Prestigious Chimps and the Emergence of Cultural Innovation
Category: Great Apes
A new study in PLoS ONE by Victoria Horner, Darby Proctor, Kristin E. Bonnie, Andrew Whiten, and Frans de Waal suggests that prestige is an important factor in other primates as well. By employing a simple behavioral experiment these researchers demonstrated that chimpanzees, when given a choice between two nearly identical tasks, will choose the one they previously witnessed a high-ranking member of the troop perform.
Posted by EMJ at 8:25 AM • • 0 TrackBacks
