Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T19:16:31.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The limits of chimpanzee-human comparisons for understanding human cognition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2012

Simon M. Reader  and
Steven M. Hrotic
Simon M. Reader
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec H3A 1B1, Canada. [email protected]://biology.mcgill.ca/faculty/reader/ Behavioural Biology, Department of Biology and Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht 3508 TB, The Netherlands. [email protected]
Steven M. Hrotic
Affiliation:
Behavioural Biology, Department of Biology and Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht University, Utrecht 3508 TB, The Netherlands. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Evolutionary questions require specialized approaches, part of which are comparisons between close relatives. However, to understand the origins of human tool behavior, comparisons with solely chimpanzees are insufficient, lacking the power to identify derived traits. Moreover, tool use is unlikely a unitary phenomenon. Large-scale comparative analyses provide an alternative and suggest that tool use co-evolves with a suite of cognitive traits.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , August 2012 , pp. 238 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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

Bshary, R. & Grutter, A. S. (2005) Punishment and partner switching cause cooperative behaviour in a cleaning mutualism. Biology Letters 1:396–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bshary, R. & Grutter, A. S. (2006) Image scoring and cooperation in a cleaner fish mutualism. Nature 441:975–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, R. (1997) The technical intelligence hypothesis: An additional evolutionary stimulus to intelligence. In: Machiavellian intelligence II, ed. Whiten, A. & Byrne, R., pp. 289–311. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Kort, S. & Clayton, N. (2006) An evolutionary perspective on caching by corvids. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 4:149–96.Google Scholar
Deaner, R. O., van Schaik, C. & Johnson, V. (2006) Do some taxa have better domain-general cognition than others? A meta-analysis of nonhuman primate studies. Evolutionary Psychology 4:149–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fragaszy, D. & Visalberghi, E. (1989) Social influences on the acquisition of tool-using behaviors in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Journal of Comparative Psychology 103:159–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hrubesch, C., Preuschoft, S. & van Schaik, C. (2009) Skill mastery inhibits adoption of observed alternative solutions among chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition 12:209–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kenward, B., Weir, A. A. S., Rutz, C. & Kacelnik, A. (2005) Tool manufacture by naive juvenile crows. Nature 433:121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Laland, K. N. (2004) Social learning strategies. Learning & Behavior 32:4–14.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leca, J. B., Gunst, N. & Huffman, M. A. (2007) Japanese macaque cultures: Inter- and intra-troop behavioural variability of stone handling patterns across 10 troops. Behaviour 144:251–81.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, L., Nicolakakis, N. & Boire, D. (2002) Tools and brains in birds. Behaviour 139(7):939–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, L., Reader, S. M. & Sol, D. (2004) Brains, innovations and evolution in birds and primates. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 63:233–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lindeyer, C. M. & Reader, S. M. (2010) Social learning of escape routes in zebrafish and the stability of behavioural traditions. Animal Behaviour 79:827–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall-Pescini, S. & Whiten, A. (2008) Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and the question of cumulative culture: An experimental approach. Animal Cognition 11:449–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morand-Ferron, J., Lefebvre, L., Reader, S. M., Sol, D. & Elvin, S. (2004) Dunking behaviour in Carib grackles. Animal Behaviour 68:1267–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunn, C. L. & Barton, R. A. (2001) Comparative methods for studying primate adaptation and allometry. Evolutionary Anthropology 10:81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overington, S. E., Morand-Ferron, J., Boogert, N. J. & Lefebvre, L. (2009) Technical innovations drive the relationship between innovativeness and residual brain size in birds. Animal Behaviour 78(4):1001–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, E. M. & Mann, J. (2011) The ecological conditions that favor tool use and innovation in wild bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.). PLoS ONE 6(7):e22243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reader, S. M. & Laland, K. N. (2002) Social intelligence, innovation and enhanced brain size in primates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99:4436–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reader, S. M. & Laland, K. N., eds. (2003) Animal innovation. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reader, S. M., Hager, Y. & Laland, K. N. (2011) The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366:1017–27.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seppänen, J. T., Forsman, J. T., Mönkkönen, M., Krams, I. & Salmi, T. (2011) New behavioural trait adopted or rejected by observing heterospecific tutor fitness. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278:1736–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shumaker, R. W., Walkup, K. R. & Beck, B. B. (2011) Animal tool behavior. The Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simonton, D. K. (2003) Human creativity: Two Darwinian analyses. In: Animal innovation, ed. Reader, S. M. & Laland, K. N., pp. 309–25. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tebbich, S., Taborsky, M., Fessl, B. & Blomqvist, D. (2001) Do woodpecker finches acquire tool-use by social learning? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 268(1482):2189–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tebbich, S., Taborsky, M., Fessl, B. & Dvorak, M. (2002) The ecology of tool-use in the woodpecker finch Cactospiza pallida. Ecology Letters 5:656–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thornton, A. & Raihani, N. J. (2011) Identifying teaching in wild animals. Learning & Behavior 38:297–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toelch, U., Bruce, M. J., Meeus, M. T. H. & Reader, S. M. (2011) Social performance cues induce behavioral flexibility in humans. Frontiers in Psychology 2:160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van de Waal, E., Renevey, N., Favre, C. M. & Bshary, R. (2010) Selective attention to philopatric models causes directed social learning in wild vervet monkeys. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277:2105–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Schaik, C. P., Deaner, R. O. & Merrill, M. Y. (1999) The conditions for tool use in primates: Implications for the evolution of material culture. Journal of Human Evolution 36:719–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed