#CHIMPANZEE CRACK#

'In one national park, chimps are known for fishing algae. (Their 'gargantuan efforts' produced a sample size that was 'unimaginable just a few years ago,' says Van Schaik, who was not involved in the new study.)Īll in all, the researchers tallied 31 behaviors that could be called cultural. They combined those data with published observations from 106 additional chimpanzee groups. Kühl and Ammie Kalan, another primatologist at the Max Planck Institute, worked with more than 70 co-authors to collect data on chimpanzee behaviors from 46 populations that hadn't previously been studied, part of a larger project to study cultural behaviors in chimpanzees.

But it has been hard to collect enough data to test the hypothesis.Ī huge effort to catalog behaviors in 144 chimpanzee communities now suggests Van Schaik's hypothesis is right. ( Van Schaik studied cultural behaviors in orangutans.) For example, a population may lose important traditions when a key resource it involved-like kola nuts-becomes scarce, or when fewer experienced group members are alive to pass on the behavior. Nearly 2 decades ago, primatologist Carel van Schaik, an emeritus professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, proposed that human impacts like habitat destruction and poaching could wipe out key behaviors in great apes. 'A lot of conservation effort is focused on species diversity and genetic diversity, but we need to look at cultural diversity as well,' says Hjalmar Kühl, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who helped lead the study. The authors say 'chimpanzee cultural heritage sites' may be needed to protect key behaviors.

These behaviors include adaptations that can be crucial for the animals' survival-but chimp groups living near people have fewer such behaviors, according to the study.

#CHIMPANZEE CRACK#

Now, a new study suggests human activity may also rob chimp populations of their cultures.Ĭhimpanzees perform distinct behaviors, such as using tools to crack nuts or collect termites, that are passed on from one generation to the next, like human culture. Logging, hunting, and epidemics have helped push chimpanzee populations to the brink across their range in West and Central Africa.

When chimpanzees encounter humans, it's usually bad news for the chimps.

Chimpanzee