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Page 1: The Cultures of Chimpanzees Copyright 2000 …...in courtship patterns or feeding prac-tices, for example, to go alongside the differences in dialect. Chimpanzees, though, do more

60 Scientific American January 2001 The Cultures of ChimpanzeesCopyright 2000 Scientific American, Inc.

Page 2: The Cultures of Chimpanzees Copyright 2000 …...in courtship patterns or feeding prac-tices, for example, to go alongside the differences in dialect. Chimpanzees, though, do more

As researchers quietly approach a clearing in theTaï Forest of Ivory Coast, they hear a complex

pattern of soft thuds and cracks. It sounds asthough a small band of people are busy in the forest,applying some rudimentary technology to a routinetask. On entering the clearing, the scientists observeseveral individuals working keenly at anvils, skillfullywielding wooden hammers. One or two juveniles haveapprenticed themselves to the work and—more clum-sily and with less success—are struggling to lift the besthammer they can find. All this activity is directed to-ward cracking rock-hard but nutritious coula nuts. In-termittently, individuals set aside their tools to gathermore handfuls of nuts. An infant sits with her mother,gathering morsels of broken nuts.

In many ways, this group could indeed be a familyof foraging people. The hammers and anvils they leavebehind, some made of stone, would excite the imagi-

www.sciam.com Scientific American January 2001 61

GOING FISHING for antsis a handy way to find din-ner for some chimpanzees.This chimpanzee, from Ma-hale National Park in Tan-zania, inserts a stick into anant nest located within atree; once the ants climb upthe stick, the chimpanzeeremoves the stick and picksthe ants off with its lips.

Culturesthe

ChimpanzeesofHumankind’s nearest relative

is even closer than we thought:

chimpanzees display remarkable

behaviors that can only

be described as social customs

passed on from generation

to generation

by Andrew Whiten and Christophe Boesch

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Inc.

Copyright 2000 Scientific American, Inc.

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nation of any anthropologist searchingfor signs of a primitive civilization. Yetthese forest residents are not humansbut chimpanzees.

The similarities between chimpanzeesand humans have been studied foryears, but in the past decade researchershave determined that these resemblancesrun much deeper than anyone firstthought. For instance, the nut crackingobserved in the Taï Forest is far from asimple chimpanzee behavior; rather it is

a singular adaptation found only inthat particular part of Africa and a traitthat biologists consider to be an expres-sion of chimpanzee culture. Scientistsfrequently use the term “culture” to de-scribe elementary animal behaviors—such as the regional dialects of differentpopulations of songbirds—but as itturns out, the rich and varied culturaltraditions found among chimpanzeesare second in complexity only to hu-man traditions.

During the past two years, an un-precedented scientific collaboration, in-volving every major research groupstudying chimpanzees, has documenteda multitude of distinct cultural patternsextending across Africa, in actionsranging from the animals’ use of toolsto their forms of communication andsocial customs. This emerging pictureof chimpanzees not only affects howwe think of these amazing creatures butalso alters human beings’ conception of

Scientists have been investigating chimpanzee culture for sev-eral decades, but too often their studies contained a crucial

flaw. Most attempts to document cultural diversity amongchimpanzees have relied solely on officially published accountsof the behaviors recorded at each research site. But this ap-proach probably overlooks a good deal of cultural variation forthree reasons.

First, scientists typically don’t publish an extensive list of allthe activities they do not see at a particular location. Yet this isexactly what we need to know—which behaviors were and werenot observed at each site. Second, many reports describe chim-panzee behaviors without saying how common they are; with-out this information, we can’t determine whether a particular ac-tion was a once-in-a-lifetime aberration or a routine event thatshould be considered part of the animals’ culture. Finally, re-searchers’descriptions of potentially significant chimpanzee be-haviors frequently lack sufficient detail, making it difficult for sci-entists working at other spots to record the presence or absenceof the activities.

To remedy these problems, the two of us decided to take anew approach. We asked field researchers at each site for a list ofall the behaviors they suspected were local traditions. With thisinformation in hand, we pulled together a comprehensive list of65 candidates for cultural behaviors.

Then we distributed our list to the team leaders at each site.

In consultation with their colleagues, they classified each behav-ior in terms of its occurrence or absence in the chimpanzee com-munity studied. The key categories were customary behavior(occurs in most or all of the able-bodied members of at least oneage or sex class, such as all adult males), habitual (less commonthan customary but occurs repeatedly in several individuals),present (seen at the site but not habitual), absent (never seen),and unknown.

