Culture in great apes: using intricate complexity in feeding skills to trace the evolutionary origin of human technical prowess

Abstract

Geographical cataloguing of traits, as used in human ethnography, has led to the description of 'culture' in some non-human great apes. Culture, in these terms, is detected as a pattern of local ignorance resulting from environmental constraints on knowledge transmission. However, in many cases, the geographical variations may alternatively be explained by ecology. Social transmission of information can reliably be identified in many other animal species, by experiment or distinctive patterns in distribution; but the excitement of detecting culture in great apes derives from the possibility of understanding the evolution of cumulative technological culture in humans. Given this interest, I argue that great ape research should concentrate on technically complex behaviour patterns that are ubiquitous within a local population; in these cases, a wholly non-social ontogeny is highly unlikely. From this perspective, cultural transmission has an important role in the elaborate feeding skills of all species of great ape, in conveying the 'gist' or organization of skills. In contrast, social learning is unlikely to be responsible for local stylistic differences, which are apt to reflect sensitive adaptations to ecology.

Figure 1

Flow diagram showing the overall organization of behaviour and the apparent decision processes used in Saba florida fruit-processing (Corp & Byrne 2002). Actions are represented by boxes and decision processes by diamonds; when the underlying factor dictating a decision is unknown, this is denoted by a question mark. Square brackets enclose a series of options that each serves to achieve certain actions; choice between them is presumably a function of local stimulus conditions, rather than contributing to the overall complexity of the task organization.