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[Josh Greenman <josh.greenman AT gmail.com>]

http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=215944&source=r_science

Chimpanzees Are Social Conformists

Research being published today by Nature (21 August) suggests that
humans are not alone in wanting to conform and be like their
neighbours but that chimpanzees also have an innate desire to be like
everyone else.

Researchers at St Andrews University, funded by the Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), with international
collaborators at Emory University in Atlanta, have demonstrated that
chimpanzee communities have developed their own particular traditions
by copying other members of their species – and that chimpanzees have
a bias towards social conformity that has previously been considered
to be a unique hallmark of human culture.

During the study the researchers artificially spread different habits
among separate groups of chimpanzees at Emory University's Yerkes
National Primate Research Center. They presented two groups of
chimpanzees with identical problems but different solutions.

The situation was something wild chimpanzees would face often; a tasty
food item was placed just out of reach, behind a blockage in a network
of pipes. A chimpanzee from each group was taught a different way to
use a stick to reach the food. Erika was taught to use the tool to
lift the blockage so the food would fall towards her while Georgia was
taught to use the stick to prod the blockage until it pushed the food
backwards so it rolled down another pipe and into her hand.

Erika and Georgia were then reunited with their respective groups and
began applying their new skills to food stuck in the pipes. The other
chimpanzees proved to be attentive learners and observed their group
'expert' and were soon using the particular technique they had watched
to obtain the food from the pipes themselves.

Professor Andrew Whiten, the research leader from St Andrews,
explained, "The chimpanzees in each group gathered around their
respective expert and observed the technique they were using. They
were quick to apply this themselves, in contrast to a third group of
chimpanzees who did not have the benefit of an expert colleague and
were not able to solve the pipe problem themselves."

The lifting technique Ericka had been taught spread in her group and
the poking technique spread in Georgia's group. When the researchers
tested the groups again two months later the difference in group
traditions was still in place. However, unexpectedly when some
chimpanzees independently discovered the method that their expert had
not been taught, they abandoned it and reverted to the norms of their
group.

Professor Whiten said, "This is the first experimental evidence for
the spread and maintenance of traditions in any primate and it makes
it likely that differences in tool use between wild chimpanzee
communities in Africa indeed reflect a simple form of culture. The
evidence that the chimpanzees knew the alternative methods but
reverted to the conventions of their group shows a level of conformity
that has only previously been seen in our own species."