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Foundations of cumulative culture in apes: improved foraging efficiency through relinquishing and combining witnessed behaviours in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

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Whiten_2016_SciRep_Foundations_CCBYFinalPublishedVersion.pdf (581.8Kb)
Date
24/10/2016
Author
Davis, Sarah Jayne
Vale, Gillian Louise
Schapiro, Steven J.
Lambeth, Susan P.
Whiten, Andrew
Keywords
RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
QH301 Biology
NDAS
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Abstract
A vital prerequisite for cumulative culture, a phenomenon often asserted to be unique to humans, is the ability to modify behaviour and flexibly switch to more productive or efficient alternatives. Here, we first established an inefficient solution to a foraging task in five captive chimpanzee groups (N = 19). Three groups subsequently witnessed a conspecific using an alternative, more efficient, solution. When participants could successfully forage with their established behaviours, most individuals did not switch to this more efficient technique; however, when their foraging method became substantially less efficient, nine chimpanzees with socially-acquired information (four of whom witnessed additional human demonstrations) relinquished their old behaviour in favour of the more efficient one. Only a single chimpanzee in control groups, who had not witnessed a knowledgeable model, discovered this. Individuals who switched were later able to combine components of their two learned techniques to produce a more efficient solution than their extensively used, original foraging method. These results suggest that, although chimpanzees show a considerable degree of conservatism, they also have an ability to combine independent behaviours to produce efficient compound action sequences; one of the foundational abilities (or candidate mechanisms) for human cumulative culture.
Citation
Davis , S J , Vale , G L , Schapiro , S J , Lambeth , S P & Whiten , A 2016 , ' Foundations of cumulative culture in apes: improved foraging efficiency through relinquishing and combining witnessed behaviours in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) ' , Scientific Reports , vol. 6 , 35953 . https://doi.org/10.1038/srep35953
Publication
Scientific Reports
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep35953
ISSN
2045-2322
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2016 the Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
This research was funded by the John Templeton Foundation (Grant ID: 40128, to K. Laland and A. Whiten).
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URL
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep35953#supplementary-information
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9718

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