PSYT 400D2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Prefrontal Cortex, Cultra, Cultural Universal
Document Summary
Yes and no: it is universal, video: scientists have made an unprecedented observation about the way that chimpanzees transmit knowledge from one individual to another in the wild. Chimps often use leaves like sponges to drink water, but here you can see the alpha male chimp grabbing moss to add to his leaf to absorb more water. Hobaiter observed how other chimps who saw that innovation started doing it themselves until it had spread across the group. Hobaiter and her colleagues map this spread and created a model for it in the study. But in both those cases there was human intervention of some kind where this most recent discovery was purely in the wild and it"s also worth noting macaques and chimps are pretty distant relatives. Scientists have know for a while that chimps were capable of cultural learning having previously observed it in captivity.
