November 21, 2024
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Chimpanzees share knowledge and foster innovation just like humans
Female chimpanzees who migrate to new social groups bring skills and technology, facilitating the development of increasingly complex toolsets.
Fana, a 54-year-old female western chimpanzee, teaches her 3-year-old grandson Franl how to split palm oil nuts in the Bossou Forest in Guinea’s Nimba Mountains.
Nature Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo
Chimpanzees live in a highly hierarchical society, with male members remaining within the same group over time. To prevent inbreeding, females migrate to new communities when they reach adulthood. They bring not only new genes, but also new knowledge.
As this process repeats itself over thousands of years, female chimpanzees played a key role in driving cultural innovation, a new study reports. Women spread actions among communities, and those actions recombined with existing traditions to create layers of innovation, resulting in increasingly complex and sophisticated toolsets.
Cassandra Gunasekaram, a PhD student in evolutionary biology at the University of Zurich and lead author of the study, said: “New research is the only way that humans can innovate over time to increase efficiency. ,” said Cassandra Gunasekaram, a PhD student in evolutionary biology at the University of Zurich and lead author of the paper. science. Additionally, she says, the study shows “the importance of social connections between different groups of chimpanzees in promoting cultural complexity.”
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As recently as the 1990s, the idea that non-human animals might exhibit distinctive socially learned behaviors that constitute culture was controversial. Many examples of animal culture are now known, including the diversity of bird songs, the sounds of whales, and the “waggle dance” movements of bees.
The new chimpanzee paper gives an example of cumulative culture, but it is different. Cumulative culture refers to knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation, where new ideas and breakthroughs are gradually accumulated through the contributions of multiple minds, allowing the development of new and increasingly sophisticated technologies. . The products of accumulated culture are usually so complex that they are virtually impossible for a single individual to invent. Computers are one example. As researchers have repeatedly built on previous ones, they have grown in complexity and efficiency to the point that no one can build a computer that complies with today’s standards completely from scratch.
Accumulated culture is still considered to be primarily a feature of human societies. But some researchers are beginning to question that assumption, and this latest study confirms that cumulative cultures may also be found in other species. Chimpanzees, like humans, appear to have the ability to exchange and combine ideas, said study co-senior author Andrea Migliano, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Zurich. But the amount of cultural knowledge that animals can accumulate is limited by hierarchical social structures, limited movement between groups, and a lack of spoken language, she added.
To carry out the new study, Migliano, Gunasekaram, and their colleagues turned to an existing open dataset maintained by the Pan-African Program, a chimpanzee research consortium. They used genetic data from 240 chimpanzees from 35 different communities representing all four subspecies to track past encounters between the animals. First, researchers reconstructed 5,000 years of ancestry by analyzing segments of DNA that showed common relatives and split into smaller pieces over generations. They then traced the connections between the populations back 15,000 years by tracing genetic variations that occurred in individual groups but were rare in others.
In addition to the genetic analysis, they also mapped 15 foraging behaviors across chimpanzee populations. They classified behaviors into three categories. The simplest actions do not use tools. Intermediate examples relied on a single tool. And the most complex ones relied on sophisticated toolsets. An example of a complex toolset includes a multi-step approach using a variety of tools to access a beehive inside a tree, bashing open the hive, penetrating the internal chambers, and wiping out the honey for collection. It was.
Finally, the researchers overlay and compare these networks of acquired data (genetic relatedness and cultural similarity) to see whether one predicted the other and to determine the cumulative cultural potential. I have confirmed the gender. When we included the simplest behaviors, we found no corresponding evidence for genetic exchange between groups. However, when we analyzed only the most complex behaviors, we found a clear correlation with female migration. This suggests that women who move into new groups play a role in promoting innovation, and that social transmission between groups is limited to the development of the most sophisticated tools rather than simpler ones. Migliano said it fits the hypothesis that it is necessary. “The big pattern we’re seeing is that if it’s complex, it’s actually correlated with immigration and it’s less likely to be reinvented,” she added.
“This project provides the best evidence that wild chimpanzee traditions are truly cultural and can and have evolved cumulatively,” said Thomas Morgan, an evolutionary anthropologist at Arizona State University. It provides evidence.” He was not involved in this study. “In recent decades, the idea that cumulative cultural change is our species’ secret secret has emerged, but recent research, including this project, is really changing that perspective.”
