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Spontaneous innovation of hook-bending and unbending in orangutans (Pongo abelii)

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Call_2018_SciRep_HookOrangutans_CCBY_VoR.pdf (2.057Mb)
Date
08/11/2018
Author
Laumer, I. B.
Call, Josep
Bugnyar, T.
Auersperg, A. M. I.
Keywords
BF Psychology
QH301 Biology
RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
DAS
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Abstract
Betty the crow astonished the scientific world as she spontaneously crafted hook-tools from straight wire in order to lift a basket out of vertical tubes. Recently it was suggested that this species’ solution was strongly influenced by predispositions from behavioural routines from habitual hook-tool manufacture. Nevertheless, the task became a paradigm to investigate tool innovation. Considering that young humans had surprising difficulties with the task, it was yet unclear whether the innovation of a hooked tool would be feasible to primates that lacked habitual hook making. We thus tested five captive orangutans in a hook bending and unbending task. Orangutans are habitually tool-using primates that have been reported to use but not craft hooked tools for locomotion in the wild. Two orangutans spontaneously innovated hook tools and four unbent the wire from their first trial on. Pre-experience with ready-made hooks had some effect but did not lead to continuous success. Further subjects improved the hook-design feature when the task required the subjects to bent the hook at a steeper angle. Our results indicate that the ability to represent and manufacture tools according to a current need does not require stereotyped behavioural routines, but can indeed arise innovatively. Furthermore, the present study shows that the capacity for hook tool innovation is not limited to large brained birds within non-human animals.
Citation
Laumer , I B , Call , J , Bugnyar , T & Auersperg , A M I 2018 , ' Spontaneous innovation of hook-bending and unbending in orangutans ( Pongo abelii ) ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 8 , 16518 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34607-0
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34607-0
ISSN
2045-2322
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 the Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Description
This work was supported by FWF Grants P-29084 and P-29075 to Alice Auersperg and by a uni:docs fellowship of the University of Vienna to Isabelle Laumer.
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URL
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-34607-0#Sec20
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/16436

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