Chimps with tools: Wild ape culture caught on camera

Chimps with tools: Wild ape culture caught on camera

Quote

Researchers have captured the spread of a new type of tool use in a wild population of chimps. They say this is the first clear evidence of wild chimpanzees developing a new culture. As the team filmed the animals at at a field station in Uganda, they noticed that some of them started to make a new type of leaf sponge - something the animals use to drink.

This new behaviour soon spread throughout the group. he findings are published in the journal Plos Biology.

Lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter, from the University of St Andrew's, explained that chimps make and use folded up "little sponges that they dip into ponds and then suck the water out".

"We were insanely lucky," she told BBC News. "We saw two new versions of this tool use emerge in the chimps [we were watching]." Dr Hobaiter noticed a dominant male chimp using moss rather than leaves to make his sponge. Another picked up an old sponge that another chimp had been using and started using that.

"It might sound trivial, but the chimps [we study] just don't do that," she told BBC News. "And both of these new versions of the tool use started at this water hole that we had amazing filming access at." As she sat filming and watching the chimps, Dr Hobaiter saw this behaviour spread from individual to individual. "Basically, if you saw it done, you learned how to do it, and if you didn't you didn't," she said.

"It was just this wonderfully clear example of social learning that no one had in the wild before. "We've had that in captivity, we've had indications in the wild, but this was the final little piece of the puzzle." .......

read it all at that BBC science link and watch the tubes..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cp7_In7f88

Quote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxqIITtTtU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZv0HyK5sw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1IeOjxKasA

Welcome

Donations

Recent Posts

New Britain

German nationalist party ...

Do humans have needed kno...

Lights on the way

Gaza assault

AMRIKAAA Land of Free .....

The origins of Judaism

Qur'anic studies today

Random Islamic History Po...

اضواء على الطريق ....... ...

News From Syria

Mo Salah

Theme Changer

Topic: Chimps with tools: Wild ape culture caught on camera

yeezevee

OP - October 01, 2014, 09:46 AM

Basic Information

General Resources

CEMB Organisation