Experiments have shown the ability of chimpanzees to cultural progress: monkeys use the achievements of others to solve new, more complex problems.
The achievements of science, art, technology, and just the personal experience of people are based on the achievements and experience of the past. Culture is cumulative, passed down from generation to generation. This allows descendants not to search again for solutions to the same problems as their ancestors, but to turn to new ones.
Until now, it has been shown that only baboons and pigeons are capable of such cultural accumulation. However, Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews in Scotland and his colleagues showed in an experiment that cumulative culture is possible in chimpanzees. The article of scientists is published by the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
For this, containers with tasty juice were installed right behind the fence of the enclosure where the animals were kept. The monkeys could reach it with a long drinking straw. In addition to straws, they were given tubes of different lengths and diameters - they could also get to the juice, although not so easily. Gradually, the easiest-to-use tools were removed, and the monkeys were forced to learn more and more complex ways to feast on juice.
For example, the most complex tool had to be first unscrewed, removed from the fasteners and spread out in length. Chimpanzees, when faced with such a device for the first time, were unable to cope with it. However, in one of the experimental groups of animals, scientists themselves taught one of the monkeys to use a complex folding tool. Other members of the group, by imitating her actions, also learned to cope with the uncomfortable pipe.
But progress in other groups did not stand still. Scientists noticed that chimpanzees found a solution to a complex problem using partial solutions found before them. One animal in the group found a way to unscrew the tube, the second - to remove the fasteners from it, the third - to unfold: achievements accumulated, leading to new achievements.
The authors emphasize that such cumulative progress developed only when the animals were faced with "ecological changes", which in this case were created by artificial conditions of the experiment.
Sergey Vasiliev
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