Projects per year
Abstract
Humans are distinctive in their dependence upon products of culture for
survival, products that have evolved cumulatively over generations such
that many cannot now be created by a single individual. Why the cultural
capacity of humans appears unrivalled in the animal kingdom is a topic
of ongoing debate. Here we explore whether innovation and/or social
learning propensities may constrain the ability of one of our closest
living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), to master an
extractive foraging and tool-use task designed to afford opportunities
for cumulative culture to develop. We further explore the potential
demographic characteristics associated with novel task solutions.
Chimpanzees (N = 53) were inventive, flexibly exploring the
novel task, albeit complex inventions were rare and shaped by prior
individual experience with similar tool-use tasks. However, they
displayed no evidence of cumulative cultural learning. Communities
displayed richer behavioral repertoires and had greater task success
than chimpanzees tested in an asocial control condition, but their
solution complexity did not surpass what individuals invented. The lack
of social transmission of complex and beneficial solutions in contexts
like those we studied provides one explanation for the limited
cumulative culture observed in this species.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Evolution and Human Behavior |
Volume | In press |
Early online date | 16 Dec 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 16 Dec 2020 |
Keywords
- Culture
- Cumulative culture
- Cumulative cultural evolution
- Innovation
- Social learning
- Tool use
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Dive into the research topics of 'Why do chimpanzees have diverse behavioral repertoires yet lack more complex cultures? Invention and social information use in a cumulative task'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations: Exploring the Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Complexity Creativity and Trust
Whiten, A. (PI)
1/09/13 → 30/05/16
Project: Standard