Chimps show “social conformity,” researchers find

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http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050822_conformfrm.htm

 

 

 

 

Chimps show " social conformity, " researchers find

 

Aug. 22, 2005

Courtesy Nature

and World Science staff

 

Social conformity—a desire to act, talk, dress and even think like

everyone else—is a human tendency that has helped glue societies

together for ages, while perennially irritating some of the greatest

thinkers, scientists and artists.

 

Now, researchers have found we share this monkey-see-monkey-do mindset

with—perhaps unsurprisingly—chimps. This shows conformity has deep

evolutionary roots, the researchers claim.

 

The findings, by U.S. and British scientists, are published in the

current online edition of the research journal Nature.

 

During the study, three groups of chimps at the Yerkes National

Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., were

presented with a problem also known to their wild cousins: some

enticing food was stuck just out of reach, behind a blockage.

 

This was achieved by a system of tubes the researchers called the

Pan-pipes.

 

Unseen by their group-mates, one chimp from each of two of the groups

was shown a different way to use a stick to retrieve the food. One was

taught to use the tool to lift the blockage up so the food fell

towards her. The other was trained instead to poke the blockage,

pushing it so the food fell backwards and rolled down another pipe

into her waiting hand.

 

These two chimps, who were high-ranking members of their groups, were

then reunited with their respective groups, the researchers recounted.

They soon started to apply their newly-learned techniques to the

Pan-pipes task.

 

The researchers said they wanted to find out whether the other chimps

would learn by observation the technique used by their local expert,

and thus establish different traditions in the two groups.

 

" Chimpanzees in the wild show numerous local traditions described as

`ape culture,' " said Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in

Fife, U.K, one of the researchers. " But it is almost impossible to

prove that these traditions are actually passed on by each chimpanzee

learning from others, " as is the case with humans. " It is hard to do

the necessary experiments with wild chimpanzees. "

 

The chimps in the experiment proved keen learners, according to the

scientists. Members of the chimp groups gathered around their local

experts, watched attentively and learned the technique.

 

But this wasn't true of the third group of chimps, which didn't have

the benefit of a local expert and was left to solve the task on its

own. Its members couldn't retrieve food from the pipes.

 

In contrast, in the first experimental group the expert's " lift "

technique was soon adopted, while the " poke " method spread in the

second group, the scientists said. When tested two months later, this

difference in group traditions persisted, the researchers found. This

is the first experimental evidence for the spread and maintenance of

traditions in any primate, they claimed.

 

Chimps " copy members of their own species and they develop different

traditions by doing so, " said the university's Victoria Horner,

another of the researchers. " It makes it likely differences in tool

use between wild chimpanzee communities in Africa indeed reflect a

form of culture and establishes another link between human and

chimpanzee societies. "

 

A few members of each group independently discovered the alternative

method for freeing food from the Pan-pipes, the researchers said. But

this knowledge didn't change group traditions: most of these chimps

reverted to the norm set by their local expert. " Choosing the group

norm over the alternative method shows a level of conformity we

usually associate only with our own species, " said Horner.

 

" These results suggest an ancient origin for the cultural conformism

that is so evident in humans, " said Emory University's Frans de Waal,

another member of the research team. " Further research may reveal this

tendency to be more widespread in the animal kingdom. "

 

The findings aren't the only recent research to find unexpected

commonalities between human and primate societies. These commonalities

sometimes involve cultural tendencies that some of us view with contempt.

 

For instance, one recent study concluded that monkeys may have a

version of " celebrity-gazing " evident in humans. Monkeys in that study

were found to prefer looking at higher-ranking members of their group,

rather than lower-ranking ones. Interestingly, in the conformity

study, the chimp chosen to be each group's expert was a high-ranking

female.

 

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