Abstract
Culture, while long viewed as exclusively human, has now been demonstrated across diverse taxa and contexts. However, most animal culture data are constrained to well-studied, habituated groups. This is the case for chimpanzees, arguably the most ‘cultural’ non-human species. While much progress has been made charting wild chimpanzees' cultural repertoire, large gaps remain in our knowledge of the majority of the continent's chimpanzees. Furthermore, few studies have compared neighbouring communities, despite such comparisons providing the strongest evidence for culture, and few have studied communities living in anthropogenic habitats although their culture is in imminent danger of disappearing. Here we combine direct, indirect and remote methods, including camera traps, to study, over 2 years, four unhabituated neighbouring chimpanzee communities inhabiting human-impacted habitats in Cantanhez NP, Guinea-Bissau. From traces collected during 1089 km of reconnaissance walks and 4197 videos from 56 camera trap locations, we identified 18 putative cultural traits. These included some noteworthy novel behaviours for these communities, and behaviours possibly new to the species. We created preliminary behavioural profiles for each community, and found inter-community differences spanning tool use, communication, and social behaviour, demonstrating the importance of comparing neighbouring communities and of studying previously neglected communities including those inhabiting anthropogenic landscapes.
Highlights
Animal culture, defined as patterns of behaviour that are group-typical and transmitted, at least in part, through social learning [1], is argued to be a source of adaptive behaviour: individuals can more readily discover the solution to a problem if they attend to or copy the behaviour of other individuals facing the same problem, allowing them to better exploit their natural and social environment
During the study period a total of 1089 km were walked over 195 recces, and camera traps were set up in 56 locations, for a combined total of 9695 days, yielding a total of 4197 videos of chimpanzees
No evidence of tool-assisted nut-cracking or insectivory was confirmed for Cantanhez National Park (CNP); a previous study that analysed hundreds of faecal samples in Caiquene-Cadique found no macroscopic evidence of insectivory [39]
Summary
Animal culture, defined as patterns of behaviour that are group-typical and transmitted, at least in part, through social learning [1], is argued to be a source of adaptive behaviour: individuals can more readily discover the solution to a problem if they attend to or copy the behaviour of other individuals facing the same problem, allowing them to better exploit their natural and social environment. The study of animal culture can inform researchers of different ways animals adapt to their environment (e.g. foraging techniques, migratory patterns, communication of information), and might be a valuable tool when planning conservation strategies [2,4–6]. The first evidence for animal culture was described over 70 years ago where the transmission of new behaviour (milk-bottle opening) by titmice (Parus sp.) was tracked across the United Kingdom [7]. Evidence of animal culture has been identified in numerous taxa, from fish to meerkats, cetaceans and apes (e.g. [10–14]), both in the wild and in captivity
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