Chimps can learn from videos, and demonstrate culture

[Humodour]

Two fascinate studies on chimps. The first one shows how chimps have culture, or social knowledge, and it's different between groups. It's interesting because all the other variables are controlled (e.g. genetic difference): http://www.physorg.com/news175435694.html

 

The other one is a study which demonstrates that chimps shown a video of another chimp making a tool to solve a problem they were previously unable to go on to construct the tool themselves to solve the problem: http://www.physorg.com/news165682373.html

 

And the third demonstrates some intelligent chimps refining and making better tools for harvesting termites to eat (delicious!) - using a brush rather than a basic straw (both constructed from plants): http://www.physorg.com/news155372626.html

 

The apes, they found, manufactured special "brush sticks" in the knowledge that more termites would hook onto this form of the probe.

 

The sticks are made from the stems of arrowroot plants, which are picked by the chimps and defoliated. The apes then use their teeth to split the end of the stem and fray the fibres, forming a tip that looks rather like an artist's paintbrush.

 

More than 80 percent of tools recovered from termite nests in six chimpanzee communities in the Goualougo Triangle have been engineered to give a brush tip, according to the paper.

 

"Brush sticks" have also been found at other chimp sites in central Africa but, interestingly, chimpanzees in eastern Africa actively remove frayed ends.

 

Perhaps those chimps should learn the trick. For the zoologists tested the brush stick and the unmodified stick for themselves and were surprised by the difference in effectiveness.

 

The brush stick was four times more likely to result in a catch, and the average haul was 4.9 termites compared with 0.27 termites with the unmodified stick.

 

The findings are important, says the study. It seems that chimpanzees, like humans, are able to conceptualise what they want to do -- and tool making is a cultural achievement, learnt or copied from others, and not something innate.

 

"Our results indicate that chimpanzees have a mental template of the tool form, which is employed in crafting the tool prior to use and refining it during use," says the study.

 

Bloody fascinating.

[Humodour]

Chimpanzees seem to get sad and mourn their dead the same way humans do according to two seperate studies published recently:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/04...h-reaction.html

 

Study 1: the death of an elderly female

 

Researchers at the University of Stirling in the U.K., led by James Anderson, examined the behaviour of adult chimps living in a small group at a safari park in Scotland after an elderly female died.

 

Pansy was more than 50 years old when she died in 2008. She lived on an island in Blair Drummond Safari Park with her daughter, and another adult female and her son.

 

The reactions of the chimps to Pansy's death were recorded on the park's cameras.

 

The researchers found that in the days leading up to Pansy's death, the group paid close attention to her, grooming and caressing her. After she died, members of the group appeared to check her for signs of life by lifting her arms and looking into her mouth.

 

The young male attacked the corpse, in an attempt, the researchers said, to revive her, or in an expression of anger or frustration.

 

The group left soon after Pansy died, but her adult daughter returned and spent the night with her. The next morning, the chimps removed straw that was covering Pansy's body.

 

As zoo workers removed Pansy's body, the group sat quietly and watched. They avoided sleeping on the platform where she had died, even though it was normally the chimps' preferred sleeping spot.

 

Study 2: mothers responding to the deaths of their babies

Two of the chimps who died were infants.

 

"In each case, our observations showed a remarkable response by chimpanzee mothers to the death of their infants: they continued to carry the corpses for weeks, even months, following death," said Biro.

 

In those weeks, the babies' corpses mummified and the mothers continued to carry them with them and groom them as if they were alive.

 

After more time passed, the mothers eventually "let go" of the infants, allowing other chimps to handle them.

 

Biro said that although humans don't carry deceased infants in this way, the chimp behaviour was similar to human feelings of refusing to "let go" after a loved one dies.

 

"Our observations confirm the existence of an extremely powerful bond between mothers and their offspring, which can persist, remarkably, even after the death of the infant, and they further call for efforts to elucidate the extent to which chimpanzees understand and are affected by the death of a close relative,"

 

It's sad.

[Walsingham]

So what your saying is that if we flooded the average English town centre with chimps on a Firday night we'd actually improve the average standards of behaviour.