Abstract
Digging for underground storage organs of plants has been reported in various populations of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). However, it is unknown so far whether chimpanzees display lateral biases in manual digging as direct observations of this behavior are still lacking. It was therefore the aim of the present study to assess, for the first time, hand preferences for digging in a group of nine captive chimpanzees. We found that with only one exception, all individuals engaged in manual digging for buried food. Five individuals displayed a significant right-hand preference, two a significant left-hand preference, and one was ambidextrous. No apparent differences between males and females were found with regard to the direction or strength of hand preferences for manual digging. Only one out of four parent–offspring pairs was congruent in their preferred hand for manual digging. Three of the eight chimpanzees who dug manually also used tools in order to excavate buried food. Among those three individuals, one displayed a significant right-, one a significant left-hand preference, and one was ambidextrous. Only one of these three chimpanzees was consistent in preferring the same hand for manual and tool digging. The present findings are in line with the notion that chimpanzees display significant hand preferences at the individual level for haptic-guided behaviors, with a tendency for the right hand.
Highlights
Chimpanzees in the wild are known to exploit food sources that require either manual processing or the use of tools in order to access and/or process them
With only one exception, all chimpanzees engaged in manual digging for hidden food
To the best of our knowledge, the present study reports the first direct observations on preferential hand use in chimpanzees for digging
Summary
Chimpanzees in the wild are known to exploit food sources that require either manual processing or the use of tools in order to access and/or process them. Wild chimpanzees have been reported to excavate underground storage organs of plants (McGrew and Marchant 1997; Hernandez-Aguilar et al 2007; Hockings et al 2010; Lanjouw 2002) This digging behavior is interesting from an evolutionary point of view, as it has been hypothesized that underground storage organs were used by early hominins as fallback foods in the initial colonization of savanna habitats (Laden and Wrangham 2005; Wrangham et al 1999). Foraging for and consuming underground storage organs of plants is a behavior currently
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