Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T21:02:53.942Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Forty years striving to capture culture among the Taï chimpanzees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2019

Christophe Boesch
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Roman Wittig
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Catherine Crockford
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Linda Vigilant
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Tobias Deschner
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Fabian Leendertz
Affiliation:
Robert Koch-Institut, Germany
Get access

Summary

First established to distinguish humans from other animals, the concept of culture provides a stimulating framework to address complexity and diversity of social responses to environmental and social factors in animals. The ‘Golden Barrier’ separating humans from other animals thinned as observations of behavioural diversity in wild chimpanzees accumulated. For 40 years, the Taï Chimpanzee Project has contributed to discussions of animal culture. The ant-dipping and nut-cracking differences reported between chimpanzee populations across Africa produced insights into cultural attributes of chimpanzees. Observed differences between neighbouring communities in the same environment of Taï forest with routine gene flow presented strong evidence for a social process sustaining group-specific cultural differences. Today, the concept of chimpanzee culture implies not only varied behaviours, group-specific forms of social learning, but also conformity within groups, accumulation of variation within traits, presence of material, symbolic and social cultural traits and diverse forms of maternal tutoring. Future work will elucidate cultural transmission mechanisms in wild animal populations.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest
40 Years of Research
, pp. 178 - 193
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambrose, S. (2001). Paleolithic technology and human evolution. Science, 291, 17481753.Google Scholar
Barnard, A. (2000). History and Theory in Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, B. (1980). Animal Tool Behavior. New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar
Bissonnette, A., Franz, M., Schülke, O. & Ostner, J. (2014). Socioecology, but not cognition, predicts male coalitions across primates. Behavioral Ecology, 25, 794801.Google Scholar
Boas, F. (1940). Race, Language, and Culture. New York: The MacMillan Company.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. (1991). Symbolic communication in wild chimpanzees? Human Evolution, 6, 8190.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. (1996). Three approaches for assessing chimpanzee culture. In Russon, A., Bard, K. & Parker, S. (eds.), Reaching into Thought (pp. 404429). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. (2003). Is culture a golden barrier between human and chimpanzee? Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 2632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boesch, C. (2012). Wild Cultures: A Comparison Between Chimpanzee and Human Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. (2015). Similarities between chimpanzee and human culture. In Gelfand, M. J., Chiu, C.-Y. and Hong, Y.-Y. (eds.), Handbook of Advances in Culture and Psychology (Volume 5, pp. 137). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. & Boesch, H. (1984). Mental map in wild chimpanzees: An analysis of hammer transports for nut cracking. Primates, 25, 160170.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. & Boesch, H. (1989). Hunting behavior of wild chimpanzees in the Taï National Park. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 78, 547573.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. & Boesch, H. (1990). Tool use and tool making in wild chimpanzees. Folia Primatologica, 54, 8699.Google Scholar
Boesch, C. & Boesch-Achermann, H. (2000). The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioural Ecology and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boesch, C., Crockford, C., Herbinger, I., Wittig, R., Moebius, Y. & Normand, E. (2008). Intergroup conflicts among chimpanzees in Taï National Park: Lethal violence and the female perspective. American Journal of Primatology, 70, 114.Google Scholar
Boesch, C., Marchesi, P., Marchesi, N., Fruth, B. & Joulian, F. (1994). Is nut cracking in wild chimpanzees a cultural behaviour? Journal of Human Evolution, 26, 325338.Google Scholar
Bonner, J. (1980). The Evolution of Culture in Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bril, B., Smaers, J., Steele, J., Rein, R., Nonaka, T., Dietrich, G., et al. (2012). Functional mastery of percussive technology in nut-cracking and stone-flaking actions: Experimental comparison and implications for the evolution of the human brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367, 5974.Google Scholar
Buchanan, K., Grindstaff, J. & Pravosudov, V. (2014).Condition dependence, developmental plasticity, and cognition: Implications for ecology and evolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 28, 290296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cissewski, J. & Boesch, C. (2016). How great apes may cover crucial advantages of language without creating a system of symbolic communication. Gesture, 15, 224249.Google Scholar
Dart, R. (1925). Australopithecus africanus, the man-ape of South Africa. Nature, 115, 195199.Google Scholar
