Chimpanzee culture extends beyond matrilineal family units

The “grooming handclasp” (GHC) is one of the most well-established cultural traditions in chimpanzees. A recent study by Wrangham et al. [1] reduced the cultural scope of GHC behavior by showing that GHC-style convergence is “explained by matrilineal relationship rather than conformity” [1]. Given that we have previously reported cultural differences in GHC-style preferences in captive chimpanzees [2], we tested Wrangham et al. [1]’s alternative view in the chimpanzee populations that our original results were based on. Using the same outcome variable as Wrangham et al. [1] – proportion high-arm grooming featuring palm-to-palm clasping (PPC) – we found that matrilineal relationships neither explained within-group homogeneity nor between-group heterogeneity, thereby corroborating our original conclusion that GHC can represent a group-level cultural tradition in chimpanzees.

Citation

van Leeuwen , E J C , Mundry , R , Cronin , K A , Bodamer , M & Haun , D B M 2017 , ' Chimpanzee culture extends beyond matrilineal family units ' , Current Biology , vol. 27 , no. 12 , pp. R588-R590 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.003

Publication

Current Biology

Status

Peer reviewed

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.003

ISSN

0960-9822

Type

Journal article

Rights

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.003

Description

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement n° 609819 (SOMICS).