Our inquiry concentrated on seven sites with chimpanzeeshabituated to human onlookers; all told, the study compiled atotal of more than 150 years of chimpanzee observation. The be-havior patterns we were particularly interested in, of course,were those absent in at least one community,yet habitual or cus-tomary in at least one other; this was our criterion for denotingany behavior a cultural variant. (Certain behaviors are absent forspecific local reasons, however, and we excluded them from con-sideration. For example, although chimpanzees at Bossou scooptasty algae from pools of water with a stick, chimpanzees else-where don’t do this, simply because algae are not present.)

The extensive survey turned up no fewer than 39 chim-panzee patterns of behavior that should be labeled as culturalvariations, including numerous forms of tool use, groomingtechniques and courtship gambits, several of which are illustrat-ed throughout this article. This cultural richness is far in excess ofanything known for any other species of animal. —A.W.and C.B.

includes a demon-stration of how to crack open a coula nut.A mother chimpanzee in the Taï Forest ofIvory Coast uses a stone hammer to cleavea nut while a youngster watches. Not allchimpanzees in this area have developedthis behavior: on the eastern bank of theSassandra-N’Zo River, chimpanzees do notcrack nuts even though members of thesame species on the other side of the river,just a few miles away, do. All the requiredraw materials are available on both sides,and the nuts could be cracked using thetechnique habitual at Taï. The river servesas a literal cultural barrier.

The Cultures of Chimpanzees62 Scientific American January 2001

The Culture ClubHow an international team of chimpanzee experts conducted the most comprehensive survey of the animals ever attempted

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Today’s Lesson

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www.sciam.com Scientific American January 2001 63

our own uniqueness and hints at veryancient foundations for humankind’sextraordinary capacity for culture.

Contemplating Culture

Homo sapiens and Pan troglodyteshave coexisted for hundreds of

millennia and share more than 98 per-cent of their genetic material, yet only40 years ago we still knew next tonothing about chimpanzee behavior inthe wild. That began to change in the1960s, when Toshisada Nishida of Kyo-to University in Japan and Jane Goodallbegan their studies of wild chimpanzeesat two field sites in Tanzania. (Goodall’sresearch station at Gombe—the first ofits kind—is more famous, but Nishida’ssite at Mahale is the second-oldest chimpanzee research sitein the world.)

In these initial studies, as thechimpanzees became accus-tomed to close observation, theremarkable discoveries began.Researchers witnessed a rangeof unexpected behaviors, in-cluding fashioning and usingtools, hunting, meat eating,food sharing and lethal fightsbetween members of neighbor-ing communities. In the yearsthat followed, other primatolo-gists set up camp elsewhere,and, despite all the financial,political and logistical prob-lems that can beset Africanfieldwork, several of these out-posts became truly long-termprojects. As a result, we live inan unprecedented time, whenan intimate and comprehensive scientif-ic record of chimpanzees’ lives at lastexists not just for one but for severalcommunities spread across Africa.

As early as 1973, Goodall recorded 13forms of tool use as well as eight socialactivities that appeared to differ betweenthe Gombe chimpanzees and chim-panzee populations elsewhere. She ven-tured that some variations had whatshe termed a cultural origin. But whatexactly did Goodall mean by “cul-ture”? According to the Oxford Ency-clopedic English Dictionary, culture isdefined as “the customs . . . and achieve-ments of a particular time or people.”The diversity of human cultures ex-tends from technological variations tomarriage rituals, from culinary habitsto myths and legends. Animals do nothave myths and legends, of course. But

they do have the capacity to pass on be-havioral traits from generation to gen-eration, not through their genes but bylearning. For biologists, this is the fun-damental criterion for a cultural trait: itmust be something that can be learnedby observing the established skills ofothers and thus passed on to futuregenerations [see box on page 66].

By the 1990s the discovery of newbehavioral differences among chimpan-zees made it feasible to begin assem-bling comprehensive charts of culturalvariations for these animals. William C.McGrew, in his 1992 book Chimpan-zee Material Cultures, was able to list19 different kinds of tool use in distinctcommunities. One of us (Boesch), alongwith colleague Michael Tomasello of

the Max Planck Institute for Evolution-ary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany,identified 25 distinct activities as poten-tial cultural traits in wild chimpanzeepopulations.

