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dc.contributor.authorHobaiter, Catherine
dc.contributor.authorByrne, Richard William
dc.date.accessioned2013-11-05T17:01:01Z
dc.date.available2013-11-05T17:01:01Z
dc.date.issued2010-08-05
dc.identifier.citationHobaiter , C & Byrne , R W 2010 , ' Able-bodied wild chimpanzees imitate a motor procedure used by a disabled individual to overcome handicap ' , PLoS ONE , vol. 5 , no. 8 , e11959 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011959en
dc.identifier.issn1932-6203
dc.identifier.otherPURE: 4596644
dc.identifier.otherPURE UUID: 04e9ccc7-8c87-40ec-a230-8e461c3935fa
dc.identifier.otherWOS: 000280605400007
dc.identifier.otherScopus: 77957814300
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0002-3893-0524/work/46125072
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0001-9862-9373/work/60630525
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10023/4171
dc.descriptionFieldwork of CH was generously supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (http://wennergren.org) and the Russell Trust. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.en
dc.description.abstractChimpanzee culture has generated intense recent interest, fueled by the technical complexity of chimpanzee tool-using traditions; yet it is seriously doubted whether chimpanzees are able to learn motor procedures by imitation under natural conditions. Here we take advantage of an unusual chimpanzee population as a 'natural experiment' to identify evidence for imitative learning of this kind in wild chimpanzees. The Sonso chimpanzee community has suffered from high levels of snare injury and now has several manually disabled members. Adult male Tinka, with near-total paralysis of both hands, compensates inability to scratch his back manually by employing a distinctive technique of holding a growing liana taut while making side-to-side body movements against it. We found that seven able-bodied young chimpanzees also used this 'liana-scratch' technique, although they had no need to. The distribution of the liana-scratch technique was statistically associated with individuals' range overlap with Tinka and the extent of time they spent in parties with him, confirming that the technique is acquired by social learning. The motivation for able-bodied chimpanzees copying his variant is unknown, but the fact that they do is evidence that the imitative learning of motor procedures from others is a natural trait of wild chimpanzees.
dc.format.extent7
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofPLoS ONEen
dc.rights© 2010 Hobaiter, Byrne. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.en
dc.subjectPan troglodytesen
dc.subjectTool useen
dc.subjectImitatitive learningen
dc.subjectMotor proceduresen
dc.subjectQ Scienceen
dc.subject.lccQen
dc.titleAble-bodied wild chimpanzees imitate a motor procedure used by a disabled individual to overcome handicapen
dc.typeJournal articleen
dc.description.versionPublisher PDFen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. School of Psychology and Neuroscienceen
dc.contributor.institutionUniversity of St Andrews. Centre for Social Learning & Cognitive Evolutionen
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011959
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden


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