Knot tying in great apes: etho-ethnology of an unusual tool behavior

Abstract

The authors intend to show in this article that, unlike what is usually said, some great apes are able to tie knots. First, they give the result of a survey on the Internet whose result has been to identify twelve “knot-maker” apes: seven orangutans, three bonobos and two chimpanzees. All of them have been reared by humans and are highly accultured anthropoids living in zoos. Second, they offer an ethnography of a knot-making orangutan, Wattana, a resident of the Ménagerie of the Jardin deśum National d’Histoire Naturelle) in Paris, who was born on 17 November 1995 at the Antwerp Zoo in Belgium. The authors show that she is able to make true knots using her hands, feet and mouth and carefully describe the process involved. They then correlate Wattana’s knots, fiber techniques and ecology of techniques with nest-making behavior and propose an ethology of the singular, at the crossroad of ethology and ethnology, to describe Wattana’s skills.