The most recent catalogue of culturalvariations results from a unique collab-oration of nine chimpanzee experts (in-cluding the two of us) who pooled ex-tensive field observations that, taken to-gether, amounted to a total of 151years of chimp watching [see box onopposite page]. The list cites 39 pat-terns of chimpanzee behavior that webelieve to have a cultural origin, includ-ing such activities as using sticks to“fish” for ants, making dry seats fromleaves, and a range of social groominghabits. At present, these 39 variants putchimpanzees in a class of their own,with far more elaborate customs than

any other animal studied to date. Ofcourse, chimpanzees also remain dis-tinct from humans, for whom culturalvariations are simply beyond count.(We must point out, however, that sci-entists are only beginning to uncoverthe behavioral complexity that existsamong chimpanzees—and so the num-ber 39 no doubt represents a minimumof cultural traits.)

Multicultural Chimpanzees

When describing human customs,anthropologists and sociologists

often refer to “American culture” or“Chinese culture”; these terms encom-pass a wide spectrum of activities—lan-guage, forms of dress, eating habits,

marriage rituals and so on. Among ani-mals, however, culture has typicallybeen established for a single behavior,such as song dialects among birds. Or-nithologists haven’t identified variationin courtship patterns or feeding prac-tices, for example, to go alongside thedifferences in dialect.

Chimpanzees, though, do more thandisplay singular cultural traits: eachcommunity exhibits an entire set of be-haviors that differentiates it from othergroups [see illustrations on pages 64and 65]. As a result, we can talk about“Gombe culture” or “Taï culture.” In-deed, once we observe how a chim-panzee behaves, we can identify wherethe animal lives. For instance, an indi-vidual that cracks nuts, leaf-clips duringdrumming displays, fishes for ants with

during groomingis commonplace among chimpan-zees at Taï Forest, Mahale andKibale. Here two male chimpanzeesat Mahale groom each other whileclasping hands. Recent research byWilliam C. McGrew and Linda F.Marchant, both at Miami Universi-ty, suggests that the two adjacentcommunities at Mahale display sub-tle differences in how they clasphands, with one community avoidingpalm-to-palm contact, the stylecommon among their neighbors. In40 years of observations at Gombe,hand clasping has never been seen;chimpanzees sometimes grasp abranch overhead, but they do nothold their grooming partner’s hand.

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High Five

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A Guide to the Cultures of Chimpanzees

In an effort to catalogue cultural variations among chimpanzees,we asked researchers working at six sites across central Africa to

classify chimpanzee behaviors in terms of occurrence or absencein seven communities. (There are two communities at Mahale.)The key categories were customary behavior, which occurs inmost or all members of one age or sex class; habitual,which is less

common but which still occurs repeatedly; present; absent; andunknown. Certain behaviors are absent for ecological reasons(eco): for example, chimpanzees do not use hammers to opencoula nuts at Budongo, because the nuts are not available.The sur-vey turned up 39 chimpanzee rituals that are labeled as culturalvariations; 18 are illustrated below. —A.W.and C.B.

customary

customary

absent

present

customary

absent

present

absent

absent

customary

absent

absent(eco)

absent

customary

customary

habitual

habitual

absent

KIBALE

absent(eco?)

absent(eco?)

absent(eco)

absent

absent

absent

present

absent

absent

absent(eco)

absent(eco?)

absent(eco?)

absent

absent

absent

absent

habitual

absent

absent

absent(eco?)

absent

absent

absent

absent

absent

absent

absent

BOSSOUTAÏ

FOREST BUDONGOMAHALE

M-GROUPHammering nutsTo crack open nutritious coula nuts, chim-panzees use stones as rudimentary ham-mers and anvils.

Pounding with pestle With the stalks of palm trees acting asmakeshift pestles, chimpanzees can poundand deepen holes in trees.

Fishing for termitesChimpanzees insert thin, flexible strips ofbark into termite mounds to extract the in-sects,which they then eat.

Wiping ants off stick manuallyOnce the ants have swarmed almost half-way up sticks dipped into the insects’nests,chimpanzees pull the sticks through theirfists and sweep the ants into their mouths.

Eating ants directly off stickAfter a few ants climb onto sticks insertedinto the nests, chimpanzees bring the sticksdirectly to their mouths and eat the ants.

