Technical intelligence and culture: Nut cracking in humans and chimpanzees

Boesch, Christophe; Bombjaková, Daša; Boyette, Adam H.; Meier, Amelia

doi:10.1002/ajpa.23211

Cited by 25 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 81 publications

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“…Indeed, wild sweet potato ( mela ) usually grows in abandoned forest camps, and thus locating these resources is straightforward (see also Tucker and Young 2005 ). Furthermore, unlike the mongongo nuts harvested in the Kalahari (Blurton Jones et al 1994 ), various nut varieties are easy to find, and are not difficult to husk and shell; indeed, inexperienced anthropologists have done so with success (see Boesch et al 2017 for description of processing different Congo Basin nut varieties).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the Adaptive Learning Function of Work and Work-Themed Play among Aka Forager and Ngandu Farmer Children from the Congo Basin

Lew‐Levy

Boyette

2018

Hum Nat

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Work-themed play may allow children to learn complex skills, and ethno-typical and gender-typical behaviors. Thus, play may have made important contributions to the evolution of childhood through the development of embodied capital. Using data from Aka foragers and Ngandu farmer children from the Central African Republic, we ask whether children perform ethno- and gender-typical play and work activities, and whether play prepares children for complex work. Focal follows of 50 Aka and 48 Ngandu children were conducted with the aim of recording children’s participation in 12 categories of work and work-themed play. Using these data, we test a set of hypotheses regarding how age, gender, ethnicity, and task complexity influence children’s activities. As hypothesized, we find performance of work-themed play is negatively correlated with age. Contrary to our hypothesis, children do not play more than they work at complex tasks, but they work more than they play at simple ones. Gender and ethnicity are associated with play and work at culturally salient activities, despite availability of other-gender and other-ethnicity social partners. Our findings show that ethnic and gender biases are apparent in the play and work behavior of Aka and Ngandu children. Moreover, our results show that play helps both forager and farmer children learn complex skills, consistent with play having an adaptive learning function.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the Adaptive Learning Function of Work and Work-Themed Play among Aka Forager and Ngandu Farmer Children from the Congo Basin

Lew‐Levy

Boyette

2018

Hum Nat

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“…7), rendering this condition unnecessary. This was unexpected as Boesch & Boesch (1983) state that they never observed a wild chimpanzee cracking coula nuts with its teeth; macadamia nuts (as used in this study) have a break strain of between 1,800 and 4,000 N (Schüler et al, 2014), which is comparable to coula nuts and substantially less than required for panda nuts (Boesch et al, 2017).…”

Section: End State Conditionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Testing the individual and social learning abilities of task-naïve captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes sp.) in a nut-cracking task

Neadle

Bandini

Tennie

2020

PeerJ

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Nut-cracking is often cited as one of the most complex behaviours observed in wild chimpanzees. However, the cognitive mechanisms behind its acquisition are still debated. The current null hypothesis is that the form of nut-cracking behaviour relies on variants of social learning, with some researchers arguing, more precisely, that copying variants of social learning mechanisms are necessary. However, to date, very few experiments have directly investigated the potentially sufficient role of individual learning in explaining the behavioural form of nut-cracking. Despite this, the available data provides some evidence for the spontaneous acquisition of nut-cracking by chimpanzees; later group acquisition was then found to be at least facilitated by (unspecified) variants of social learning. The latter findings are in line with both suggested hypotheses, i.e., that copying social learning is required and that other (non-copying) social learning mechanisms are at play. Here we present the first study which focused (initially) on the role of individual learning for the acquisition of the nut-cracking behavioural form in chimpanzees. We tested task-naïve chimpanzees (N = 13) with an extended baseline condition to examine whether the behaviour would emerge spontaneously. After the baseline condition (which was unsuccessful), we tested for the role of social learning by providing social information in a step-wise fashion, culminating in a full action demonstration of nut-cracking by a human demonstrator (this last condition made it possible for the observers to copy all actions underlying the behaviour). Despite the opportunities to individually and/or socially learn nut-cracking, none of the chimpanzees tested here cracked nuts using tools in any of the conditions in our study; thus, providing no conclusive evidence for either competing hypothesis. We conclude that this failure was the product of an interplay of factors, including behavioural conservatism and the existence of a potential sensitive learning period for nut-cracking in chimpanzees. The possibility remains that nut-cracking is a behaviour that chimpanzees can individually learn. However, this behaviour might only be acquired when chimpanzees are still inside their sensitive learning period, and when ecological and developmental conditions allow for it. The possibility remains that nut-cracking is an example of a culture dependent trait in non-human great apes. Recommendations for future research projects to address this question are considered.

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“…Furthermore, in a comparative study of on nut-cracking in humans and chimpanzees (Boesch et al, 2017), it was found that humans understood how to apply force to extract numerous nut species through using hammerstones. Yet, the chimpanzees only ever applied such force to Panda nuts, even though they regularly eat hard Irvingia nuts using their teeth.…”

Section: Animal Reasoning About Forcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces

Gärdenfors

2020

Front. Psychol.

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The aim of the article is to present a model of causal relations that is based on what is known about human causal reasoning and that forms guidelines for implementations in robots. I argue for two theses concerning human cognition. The first is that human causal cognition, in contrast to that of other animals, is based on the understanding of the forces that are involved. The second thesis is that humans think about causality in terms of events. I present a two-vector model of events, developed by Gärdenfors and Warglien, which states that an event is represented in terms of two main componentsthe force of an action that drives the event, and the result of its application. Apart from the causal mapping, the event model contains representations of a patient, an agent, and possibly some other roles. Agents and patients are objects (animate or inanimate) that have different properties. Following my theory of conceptual spaces, they can be described as vectors of property values. At least two spaces are needed to describe an event, an action space and a result space. The result of an event is modeled as a vector representing the change of properties of the patient before and after the event. In robotics the focus has been on describing results. The proposed model also includes the causal part of events, typically described as an action. A central part of an event category is the mapping from actions to results. This mapping contains the central information about causal relations. In applications of the two-vector model, the central problem is how the event mapping can be learned in a way that is amenable to implementations in robots. Three processes are central for event cognition: causal thinking, control of action and learning by generalization. Although it is not yet clear which is the best way to model how the mappings can be learned, they should be constrained by three corresponding mathematical properties: monotonicity (related to qualitative causal thinking); continuity (plays a key role in activities of action control); and convexity (facilitates generalization and the categorization of events). I argue that Bayesian models are not suitable for these purposes, but some more geometrically oriented approach to event mappings should be used.

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Technical intelligence and culture: Nut cracking in humans and chimpanzees

Cited by 25 publications

References 81 publications

Evidence for the Adaptive Learning Function of Work and Work-Themed Play among Aka Forager and Ngandu Farmer Children from the Congo Basin

Evidence for the Adaptive Learning Function of Work and Work-Themed Play among Aka Forager and Ngandu Farmer Children from the Congo Basin

Testing the individual and social learning abilities of task-naïve captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes sp.) in a nut-cracking task

Events and Causal Mappings Modeled in Conceptual Spaces

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