Wild chimpanzees from different places often display distinct regional behaviors, leading researchers to suspect that chimps can maintain local traditions across many generations.
In support of this theory, Victoria Horner of Emory University and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and her colleagues recently showed that captive chimpanzees can transfer newly acquired knowledge through a chain of simulated generations. The study suggests that cultural learning may be rooted deep within the evolutionary process and may be traced back to a common ancestor.
The team trained a pair of chimpanzees to open the door of a box that contained fruit. But each animal was taught a different technique—one by sliding the door, the other by lifting it. Then each animal demonstrated the technique to another chimpanzee, which in turn simulated a member of a next generation. Once successful at using the method, the newly taught chimps became the teachers of a third generation, and so on. The experiment generated a chain of six chimpanzees that exclusively lifted the door and a chain of five chimps that slid the door open.
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“Cultural learning determined which of the two techniques the chimpanzees used in much the same way it determines whether humans use knife and fork or chopsticks,” Horner says.