Abstract
Elaborate manual skills of food processing are known in several species of great ape; but their manner of acquisition is controversial. Local, “cultural” traditions show the influence of social learning, but it is uncertain whether this includes the ability to imitate the organization of behavior. Dispute has centered on whether program-level imitation contributes to the acquisition of feeding techniques in gorillas. Here, we show that captive western gorillas at Port Lympne, Kent, have developed a group-wide habit of feeding on nettles, using two techniques. We compare their nettle processing behavior with that of wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda. Both populations are similar in their repertoires of action elements, and in developing multi-step techniques for food processing, with coordinated asymmetric actions of the hands and iteration of parts of a process as “subroutines”. Crucially, however, the two populations deal in different ways with the special challenges presented by nettle stings, with consistently different organizations of action elements. We conclude that, while an elaborate repertoire of manual actions and the ability to develop complex manual skills are natural characteristics of gorillas, the inter-site differences in nettle-eating technique are best explained as a consequence of social transmission. According to this explanation, gorillas can copy aspects of program organization from the behavior of others and they use this ability when learning how to eat nettles, resulting in consistent styles of processing by most individuals at each different site; like other great apes, gorillas have the precursor abilities for developing culture.
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Acknowledgments
The Port Lympne data were collected by CH, who would like to acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission Sixth Framework Program grant “Origins of Referential Communication” Contract 12787. MK acknowledges the support of the University of Stirling and Metro Toronto Zoo for her Ph.D. funding. We thank the Howletts Wild Animal Trust for permission to conduct the study at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park, and in particular we are grateful to Pippa Ducat, Mark Kingston Jones and Charlie Romer for their assistance in planning the project and gathering information. We thank all the staff members of the gorilla section for so generously sharing their invaluable knowledge and assistance. In particular head keeper Phil Ridges, along with fellow keepers Helen Roberts, Ingrid Naisby, Rachel Wood, Sharon Tremaine and Julia Betts. We thank Claudio Tennie for stimulating discussions, and for allowing us to use his video exemplars.
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ESM_1 Video of mountain gorilla processing nettle in group-typical way (MPG 4409 kb)
ESM_2 Video of captive gorilla processing nettle; file kindly provided by Dr. Claudio Tennie, who noted that this video was “typical” of the behavior analyses in Tennie et al. (2008) (MPG 4782 kb)
ESM_7 Video of Port Lympne gorilla Djala using the leaves-separate technique for processing nettles (MPG 6862 kb)
ESM_8 Video of Port Lympne gorilla Kishi using the leaves-separate technique for processing nettles (MPG 8080 kb)
ESM_9 Video of Port Lympne gorilla Jaja using the leaves-separate technique for processing nettles (MPG 15024 kb)
ESM_10 Video of Port Lympne gorilla Dishi using the leaves-separate technique for processing nettles (MPG 8034 kb)
ESM_11 Video of Port Lympne gorilla Kibi using the leaves-separate technique for processing nettles (MPG 8230 kb)
ESM_14 Video of captive gorilla using the action described by Tennie et al. (2008) as “folding”; file kindly provided by Dr Claudio Tennie (MPG 724 kb)
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Byrne, R.W., Hobaiter, C. & Klailova, M. Local traditions in gorilla manual skill: evidence for observational learning of behavioral organization. Anim Cogn 14, 683–693 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0403-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0403-8