Removing bone marrowWith the help of small sticks, chimpanzeeseat the marrow found inside the long bonesof monkeys they have killed and eaten.

Sitting on leavesA few large leaves apparently serve as protec-tion when chimpanzees sit on wet ground.

Fanning fliesTo keep flies away, chimpanzees utilize leafytwigs as a kind of fan.

Tickling selfA large stone or stick can be used to probeespecially ticklish areas on a chimpanzee’sown body.

MAHALEK-GROUP

absent

absent(eco?)

customary

absent

absent

absent

absent

absent

absent

GOMBE

absent

absent

customary

customary

present

absent

absent

present

habitual

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ThrowingChimpanzees can throw objects such asstones and sticks with clear—though ofteninaccurate—aim.

Inspecting woundsWhen injured, chimpanzees touch woundswith leaves, then examine the leaves. In someinstances, chimpanzees chew the leaves first.

Clipping leavesTo attract the attention of playmates or fer-tile females, male chimpanzees noisily tearleaf blades into pieces without eating them.

Squashing parasites on leavesWhile grooming another chimpanzee, an in-dividual removes a parasite from its partner,places it on a leaf and then squashes it.

Inspecting parasitesParasites removed during grooming areplaced on a leaf in the chimpanzee’s palm;the animal inspects the insect, then eats ordiscards it.

Squashing parasites with fingersChimpanzees remove parasites from theirgrooming partners and place the tiny insectson their forearms. They then hit the bugs re-peatedly before eating them.

Clasping arms overheadTwo chimpanzees clasp hands above theirheads while grooming each other with theopposite hand.

Knocking knucklesTo attract attention during courtship, chim-panzees rap their knuckles on trees or otherhard surfaces.

Rain dancingAt the start of heavy rain,adult males performcharging displays accompanied by draggingbranches, slapping the ground, beating but-tress roots, and pant hooting.

Bossou,Guinea

Taï Forest,Ivory Coast

Budongo,Uganda

Kibale,Uganda

Gombe,Tanzania Mahale,

Tanzania

customary

absent

customary

absent

absent

absent

absent

present

absent

customary

present

customary

absent

absent

customary

habitual

customary

habitual

KIBALE

present

customary

habitual

absent

absent

absent

customary

absent

customary

present

absent

customary

absent

customary

absent

absent

absent

habitual

customary

absent

customary

unknown

unknown

absent

customary

customary

customary

BOSSOUTAÏ

FOREST BUDONGOMAHALE

M-GROUPMAHALEK-GROUP

absent

absent

customary

unknown

unknown

absent

customary

customary

customary

GOMBE

customary

present

absent

habitual

present

present

absent

habitual

customary

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one hand using short sticks, and knuck-le-knocks to attract females clearlycomes from the Taï Forest. A chimpthat leaf-grooms and hand-clasps dur-ing grooming can come from the KibaleForest or the Mahale Mountains, but ifyou notice that he also ant-fishes, thereis no doubt anymore—he comes fromMahale.

In addition, chimpanzee cultures gobeyond the mere presence or absence of

a particular behavior. For example, allchimpanzees dispatch parasites foundduring grooming a companion. But atTaï they will mash the parasites againsttheir forearms with a finger, at Gombethey squash them onto leaves, and atBudongo they put them on a leaf to in-spect before eating or discarding them.Each community has developed a uniqueapproach for accomplishing the samegoal. Alternatively, behaviors may looksimilar yet be used in different contexts:

at Mahale, males “clip” leaves noisilywith their teeth as a courtship gesture,whereas at Taï, chimpanzees incorporateleaf-clipping into drumming displays.

The implications of this new pictureof chimpanzee culture are many. Theinformation offers insight into our dis-tinctiveness as a species. When we firstpublished this work in the journal Na-ture, we found some people quite dis-turbed to realize that the characteristicthat had appeared to separate us so

The notion that the great apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and gibbons—can imitate one another might seem

unsurprising to anyone who has watched these animals playingat the zoo. But in scientific circles, the question of whether apes,well, ape, has become controversial.

Consider a young chimpanzee watching his mother crackopen a coula nut, as has been observed in the Taï Forest of WestAfrica. In most cases, the youth will eventually take up the prac-tice himself. Was this because he imitated his mother? Skepticsthink perhaps not. They argue that the mother’s attention to thenuts encouraged the youngster to focus on them as well. Oncehis attention had been drawn to the food, the young chim-panzee learned how to open the nut by trial and error, not by im-itating his mother.

