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28 - Temporal cognition in Taï chimpanzees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2019

By
Karline R.L. Janmaat
Edited by
Christophe Boesch  and
Roman Wittig
Edited in association with
Catherine Crockford ,
Linda Vigilant ,
Tobias Deschner  and
Fabian Leendertz
Christophe Boesch
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Roman Wittig
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Catherine Crockford
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Linda Vigilant
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Tobias Deschner
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionäre Anthropologie, Germany
Fabian Leendertz
Affiliation:
Robert Koch-Institut, Germany
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Summary

Despite appealing support for theories that argue that social complexity is the main force driving primate brain-size evolution, it is still unclear how great apes were able to afford the evolution of larger and more expensive brains than sympatric species. Comparative phylogenetic studies suggest that the costs of evolutionary brain enlargement were overcome by a permanent increase in net energy intake, renewing interest in the role of ecological complexity in primate brain-size evolution. As relatively larger-brained primates, like chimpanzees, show less seasonality in their net energy intake than smaller-brained species, larger brains are proposed to provide a ‘cognitive behavioural flexibility’ that facilitates the consumption of nutritious foods during periods of food scarcity (cognitive buffer hypothesis). To date, it remains unclear what this cognitive flexibility entails. In this chapter, I will provide evidence for a variety of mechanisms of temporal cognition that chimpanzees employ to gain first access to newly ripened, energy-rich fruit in a competitive and complex rainforest environment.

Keywords

Intuitive statisticsLong-term memoryFuture planningBotanical knowledgeForaging cognition
Type
Chapter
Information
The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest
40 Years of Research
 , pp. 451 - 466
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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