Learning from conspecifics

A puzzle box with peanuts posed a major challenge for two groups of chimpanzees in Zambia. Sarah DeTroy - Chimpanzees that are unable to figure out a complex puzzle on their own, are capable of learning the solution from other chimps that were trained to solve it. This is the conclusion reached by an international research team from Utrecht University, the University of St Andrews and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology as part of a study conducted with groups of chimpanzees in Zambia. This study demonstrates, for the first time, that chimpanzees, like humans, can acquire skills from one another that they cannot innovate themselves. Chimpanzees use sticks to catch termites. Exactly how they use those sticks varies by group. In some groups, for example, the great apes directly put the sticks laden with insects into their mouths.