scholarly journals Young children spontaneously invent wild great apes’ tool-use behaviours

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1825) ◽  
pp. 20152402 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Reindl ◽  
S. R. Beck ◽  
I. A. Apperly ◽  
C. Tennie
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Great Similarity ◽  
Physical Cognition ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Over Time

The variety and complexity of human-made tools are unique in the animal kingdom. Research investigating why human tool use is special has focused on the role of social learning: while non-human great apes acquire tool-use behaviours mostly by individual (re-)inventions, modern humans use imitation and teaching to accumulate innovations over time. However, little is known about tool-use behaviours that humans can invent individually, i.e. without cultural knowledge. We presented 2- to 3.5-year-old children with 12 problem-solving tasks based on tool-use behaviours shown by great apes. Spontaneous tool use was observed in 11 tasks. Additionally, tasks which occurred more frequently in wild great apes were also solved more frequently by human children. Our results demonstrate great similarity in the spontaneous tool-use abilities of human children and great apes, indicating that the physical cognition underlying tool use shows large overlaps across the great ape species. This suggests that humans are neither born with special physical cognition skills, nor that these skills have degraded due to our species’ long reliance of social learning in the tool-use domain.

Cradle Under the Canopy The Forest Origins of our Ape and Hominin Ancestors and the Tropical Forest Forays of the Genus Homo

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Last Common Ancestor ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Tropical Environments ◽  
Genus Homo ◽  
In Captivity ◽  
Game Hunting ◽  
The Tropics

The evolutionary proximity of the non-human great apes to us is often stressed in studies of animals, such as Kanzi, a bonobo (Pan paniscus) bred in captivity, that demonstrate their capacity to undertake tool-use and even utilize and comprehend language (Toth et al., 1993; Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin, 1996; Schick et al., 1999). Likewise, studies of chimpanzees (Pan spp.) have highlighted the similarity of their emotional and empathetic capacities to those of humans (Parr et al., 2005; Campbell and de Waal, 2014). However, as noted by Savage- Rumbaugh and Lewin (1996), in palaeoanthropology and archaeology more broadly, the emergence of the hominin clade and, later, our species, is referenced in terms of the ‘chasm’ between ourselves and other extant great apes. Indeed, despite our genetic and behavioural proximity, extant non-human great ape taxa are often popularly characterized as living fossils of how we used to be. They are used as analogues for the subsistence and behaviour of the Last Common Ancestor (LCA) of humans and non-human great apes (Clutton-Brock and Harvey, 1977; Goodall, 1986; Foley and Lewin, 2004) and it is almost as if the fact that they still occupy the tropical environments in which these hominoids likely evolved (though see Elton, 2008) allows them to be treated as static comparisons (Figure 3.1). Since Darwin wrote the Descent of Man in 1871, the forests of the tropics, and their modern non-human great ape inhabitants, have tended to be perceived as being left behind as the hominin clade gained increasingly ‘human’ traits of tool-use, medium to large game hunting, and upright locomotion on open ‘savanna’ landscapes (Dart, 1925; Potts, 1998; Klein, 1999). From this perspective it is perhaps unsurprising that tropical forests are seen as alien to the genus Homo and its closest hominin ancestors.

Keas rely on social information in a tool use task but abandon it in favour of overt exploration

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gyula Koppany Gajdon ◽  
Laurent Amann ◽  
Ludwig Huber
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Reversal Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Visual Feature ◽  
Physical Cognition ◽  
Risk Environment ◽  
Chance Performance ◽  
Initial Preference

