Chimps Learn By Watching Others -- Just Like Humans

Aug. 24, 2005 — -- Researchers have demonstrated that chimpanzees, those clever apes that are so much like us, pass their "culture" on to other members of their communities, just like humans. And, just like humans, once they've learned how to do something they tend to stick with it, even if it's not the best way to get the job done.

The need to conform, even among chimps, is very powerful.

For many years animal behaviorists have theorized that chimps pass their way of life on down the line through something called "cultural transmission," but they haven't been able to prove it.

Now, according to scientists at Emory University's Yerkes Research Center, and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, they've been able to repeat in the laboratory what many experts suspect happens naturally in the wild.

And it's not just a matter of "monkey see, monkey do." Once they learn how to do something, they stick with it, apparently because the need to conform is as powerful in their communities as it is in ours.

"What's unique about chimpanzees is the fact that they've got about 39 different cultural behaviors," says Victoria Horner, an animal behaviorist at St. Andrews, co-author of a study published in the online edition of Nature. "It's a whole suite of different things that is unmatched by any other animal apart from us."

There are many examples of animals that seem to learn from others in their community, even some bird species for whom flying at first seems a bit awkward, but that's a far cry from differences in chimp populations that seem to reflect a cultural way of doing things that passes on from one generation to the next.

"People have been doing observations of chimps in the wild for a long time, and it's always been thought that different populations have different types of behaviors," Horner says. "For example, chimps in West Africa use stones to crack nuts that are too hard to bite, and chimpanzees elsewhere in Africa don't do it, although they've got the same kind of stones, the same kind of nuts, and the same kind of need to eat nuts as a food source. They just don't do it.