Tool transfers are a form of teaching among chimpanzees

Teaching is a form of high-fidelity social learning that promotes human cumulative culture. Although recently documented in several nonhuman animals, teaching is rare among primates. In this study, we show that wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in the Goualougo Triangle teach tool skills by providing learners with termite fishing probes. Tool donors experienced significant reductions in tool use and feeding, while tool recipients significantly increased their tool use and feeding after tool transfers. These transfers meet functional criteria for teaching: they occur in a learner’s presence, are costly to the teacher, and improve the learner’s performance. Donors also showed sophisticated cognitive strategies that effectively buffered them against potential costs. Teaching is predicted when less costly learning mechanisms are insufficient. Given that these chimpanzees manufacture sophisticated, brush-tipped fishing probes from specific raw materials, teaching in this population may relate to the complexity of these termite-gathering tasks.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Scientific Reports

• Publication date

  2016-10-11

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Education

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/srep34783PMID 27725706PMCID 5057084
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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