To what extent do keas, Nestor notabilis, learn from each other? We tested eighteen captive keas, New Zealand parrots, in a tool use task involving visual feature discrimination and social learning. The keas were presented with two adjacent tubes, each containing a physically distinct baited platform. One platform could be collapsed by insertion of a block into the tube to release the bait; the other platform could not be collapsed. In contrast to birds that acted on their own (“individual learners”), birds that could observe a demonstrator bird operated the collapsible platform first. However, they soon changed their behaviour to inserting blocks indiscriminately in either tube. When we reversed the collapsibility of the platforms, only adult observers but neither their demonstrators that had individually learnt nor the juveniles immediately altered their former preference. Observers, however, did not simply reverse their initial preference but rather moved to and then stayed at a chance performance as to where to insert a block first. In conclusion, the keas' overt exploration soon overrode the effect of social learning. We argue that such behaviour might help keas to find more efficient extractive foraging techniques in their native variable, low-risk environment. Keywords: tool use behaviour; social learning; reversal learning; physical cognition

The effect of demonstrator reward on social learning of operant key pecking by domestic hens

2001 ◽  
Vol 2001 ◽  
pp. OC2-OC2
Author(s):  
C.M. Sherwin ◽  
C.M. Heyes ◽  
C. Leeb ◽  
C.J. Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Naive Animal ◽  
Key Pecking ◽  
Maladaptive Behaviours ◽  
Novel Behaviour

Social learning is said to occur when social interaction facilitates the acquisition of a novel pattern of behaviour. It usually takes the form of an experienced animal (the demonstrator) performing a behaviour such that a naive animal (the observer) subsequently expresses the same novel behaviour, earlier or more completely than it would have done using individual learning. Social learning is involved in the transmission of a great variety of behaviours, e.g. tool-use, food preferences, and has also been implicated in maladaptive behaviours such as stereotypies in voles. In studies of social learning, the observers usually see the demonstrators receive a reward for performing the required behaviour. But, the role of the reward has rarely been investigated and results have been equivocal. Understanding the role of demonstrator reward on social learning is necessary to assess the cognitive abilities of individuals of different species, and aids understanding of the transmission of maladaptive behaviours.

scholarly journals The cognitive bases of human tool use

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krist Vaesen
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Executive Control ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Nonhuman Primates ◽  
Body Schema ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Hand Eye Coordination ◽  
The Face

AbstractThis article has two goals. The first is to assess, in the face of accruing reports on the ingenuity of great ape tool use, whether and in what sense human tool use still evidences unique, higher cognitive ability. To that effect, I offer a systematic comparison between humans and nonhuman primates with respect to nine cognitive capacities deemed crucial to tool use: enhanced hand-eye coordination, body schema plasticity, causal reasoning, function representation, executive control, social learning, teaching, social intelligence, and language. Since striking differences between humans and great apes stand firm in eight out of nine of these domains, I conclude that human tool use still marks a major cognitive discontinuity between us and our closest relatives. As a second goal of the paper, I address the evolution of human technologies. In particular, I show how the cognitive traits reviewed help to explain why technological accumulation evolved so markedly in humans, and so modestly in apes.

scholarly journals From sharing food to sharing information

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 136-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Burkart ◽  
Eloisa Guerreiro Martins ◽  
Fabia Miss ◽  
Yvonne Zürcher
Keyword(s):  
Cooperative Breeding ◽  
Vocal Communication ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Cognitive Component ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Cooperative Enterprise ◽  
Share Information

Abstract Language is a cognitively demanding human trait, but it is also a fundamentally cooperative enterprise that rests on the motivation to share information. Great apes possess many of the cognitive prerequisites for language, but largely lack the motivation to share information. Callitrichids (including marmosets and tamarins) are highly vocal monkeys that are more distantly related to humans than great apes are, but like humans, they are cooperative breeders and all group members help raising offspring. Among primates, this rearing system is correlated with proactive prosociality, which can be expressed as motivation to share information. We therefore propose that the unique coincidence of these two components in humans set the stage for language evolution: The cognitive component inherited from our great ape-like ancestors, and the motivational one added convergently as a result of cooperative breeding. We evaluate this scenario based on a review of callitrichd vocal communication and show that furthermore, they possess many of the mechanistic elements emphasized by the mirror system hypothesis of language evolution. We end by highlighting how more systematic phylogenetic comparisons will enable us to further promote our understanding of the role of cooperative breeding during language evolution.