Such a distinction has important implications for any discus-sion of chimpanzee cultures. Some scientists define a culturaltrait as one that is passed down not by genetic inheritance butinstead when the younger generation copies adult behavior. Ifcracking open a coula is something that chimpanzees can sim-ply figure out how to do on their own once they hold a hammerstone, then it can’t be considered partof their culture. Furthermore, if theseanimals learn exclusively by trial anderror, then chimpanzees must, in asense, reinvent the wheel each timethey tackle a new skill. No cumulativeculture can ever develop.

The clearest way to establish howchimpanzees learn is through labora-tory experiments. One of us (Whiten),in collaboration with Deborah M. Cus-tance of Goldsmiths College, Universi-ty of London, constructed artificialfruits to serve as analogues of thosethe animals must deal with in the wild(right). In a typical experiment, onegroup of chimpanzees watched acomplex technique for opening oneof the fruits, while a second group ob-served a very different method; wethen recorded the extent to which thechimpanzees had been influenced bythe method they observed. We alsoconducted similar experiments with

three-year-old human children as subjects. Our results demon-strate that six-year-old chimpanzees show imitative behaviorthat is markedly like that seen in the children, although the fideli-ty of their copying tends to be poorer.

In a different kind of experiment, one of us (Boesch), alongwith some co-workers, gave chimpanzees in the Zurich Zoo inSwitzerland hammers and nuts similar to those available in thewild. We then monitored the repertoire of behaviors displayedby the captive chimpanzees. As it turned out, the chimpanzees inthe zoo exhibited a greater range of activities than the more lim-ited and focused set of actions we had seen in the wild. We inter-preted this to mean that a wild chimpanzee’s cultural environ-ment channeled the behavior of youngsters, steering them inthe direction of the most useful skills. In the zoo, without benefitof existing traditions, the chimpanzees experimented with a hostof less useful actions.

Interestingly, some of the results from the experiments in-volving the artificial fruits converge with this idea. In one study,chimpanzees copied an entire sequence of actions they had wit-nessed, but did so only after several viewings and after trying

some alternatives. In other words,theytended to imitate what they had ob-served others doing at the expense oftheir own trial-and-error discoveries.

In our view, these findings takentogether suggest that apes do ape andthat this ability forms one strand in cul-tural transmission. Indeed, it is difficultto imagine how chimpanzees coulddevelop certain geographic variationsin activities such as ant-dipping andparasite-handling without copying es-tablished traditions. They must be imi-tating other members of their group.

We should note, however, that—just as is the case with humans—cer-tain cultural traits are no doubt passedon by a combination of imitation andsimpler kinds of social learning, suchas having one’s attention drawn touseful tools. Either way, learning fromelders is crucial to growing up as acompetent wild chimpanzee.

—A.W.and C.B.

Do Apes Ape?Recent studies show that chimpanzees and other apes can learn by imitation

The Cultures of Chimpanzees

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PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT as a juvenile chim-panzee experiments with an artificial fruit it hasbeen given to “peel” after watching others do so.Such studies help scientists determine how chim-panzees learn by imitating others.

Continued from page 63

66 Scientific American January 2001Copyright 2000 Scientific American, Inc.

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starkly from the animalworld—our capacity for cul-tural development—is not suchan absolute difference after all.

But this seems a rather misdi-rected response. The differ-ences between human customsand traditions, enriched andmediated by language as theyare, are vast in contrast withwhat we see in the chimpan-zee. The story of chimpanzeecultures sharpens our under-standing of our uniqueness,rather than threatening it inany way that need worry us.

Human achievements havemade enormous cumulativeprogress over the generations, aphenomenon Boesch and Tom-asello have dubbed the “ratcheteffect.” The idea of a hammer—oncesimply a crude stone cobble—has beenmodified and improved on countlesstimes until now we have electronicallycontrolled robot hammers in our facto-ries. Chimpanzees may show the begin-nings of the ratchet effect—some thatuse stone anvils, for example, havegone a step further, as at Bossou, wherethey wedge a stone beneath their anvilwhen it needs leveling on bumpyground—but such behavior has not be-come customary and is rudimentary in-deed beside human advancements.