Foley, R. & Lahr, M. (2003). On stony ground: Lithic technology, human evolution, and the emergence of culture. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 109122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galef, B. (1990). Tradition in animals: Field observations and laboratory analyses. In Bekoff, M., and Jamieson, D. (eds.), Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behavior (pp. 7495). Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Galef, B. (1992). The question of animal culture. Human Nature, 3, 157178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galef, B. (2004). Approaches to the study of traditional behaviors of free-living animals. Learning and Behavior, 32, 5361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodall, J. (1963). Feeding behaviour of wild chimpanzees: A preliminary report. Symposium of the Zoological Society, London, 10, 3948.Google Scholar
Goodall, J. (1964). Tool-using and aimed throwing in a community of free-living chimpanzees. Nature, 201, 12641266.Google Scholar
Goodall, J. (1968). Behaviour of free-living chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream area. Animal Behaviour Monograph, 1, 163311.Google Scholar
Goodall, J. (1973). Cultural elements in a chimpanzee community. In Menzel, E. (ed.), Precultural Primate Behaviour, Fourth IPC Symposia Proceedings (Volume 1, pp. 195249). Basel: Karger.Google Scholar
Günther, M. M. & Boesch, C. (1993). Energetic cost of nut cracking behaviour in wild chimpanzees. In Preuschoft, H. & Chivers, D.J. (eds.), Hands of Primates (pp. 109129). Vienna: Springer.Google Scholar
Haidle, M., Bolus, M., Collard, M., Conard, N., Garofoli, D., Lombard, M., et al. (2015). The Nature of Culture: An eight-grade model for the evolution and expansion of cultural capacities in hominins and other animals. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 93, 4370.Google Scholar
Henrich, J. & McElreath, R. (2003). The evolution of cultural evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 123135.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. M. (1994). Imitation, culture and cognition. Animal Behaviour, 46, 9991010.Google Scholar
Heyes, C.M. (2012). Grist and mills: On the cultural origins of cultural learning. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367, 21812191.Google Scholar
Humle, T. & Matsuzawa, T. (2002). Ant-dipping among the chimpanzees of Bossou, Guinea, and some comparisons with other sites. American Journal of Primatology, 58, 133148.Google Scholar
Isaac, G. (1978). The food sharing behavior of protohuman hominids. Scientific American, 238, 90108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kawai, M. (1965). Newly acquired precultural behavior of the natural troop of Japanese monkeys on Koshima islet. Primates, 6, 130.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A. & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A Critial Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. (1999). Culture: An Anthropologist Perspective. Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laland, K. & Hoppitt, W. (2003). Do animals have culture? Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 150159.Google Scholar
Laland, K. & Janik, V. (2006). The animal cultures debate. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 21, 542547.Google Scholar
Leakey, L. S. B. (1961). The Progress and Evolution of Man in Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Luncz, L. V. & Boesch, C. (2014). Tradition over trend: Neighboring chimpanzee communities maintain differences in cultural behavior despite frequent immigration of adult females. American Journal of Primatology, 76, 649657.Google Scholar
Luncz, L. V. & Boesch, C. (2015). The extent of cultural variations between adjacent chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) communities; A microecological approach. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 156, 6775.Google Scholar
Luncz, L. V., Mundry, R. & Boesch, C. (2012). Evidence for cultural differences between neighboring chimpanzee communities. Current Biology, 22, 922926.Google Scholar
Luncz, L., Sirianni, G., Mundry, R. & Boesch, C. (2018). Costly culture: Differences in nut-cracking efficiency between chimpanzee groups. Animal Behaviour, 137, 6373.Google Scholar
Luncz, L. V., Wittig, R. M. & Boesch, C. (2015). Primate archaeology reveals cultural transmission in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370, 20140348.Google Scholar
Maynard-Smith, J. & Szathmary, E. (1995). The Major Transitions in Evolution. Oxford: Freeman.Google Scholar
Mercader, J., Barton, H., Gillespie, J., Harris, J., Kuhn, S., Tyler, R., et al. (2007). 4,300-year-old chimpanzee sites and the origins of percussive stone technology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 30433048.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mercader, J., Panger, M. & Boesch, C. (2002). Excavation of a chimpanzee stone tool site in the African rainforest. Science, 296: 14521455.Google Scholar
Mesoudi, A. (2011). Variable cultural acquisition cost constrains cumulative cultural evolution. PLoS ONE, 6(3), e18236.Google Scholar
Möbius, Y., Boesch, C., Koops, K., Matsuzawa, T. & Humle, T. (2008). Cultural differences in army ant predation by West African chimpanzees? A comparative study of microecological variables. Animal Behaviour, 76, 3745.Google Scholar
Morimura, N. & Mori, Y. (2010). Effects of early rearing conditions on problem-solving skill in captive male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). American Journal of Primatology, 72, 626633.Google Scholar
Nishida, T. (1968). The social group of wild chimpanzees in the Mahali Mountains. Primates, 9, 167224.Google Scholar
Nishida, T. (1987). Local traditions and cultural transmission. In Smuts, S. S., Cheney, D. L., Seyfarth, R. M., Wrangham, R. W. & Struhsaker, T. T. (eds.), Primate Societies (pp. 462474). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
O’Brien, M. J., Darwent, J. & Lyman, L. (2001). Cladistics is useful for reconstructing archaeological phylogenies: Paleoindian points from the Southeastern United States. Journal of Archaeological Science, 28, 11151136.Google Scholar