scholarly journals Exploring the role of individual learning in animal tool-use

PeerJ ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. e9877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Bandini ◽  
Claudio Tennie
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Animal Species ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
The Other ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
The Individual

The notion that tool-use is unique to humans has long been refuted by the growing number of observations of animals using tools across various contexts. Yet, the mechanisms behind the emergence and sustenance of these tool-use repertoires are still heavily debated. We argue that the current animal behaviour literature is biased towards a social learning approach, in which animal, and in particular primate, tool-use repertoires are thought to require social learning mechanisms (copying variants of social learning are most often invoked). However, concrete evidence for a widespread dependency on social learning is still lacking. On the other hand, a growing body of observational and experimental data demonstrates that various animal species are capable of acquiring the forms of their tool-use behaviours via individual learning, with (non-copying) social learning regulating the frequencies of the behavioural forms within (and, indirectly, between) groups. As a first outline of the extent of the role of individual learning in animal tool-use, a literature review of reports of the spontaneous acquisition of animal tool-use behaviours was carried out across observational and experimental studies. The results of this review suggest that perhaps due to the pervasive focus on social learning in the literature, accounts of the individual learning of tool-use forms by naïve animals may have been largely overlooked, and their importance under-examined.

scholarly journals Naive, captive long-tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis fascicularis ) fail to individually and socially learn pound-hammering, a tool-use behaviour

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 171826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Bandini ◽  
Claudio Tennie
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Macaca Fascicularis ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
Specific Technique ◽  
Learning Conditions ◽  
The Individual

A subspecies of long-tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis aurea; Mfa ) has been reported to use stone tools and a specific technique to process nuts in Southeast Asia, a behaviour known as ‘pound-hammering’. The aim of this study was to examine the development of pound-hammering in long-tailed macaques: whether this behavioural form can be individually learnt or whether it has to rely on some forms of social learning. Given the absence of Mfa from captivity, long-tailed macaques of a highly related subspecies ( Macaca fascicularis fascicularis; Mff ) were experimentally tested by providing them with the ecological materials necessary to show pound-hammering. A baseline was first carried out to observe whether pound-hammering would emerge spontaneously without social information. As this was not the case, different degrees of social information, culminating in a full demonstration of the behaviour, were provided. None of the subjects ( n  = 31) showed pound-hammering in any of the individual or social learning conditions. Although these data do not support the hypothesis that individual learning underlies this behaviour, no evidence was found that (at least) Mff learn pound-hammering socially either. We propose that other—potentially interacting—factors may determine whether this behaviour emerges in the various subspecies of long-tailed macaques, and provide a novel methodology to test the role of social and individual learning in the development of animal tool-use.

scholarly journals Even under majority influence, great apes fail to copy novel actions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Neadle ◽  
Jackie Chappell ◽  
Zanna Clay ◽  
Claudio Tennie
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Great Ape ◽  
Spontaneous Action ◽  
Valid Evidence ◽  
Majority Influence

It remains unclear when and why the ability to copy actions evolved and also its uniqueness to humans. Thus far, a lack of valid evidence for spontaneous action copying by other apes supports the view that only humans spontaneously copy actions. However, wild apes have access to multiple demonstrators and have been demonstrated to be affected by majority influences, thus raising the possibility that ape action copying might require a majority ratio of demonstrators to observers. We tested for spontaneous ape action copying across all four non-human great ape species using a demonstrator majority. Nineteen captive mother-reared apes (across 4 species) were tested (Raage=9-52; Mage=18.63; ♀=14; ♂=5). All failed to copy the demonstrated actions, despite observing it in a majority influence condition. We conclude that culture in non-human great apes is more likely supported by variants of social learning which regulate frequencies, rather than forms, of observed behaviours.

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