The emergence of cultures among wild chimpanzees.

Abstract

Culture has been granted by primatologists to the chimpanzee, on the base of the many population-specific behaviour patterns they possess. Psychologist tend to disagree arguing that individual learning constrained by ecological factors could produce the same results. After setting up some rigorous criteria to differentiate between these two opposite positions, I show that social canalization, including imitation, is important in explaining the acquisition of nut-craking behaviour in wild chimpanzees. Then, I argue that a culture requires not only a social learning process to produce a faithful transmission of information, but also a mechanism that guarantees the permanence of the information between transmission events. Leaf-clipping, leaf-grooming, knuckle-knocking and a symbolic drumming communication system are proposed to be examples of behaviour pattern fixed within chimpanzee populations by social norms. The stringent criteria that have to be fulfilled to grant a behaviour cultural properties in an animal species strongly limit the possible candidates. Despite these restrictions, the repertoire of the wild chimpanzee includes many cultural behaviour patterns

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