Abstract
Imitation and tool use are expressions of intelligence that have, at one time or another, played central roles in evolutionary reconstructions of human intelligence. It is fairly well established that both occur in great apes, but questions remain over the relations between the two. This relation is critical because imitation could offer a powerful process for the social transmission of tool related skills. We explored the relation between imitation and tool use with data from our observational study on spontaneous imitation in the rehabilitant orangutans in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Indonesian Borneo. From 395 hours of observation and other reports on 26 orangutans, we identified 354 incidents of imitative behavior; 48 of these involved tool use where features of the behavior strongly suggested that the tool skills were imitatively acquired. In this paper, we discuss these incidents: the qualities of this “imitative” tool use, evidence that it was imitatively rather than experientially acquired, and the implications of these findings for models of primate and human intelligence.
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