The cultural capacity we share withchimpanzees also suggests an ancientancestry for the mentality that must un-derlie it. Our cultural nature did notemerge out of the blue but evolved fromsimpler beginnings. Social learning simi-lar to that of chimpanzees would ap-pear capable of sustaining the earlieststone-tool cultures of human ancestorsliving two million years ago.

Whether chimpanzees are the sole

species on the planet that shares hu-mankind’s capacity for culture is tooearly to judge: nobody has undertakenthe comprehensive research necessaryto test the idea. Early evidence hintsthat other creatures should be includedin these discussions, however. Carel P.van Schaik and his colleagues at DukeUniversity have found orangutans inSumatra that habitually use at least twodifferent kinds of tools. Orangutansmonitored for years elsewhere havenever been seen to do this.

And Hal Whitehead of DalhousieUniversity and his colleagues have be-gun to document the ways in whichpopulations of whales that sing in dif-ferent dialects also hunt in differentways. We hope that our comprehensiveapproach to documenting chimpanzeecultures may provide a template for thestudy of these other promising species.

What of the implications for chim-panzees themselves? We must highlightthe tragic loss of chimpanzees, whose

populations are being decimated justwhen we are at last coming to appreci-ate these astonishing animals more com-pletely. Populations have plummeted inthe past century and continue to fall asa result of illegal trapping, logging and,most recently, the bushmeat trade. Thelatter is particularly alarming: logginghas driven roadways into the forest thatare now used to ship wild-animalmeat—including chimpanzee meat—toconsumers as far afield as Europe. Suchdestruction threatens not only the ani-mals themselves but also a host of fasci-natingly different ape cultures.

Perhaps the cultural richness of theape may yet help in its salvation, how-ever. Some conservation efforts have al-ready altered the attitudes of some localpeople. A few organizations have be-gun to show videotapes illustrating thecognitive prowess of chimpanzees. OneZairian viewer was heard to exclaim,“Ah, this ape is so like me, I can nolonger eat him.”

www.sciam.com Scientific American January 2001 67

The Authors

ANDREW WHITEN and CHRISTOPHE BOESCH have collab-orated since 1998 on the cross-cultural study of chimpanzees.Whiten, a fellow of the British Academy, is professor of evolution-ary and developmental psychology at the University of St. Andrewsin Scotland. Boesch is co-director of the Max Planck Institute forEvolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and a professor atthe University of Leipzig. The chimpanzee field-study directors par-ticipating in the research described here are Jane Goodall, JaneGoodall Institute, Washington, D.C.; William C. McGrew, MiamiUniversity; Toshisada Nishida, Kyoto University, Japan; VernonReynolds, University of Oxford; Yukimaru Sugiyama, TokaigakuenUniversity, Japan; Caroline E. G. Tutin, University of Stirling, Scot-land; and Richard W. Wrangham, Harvard University.

Further Information

Chimpanzee Material Culture. William C. McGrew. Cam-bridge University Press, 1992.

Cultures in Chimpanzees. A. Whiten, J. Goodall, W. C. McGrew,T. Nishida, V. Reynolds, Y. Sugiyama, C.E.G. Tutin, R. W. Wrang-ham and C. Boesch in Nature, Vol. 399, pages 682–685; 1999.

Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest: Behavioral Ecology andEvolution. Christophe Boesch and Hedwige Boesch-Aschermann.Oxford University Press, 2000.

Primate Culture and Social Learning. Andrew Whiten inCognitive Science. Special issue on primate cognition, Vol. 24,pages 477–508; 2000.

Chimpanzee Cultures Web site: http://chimp.st-and.ac.uk/cultures/Wild Chimpanzee Foundation Web site: http://www.wildchimps.org

one another is a source of fasci-nation to chimpanzees in all known populations,but exactly how they deal with nuisances such asticks and lice differs. Those in East Africa, such asthe Gombe chimpanzee shown here, will some-times turn from grooming a companion’s coat to“grooming” leaves. When Gombe chimpanzeesfind parasites, they may put them on top of astack of leaves and then carefully, using theirthumbnails, squash the insects before eatingthem. At Budongo they will instead place the in-sects on leaves and inspect them before eating ordiscarding them. In the Taï Forest, however,chimpanzees do not use leaves; they place para-sites on their forearms and hit them repeatedlywith their forefingers until the insects have beensmashed. All East African communities incorpo-rate leaves in their grooming habits, suggesting acommon eastern origin to the practice.

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