modified:	09 Sep 2021 19:01
URI:	https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/704492

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