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Travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees

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Zuberbuehler_2016_eLIFE_Travel_CC.pdf (392.7Kb)
Date
19/07/2016
Author
Gruber, Thibaud
Zuberbühler, Klaus
Neumann, Christof
Keywords
BF Psychology
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
Immunology and Microbiology(all)
Medicine(all)
Neuroscience(all)
NDAS
BDC
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Abstract
Ecological variation influences the appearance and maintenance of tool use in animals, either due to necessity or opportunity, but little is known about the relative importance of these two factors. Here, we combined long-term behavioural data on feeding and travelling with six years of field experiments in a wild chimpanzee community. In the experiments, subjects engaged with natural logs, which contained energetically valuable honey that was only accessible through tool use. Engagement with the experiment was highest after periods of low fruit availability involving more travel between food patches, while instances of actual tool-using were significantly influenced by prior travel effort only. Additionally, combining data from the main chimpanzee study communities across Africa supported this result, insofar as groups with larger travel efforts had larger tool repertoires. Travel thus appears to foster tool use in wild chimpanzees and may also have been a driving force in early hominin technological evolution.
Citation
Gruber , T , Zuberbühler , K & Neumann , C 2016 , ' Travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees ' , eLife , vol. 5 , e16371 . https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16371
Publication
eLife
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16371
ISSN
2050-084X
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright Gruber et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Description
The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) and from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under REA grant agreement N°329197 awarded to TG, ERC grant agreement N°283871 awarded to KZ.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9339

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