Study: Chimps Learn How to Use New Tools From Other Chimps

A new study from PLOS Biology found that chimpanzees can learn group-specific behavioral traits from each other, widely considered a prerequisite for human-style culture. The results suggest the foundations of human culture can be traced back to our common ancestry with apes.

Researchers in Uganda noticed that a few chimps in a group started using new kinds of sponges to drink water. Usually, chimps use clumps of leaves to extract the water, but the team observed one chimp using moss instead. Once the other chimps saw him using moss, seven other chimps made and used moss sponges over a six-day period. There was also another variation on the leaf-sponge (re-using an old leaf sponge) that also spread through the group.

“Basically, if you saw it done, you learned how to do it, and if you didn’t you didn’t,” lead researcher Dr. Catherine Hobaiter told the BBC. “It was just this wonderfully clear example of social learning that no one had [witnessed] in the wild before.”