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13 - Cultural diversity of nut-cracking behaviour between two populations of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Côte d’Ivoire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2019

By
Lydia V. Luncz ,
Roger Mundry ,
Serge Soiret  and
Christophe Boesch
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

Across Africa, chimpanzee communities exhibit large behavioural diversity not exclusively explained by ecological or genetic variation. However, excluding subtle environmental factors is difficult when comparing far-apart populations. Taï National Park offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of social learning on behavioural diversity. The Taï South and Djouroutou communities live only 60 km apart in a continuous ecosystem. However, these groups apply semi-different techniques when nut-cracking. Djouroutou chimpanzees crack five species of nuts, exclusively using stone tools. Taï South only cracks four of those species, using stone and wooden tools, and does not exploit abundant Sacoglottis gabonensis nuts. Moreover, this group uses stone and wooden tools. Here, we compared tool material availability and tool choice. Our results showed that both groups did not differ in available nut trees and access to different materials. The communities responded to these ecological conditions differently than predicted if availability was the only factor responsible for shaping behaviour. This highlights the potential role of cultural behaviour in wild chimpanzee feeding ecology.

Keywords

ChimpanzeesTool useConformityBehavioural diversityGroup differences
Type
Chapter
Information
The Chimpanzees of the Taï Forest
40 Years of Research
 , pp. 194 - 220
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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