Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess

Abstract

Geographical cataloguing of traits, as used in human ethnography, has led to the description of 'culture' in some non-human great apes. Culture, in these terms, is detected as a pattern of local ignorance resulting from environmental constraints on knowledge transmission. However, in many cases, the geographical variations may alternatively be explained by ecology. Social transmission of information can reliably be identified in many other animal species, by experiment or distinctive patterns in distribution; but the excitement of detecting culture in great apes derives from the possibility of understanding the evolution of cumulative technological culture in humans. Given this interest, I argue that great ape research should concentrate on technically complex behaviour patterns that are ubiquitous within a local population; in these cases, a wholly non-social ontogeny is highly unlikely. From this perspective, cultural transmission has an important role in the elaborate feeding skills of all species of great ape, in conveying the 'gist' or organization of skills. In contrast, social learning is unlikely to be responsible for local stylistic differences, which are apt to reflect sensitive adaptations to ecology.

Experimental identification of social learning in wild animals

“…Japanese macaques' (Macaca fuscata ( ( ) washing of sandy food provides a key, although controversial, example of the spread of a novel foraging behavior that some assert is a result of social learning (Hirata, Watanabe, & Kawai, 2001;Kawai, 1965 havior of two or more individuals, although it has been argued that, like bird song, some primate foraging behaviors are complex and highly variable and contain arbitrary elements (Byrne, 2007). However, where acts are rewarded, a match in the behaviors of individuals will not be informative, because animals are likely to independently arrive at similar ways of doing things.…”

Ratcheting up the ratchet: on the evolution of cumulative culture

“…In the case of primates, the further claim is sometimes made that chimpanzee culture and human culture are homologous, that is, that their common ancestor some 6 million years ago passed on to both species the same basic skills of cultural transmission (Boesch 2003;Whiten et al 2003;Byrne 2007). Although this may be true for some aspects of the process, for others it is clearly suspect, as chimpanzees' sister species, bonobos, who shared that same common ancestor, have so far provided little evidence of cultural traditions or transmission in natural populations (though of course they have not been observed nearly as closely as have chimpanzees).…”

Elemental variation in the termite fishing of wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes )

“…Future research on chimpanzee traditions could adopt the approach taken to analyse song type sharing among nightingales, in which researchers simulated models of song acquisition and the cultural evolution of the population's repertoire [15]. We concur with Byrne [5] in that studies of the element composition and structure of complex tasks have the potential to facilitate more informative crosssite comparisons and provide a more precise approach to examining cognitive capacities in the wild.…”

“…An alternative approach involves identifying the distinct components (elements), which comprise a task, such as has been undertaken for the thistle processing of mountain gorillas, and the nut cracking and the use of leaves to drink water by chimpanzees [1][2][3][4]. Byrne [5] has suggested that careful study of the intricate complexity of skilled behaviour patterns may be a more direct method to detect 'cultures' than current exclusionary approaches, in that elemental variation may provide clues into the cognitive underpinnings of behaviours and a means to examine the abilities of species to socially transmit information between generations. When ecological and genetic differences are accounted for, social learning can generate detectable levels of homogeneity in behaviours within groups [6].…”