Acquisition and Transmission of Tool Making and Use for Drinking Juice in a Group of Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Abstract

so on. Recent studies have revealed that each community has its own traditional way of making and using tools (McGrew, 1992(McGrew, , 1994. Although there are still controversies (e.g., Heyes & Galef, 1996;Tomasello, 1996;Visalberghi & Fragaszy, 1990), these skills are considered to be transmitted culturally between communities and across generations (Matsuzawa, 1994;Matsuzawa & Yamakoshi, 1996;Yamakoshi & Matsuzawa, 1993).Wild chimpanzees drink rain water from the hollow of trees using leaves. This tool-use behavior, called "leaf sponging," has been reported in several habitats of chimpanzees: Gombe (Goodall, 1968(Goodall, , 1986, Mahale (McGrew, 1977;Wrangham, 1992), Budongo (Quiatt &Kiwede, 1994), and Bossou (Sugiyama, 1995b;Tonooka, Inoue, & Matsuzawa, 1994 Abstract: The present study examined the acquisition and transmission of tool making and use in a group of chimpanzees. We set up a piece of apparatus that provided orange juice in an outdoor compound for a group of nine chimpanzees. Although they could reach the juice with their hands, eight of the nine subjects used tools. Fifteen kinds of tools in total were used, such as straw, twigs, and some kinds of leaves. The chimpanzees showed high selectivity with regard to tool type. They preferred to use Thuja occidentalis as a tool although there were 28 species of tree and several kinds of grass available in the compound. Two females initiated the use of the Thuja tool. Since then, five other individuals have begun to use it selectively. Before making the tools by themselves, these five chimpanzees first watched others using the Thuja tool for drinking juice, and then used the Thuja tool which had been used and left by another chimpanzee.

Tool-use for drinking water by immature chimpanzees of Mahale: prevalence of an unessential behavior

“…The drinking tool-use was also sporadically observed in the previous years at Mahale, suggesting that individual invention occasionally occurred. Perhaps because of the relative ease of inventing a drinking tool, this kind of tool-use for drinking water (or juice) is observed almost universally among wild chimpanzees (Whiten et al 1999) and captive chimpanzees (Kitahara-Frisch and Norikoshi 1982;Takeshita and van Hooff 1996;Tonooka et al 1997;Morimura 2003). Hayashi and Matsuzawa (2003) suggested that the chimpanzee has a strong behavioral tendency to ''insert sticks into holes.''…”

Comprehension of functional support by enculturated chimpanzees Pan troglodytes

“…The implications of the failures reported for Povinelli's chimpanzees (2000) are problematic, relative to findings with other captive nonhuman primates (e.g., Deblauwe et al, 2006;Fragaszy et al, 2004;Sakura and Matsuzawa, 1991;Tonooka et al, 1997;Westergaard et al, 1995;Yocom and Boysen, 2010), but especially given the demonstrated prowess of wild chimpanzees in extensive and creative use of objects as tools in their environment. Why would captive chimpanzees not exhibit knowledge of physical support when such capabilities are both advantageous and necessary for their survival in the wild?…”

“…Since the initial discoveries by Goodall (1964), each year, particularly over the past two decades, research groups from Germany, Japan, Switzerland, the U.S., and other teams continue to report new tool types and functions by wild chimpanzees (e.g., Hernandez-Aguilar et al, 2007;Pruetz and Bertolani, 2007;Sanz and Morgan, 2009;Yamamoto et al, 2008). It is not surprising, given the extent of tool use by wild chimpanzees, that a wide array of tool-related tasks have been explored in captive apes, as well (e.g., Bania et al, 2009;Furlong et al, 2008;Limongelli et al, 1995;Mulcahy and Call, 2006;Povinelli, 2000;Tomasello et al, 1993;Tonooka et al, 1997;Visalberghi et al, 1995;Whiten et al, 1996).More recently, in contrast to reports of successful performance by chimpanzees on a range of tasks over the past several decades, Povinelli and his colleagues (2000) reported a series of some twenty-seven tool paradigms that resulted in poor performance by seven juvenile chimpanzees that had been laboratory-born and peer-reared as a separate social group. As a result, Povinelli (2000) reached a number of general conclusions about chimpanzees' abilities related to "folk physics".…”

Faithful replication of foraging techniques along cultural transmission chains by chimpanzees and children

“…The inference that the differences are socially learned is based on (i) patterns of distribution that appear incompatible with genetic or simple environmental explanations; (ii) records of close observation of adults by infants as well as matching of mother-offspring foraging styles (4-7); and (iii) studies of both wild (8-10) and captive chimpanzees (11)(12)(13)(14)(15) showing that social learning from conspecifics can affect the acquisition of tool-use skills. Each wild chimpanzee community exhibits a distinct profile defined by several different kinds of putative traditions that have been described as cultures.…”

“…However, what we really need to establish is whether chimpanzees learn from each other with sufficient fidelity for behavior to spread within a community. Thus far, only four experiments concern the spread of behavior at the group level (11,15,29,30). None of these investigations used a no-model control group, however, which might have demonstrated that the spread of behavior was not due to a gradual rise in individual learning.…”