Chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, recognize successful actions, but fail to imitate them
Publication Type: |
Journal Article |
Year of Publication: |
2013 |
Authors: |
David Buttelmann, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, Michael Tomasello |
Publication/Journal: |
Animal Behaviour |
Keywords: |
attention, chimpanzee, intention understanding, nonhuman primate, pan troglodytes, social learning |
ISBN: |
0003-3472 |
Abstract:
Cultural transmission, by definition, involves some form of social learning. Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates clearly engage in some forms of social learning enabling some types of cultural transmission, but there is controversy about whether they copy the actual bodily actions of demonstrators. In this study chimpanzees recognized when a human actor was using particular bodily actions that had led to successful problem solving in the past. But then when it was their turn to solve the problem, they did not reproduce the human actor’s bodily actions themselves, even though they were clearly capable of producing the movements. These results help us identify more precisely key reasons for the differences in the social learning and cultural transmission of humans and other primates.