NDLI: Franco-Japanese and other collaborative contributions to understanding chimpanzee culture at Bossou and the Nimba Mountains

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Humle, Tatyana
Copyright Year	2016
Abstract	The Japanese approach to science has permitted theoretical leaps in our understanding of culture in non-human animals and challenged human uniqueness, as it is not embedded in the Western traditional dualisms of human/animal and nature/culture. This paper highlights the value of an interdisciplinary approach and combining methodological approaches in exploring putative cultural variation among chimpanzees. I focus particularly on driver ants (Dorylus sp.) and oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) consumption among the Bossou and Nimba chimpanzees, in south-eastern Guinea at the border with Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, and hand use across different tool use tasks commonly witnessed at Bossou, i.e. ant-dipping, nut-cracking, pestle-pounding, and algae-scooping. Observed variation in resource use was addressed across differing scales exploring both within- and between-community differences. Our findings have highlighted a tight interplay between ecology, social dynamics and culture, and between social and individual learning and maternal contribution to tool-use acquisition. Exploration of hand use by chimpanzees revealed no evidence for individual-level hand or community-level task specialisation. However, more complex types of tool use such as nut-cracking showed distinct lateralization, while the equivalent of a haptic manual action revealed a strong right hand bias. The data also suggest an overall population tendency for a right hand preference. As well as describing these sites’ key contributions to our understanding of chimpanzees and to challenging our perceptions of human uniqueness, this paper also highlights the critical condition and high levels of threats facing this emblematic chimpanzee population, and several questions that remain to be addressed. In the spirit of the Japanese approach to science, I recommend that an interdisciplinary and collaborative research approach can best help us to challenge perceptions of human uniqueness and to further our understanding of chimpanzee behavioural and social flexibility in the face of local social, ecological and anthropogenic changes and threats to their survival.
Starting Page	339
Ending Page	348
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00328332
Journal	Primates
Volume Number	57
Issue Number	3
e-ISSN	16107365
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Japan
Publisher Date	2016-04-15
Publisher Place	Tokyo
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Handedness Tool use Oil palm Driver ants Social learning Coexistence Conservation Zoology Animal Ecology Behavioral Sciences Evolutionary Biology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Animal Science and Zoology

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Franco-Japanese and other collaborative contributions to understanding chimpanzee culture at Bossou and the Nimba Mountains.

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