Developmental perspectives on great ape traditions

Abstract

Introduction Interest in nonhuman primate culture arose primarily because of the insights promised into human culture, given the likelihood that evolutionary continuities link the two. Concepts of human culture are not directly applicable to nonhuman primates, however, because nonhuman primates do not share all the capacities deemed intrinsic to human culture. Scholars interested in comparative evolutionary questions, therefore, set aside features considered beyond the reach of nonhuman primates in order to focus on what is taken as the core feature of culture: a collective system of shared, learned practices. The focal phenomena in studies of nonhuman primate culture are then its products, enduring behavioral traditions, and the processes that generate them, social influences on learning operating at the group level over long periods of time (e.g., Donald, 1991; Kummer, 1971; McGrew, 1998; Nishida, 1987). It would be surprising, in fact, if such traditions were not prominent in the lives of nonhuman primates. Nonhuman primates typically rely on intricate forms of sociality for survival (Humphrey, 1976; Jolly, 1966; Smuts et al. , 1987) and on lifelong learning for much of their expertise (Fobes and King, 1982; King, 1994; Parker and Gibson, 1990). How widely practices must be shared, how much they must owe to social influence, and how long they must endure to qualify as “traditions” remain matters of debate (see Ch. 1). Great apes stand out in this enterprise because their traditions may be more complex than those of other nonhuman primates (Parker and Russon, 1996; Whiten et al. , 1999).