Bees and chimpanzees can learn socially, just like humans Sciences

Primates have culture, it just is Something acceptable For years. Example They are groups of orangutans that live on both banks of the Kabuas River, on the island of Borneo (Indonesia). Its width is 150 metres, which is unsuitable for these animals, which have developed a completely different diet on the two banks. Although they eat roughly the same within each community, when comparing riverbanks, foods differ by 60%. These cultural customs can be passed down from generation to generation with amazing fidelity. In Banin, in Ivory Coast, archaeological evidence has been found that chimpanzees from that region used the same type of stones that were used by nutcrackers 4,000 years ago and that their descendants now use for the same task. In Brazil, similar remains were found indicating that a group of capuchin monkeys had been opening cashew nuts with the same tools for more than seven centuries.

As part of the scientific process that leads to the recognition of increasingly sophisticated capabilities in animals, Today it was published In the magazine The nature of human behavior An article examining their capacity for cultural accumulation, which is characteristic of humans, once it is assumed that chimpanzees (and many other primates) have culture. “A metal clip to hold some papers, something very simple, is only possible because we are capable of cultural accumulation. There is probably no one on the planet today who has all the knowledge necessary to produce a clip, from mineral extraction to everything else. “This knowledge is distributed among many people and has been accumulated over many generations,” explains Josip Cole, a primatologist at the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom, and co-author of the study.

Until now, it has been suggested that although chimpanzees learn from their environment what to eat or how to crack almonds, with little time, they could have developed these abilities without help. However, they would not be able to learn new techniques beyond their own abilities, which is necessary to accumulate complex knowledge that would, in the long run, allow them to create objects beyond the capabilities of a single individual such as a metal paper clip.

To find out whether chimpanzees can learn complex processes beyond their individual abilities, the researchers tested 66 people. To get some peanuts, the animals had to interact with a type of vending machine that required several steps to deliver the reward. They had to take a wooden ball, pull out a box and keep it open, put the ball in it and then close the box until the peanuts fell out. The chimpanzee tried to solve the puzzle for three months, to no avail. However, after humans taught two chimpanzees how to overcome the problem and demonstrated their skills in front of their peers, 14 more were able to obtain peanuts. They learned it from their peers.

Although this is not conclusive evidence, the result shows that they can learn certain behaviors beyond their reach that would give them the ability to continue accumulating innovations and transmitting them between generations, even though this cultural accumulation is not currently defined in nature. ..

Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives and their behaviors can be interpreted as a living fossil from which to reconstruct the history of the human mind, but social learning does not appear to be an outgrowth of later stages of evolution. In a work released today In the magazine natureA group of researchers shows that bumblebees can also acquire skills that they do not develop on their own, even if they are allowed to try for a while by observing how others do it. In an experiment similar to that of a chimpanzee, a group of bees faced a test that, once passed, would result in a sweet reward. Although they couldn't solve the puzzle on their own, when some bumblebees were trained to pass the test and demonstrate their skills to their peers, other insects began performing all the necessary tasks in the correct sequence to claim their prize.

In nature, no bee behaviors have been identified that are cultural, and this makes researchers wonder why an ability with such great potential would appear if it is not being used. Alice Bridges, a researcher at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom) and the first signatory to the article, believes that the absence of evidence that bumblebees have a cumulative culture does not mean that it does not exist. “It is possible that an important part of their behavior, which we generally consider to be innate, has some cultural component that we have not identified because we have not looked for it and have assumed it to be innate and simple because we assume that insects are simple. Another possibility is that although bees have the ability They can solve problems, learn socially, or display flexible behavior because it is useful to their daily lives, but they don't use those skills to build culture because they don't have a need for them. Cumulative or not, in building cars or bicycles like humans, because they can actually fly.”

Although experiments indicate that the ability to learn difficult tasks, which is the basis of growing culture, appears to be something common to all animal species, it is clear that humans have evolved it in an exceptional way. Perhaps, at some point in human evolutionary history, our ancestors faced circumstances in which cultural accumulation favored their survival. Now, in addition to accumulating small innovations, Homo sapiens is making revolutionary changes, such as moving from internal combustion cars to electric cars. “It's the same solution as for transportation, but the system is completely different,” Cole explains. “We have not yet found this kind of radical and revolutionary change in chimpanzees,” he adds.

In integrating innovations, the role of exceptional individuals is also interesting, who are able to do things for the first time that will later be integrated into the common culture. On the one hand, these types of brains, which are responsible for a large number of novelties and have been seen in several species of primates, are rare. Their new ways may not always be embraced enthusiastically. “Culture is a strange thing, because it arises from the tension between two forces, between things that continue to be done as they have always been done, because if that did not happen, they would not be transmitted, there would be no culture, and the force that allows it is the changes that will be introduced and that will be adopted.” Changing culture is a struggle between individuals who call for change and those who do not change [que favorece la inercia] Of the group,” Cole says. Without going into this new animal ability, it seems that it is no longer an exclusively human trait, as was once the case with the use of tools, intentional communication, or the ability to retain specific memories from the past.

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