O’Brien, M., Lyman, L., Mesoudi, A. & Van Pool, T. (2010). Cultural traits as units of analysis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 37973806.Google Scholar
Ottoni, E. & Izar, P. (2008). Capuchin monkey tool use: Overview and implications. Evolutionary Anthropology, 17, 171178.Google Scholar
Panger, M., Perry, S., Rose, L., Gros-Louis, J., Vogel, E., MacKinnon, K., et al. (2002). Cross-site differences in foraging behavior of white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus). American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 119, 5266.Google Scholar
Perry, S. & Manson, J. (2003). Traditions in monkeys. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12, 7181.Google Scholar
Pravosudov, V. & Clayton, N. (2002). A test of the adaptive specialization hypothesis: Population differences in caching, memory, and the hippocampus in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla). Behavioral Neuroscience, 116, 515522.Google Scholar
Pravosudov, V. & Smulders, T. (2010). Integrating ecology, psychology and neurobiology within a food-hoarding paradigm. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 859867.Google Scholar
Premack, D. (2007). Human and animal cognition: Continuity and discontinuity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 13,86113,867.Google Scholar
Rahm, U. (1971). L’emploi d’outils par les chimpanzés de l’ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire. La Terre et la Vie, 25, 506509.Google Scholar
Rendell, L. & Whitehead, H. (2001). Culture in whales and dolphins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 309324.Google Scholar
Roux, V., Bril, B. & Dietrich, G. (1995). Skills and learning difficulties involved in stone knapping: The case of stone-bead knapping in Khambhat, India. World Archaeology, 27, 6387.Google Scholar
Russell, J., Lyn, H., Schaeffer, J. & Hopkins, W. (2011). The role of socio-communicative rearing environment in the development of social and physical cognition in apes. Developmental Science, 14, 14591470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sanchez, M., Hearn, E., Do, D., Rilling, J. & Herndon, J. (1998). Differential rearing affects corpus callosum size and cognitive function of rhesus monkeys. Brain Research, 812, 3849.Google Scholar
Sanz, C., Morgan, D. & Gulick, S. (2004). New insights into chimpanzees, tools, and termites from the Congo Basin. American Naturalist, 164, 567581.Google Scholar
Sanz, C. M., Schöning, C. & Morgan, D. B. (2009). Chimpanzees prey on army ants with specialized tool set. American Journal of Primatology, 71, 18.Google Scholar
Schrijver, N., Pallier, P., Brown, V. & Würbel, H. (2004). Double dissociation of social and environmental stimulation on spatial learning and reversal learning in rats. Behavioural Brain Research, 152, 307314.Google Scholar
Sirianni, G., Mundry, R. & Boesch, C. (2015). When to choose which tool: Multidimensional and conditional selection of nut-cracking hammers in wild chimpanzees. Animal Behaviour, 100, 152165.Google Scholar
Shennan, S. (2000). Population, culture history and the dynamics of culture change. Current Anthropology, 41, 811835.Google Scholar
Smulders, T., Gould, K. & Leaver, L. (2010). Using ecology to guide the study of cognitive and neural mechanisms of different aspects of spatial memory in food-hoarding animals. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 883900.Google Scholar
Sol, S., Duncan, R., Blackburn, T., Cassey, P. & Lefebvre, L. (2005). Big brains, enhanced cognition, and response of birds to novel environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 54605465.Google Scholar
Stout, D. (2002). Skill and cognition in stone tool production: An ethnographic case study from Irian Jaya. Current Anthropology, 43, 693715.Google Scholar
Struhsaker, T. T. & Hunkeler, P. (1971). Evidence of tool-using by chimpanzees in the Ivory Coast. Folia Primatologica, 15, 212219.Google Scholar
Sugiyama, Y. (1981). Observations on the population dynamics and behavior of wild chimpanzees of Bossou, Guinea, 1979–1980. Primates, 22, 435444.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Call, J. (1997). Primate Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T. & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675691.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., Savage-Rumbaugh, S. & Kruger, A. (1993). Imitative learning of actions on objects by children, chimpanzees, and enculturated chimpanzees. Child Development, 64, 16881705.Google Scholar
Tylor, E. (1871). Primitive Cultures: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom, Volume 1. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Udell, M., Dorey, N. & Wynne, C. (2010). The performance of stray dogs (Canis familiaris) living in a shelter on human-guided object-choice tasks. Animal Behaviour, 79, 717725.Google Scholar
van Schaik, C. P., Ancrenaz, M., Brogen, G., Galdikas, B., Knott, C., Singleton, I., et al. (2003). Orangutan cultures and the evolution of material culture. Science, 299, 102105.Google Scholar
Weedman, K. (2002). On the spur of the moment: Effects of age and experience on hafted stone scraper morphology. American Antiquity, 67, 731744.Google Scholar
Whitehead, H. (1998). Cultural selection and genetic diversity in matrilineal whales. Science, 282, 17081711.Google Scholar
Whiten, A., Goodall, J., McGrew, W., Nishida, T., Reynolds, V., Sugiyama, Y., et al. (1999). Cultures in chimpanzee. Nature, 399, 682685. https://doi.org/10.1038/21415Google Scholar
Whiten, A., Hinde, R., Laland, K. & Stringer, C. (2011). Culture evolves. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366, 938948.Google Scholar
Wrangham, R. (2006). Chimpanzees: The culture-zone concept becomes untidy. Current Biology, 16, R634R635.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×