Chimpanzees found to accumulate and transfer cultural knowledge from one generation to the next

A study that was recently published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior showed that chimpanzees, which the theory of evolution says are where men are descended from, exhibit “cumulative culture”, or the ability to build on the work of others. Until now, it was thought that only humans, baboons, and pigeons had this ability. 

In the study that was conducted by University of St. Andrews School of Psychology and Neuroscience professor Andrew Whiten and his colleagues from the University of Texas and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, chimpanzees were given juice in a large container and a piece of straw that was outside their enclosure. The chimpanzees in the control group who were presented with these items failed to conceptualize what they needed to do in order to get the juice; this is a novel challenge for ape minds. However in other groups of chimpanzees wherein one of them was taught how to use the tool, the chimpanzees watched and then imitated the actions of the learned chimpanzee to be able to get a drink from the container.

“This and other recent studies are beginning to show that some non-human animals are better equipped to improve the complexity of their cultural behaviors over time than was previously believed,” said study first author Dr. Gillian Vale from the University of Texas. (Related: Federal government limits chimpanzee research.)

They said that the findings of the study are relevant for grasping what may have happened as human evolution progressed. 

Bonobos do not have the skill of imitation

It could be that chimpanzees are the only ones in the ape family who are gifted with the ability to learn from other beings. Bonobos surely do not have that gift. According to a study that was conducted by researchers at the University of Birmingham and Durham University in the United Kingdom, which was featured in the journal Child Development, bonobos do not copy actions of other beings that they interact with, unlike human children, who do.

“The fact that the bonobos failed to imitate demonstrates that even enhanced social orientation may not be enough to trigger human-like cultural learning behaviors,” said Claudio Tennie, research group leader at the University of Tubingen in Germany, who co-authored the study when he was still with the University of Birmingham.

For her part, lead author and Durham University assistant professor of psychology Zanna Clay said, “The young children were very willing to copy actions even though they served no obvious function, while the bonobos were not. Children’s tendency to imitate in this way likely represents a a critical piece of the puzzle as to why human cultures differ so profoundly from those of great apes.”

Bonobos were chosen to be part of the study as they are our closest ape relatives, aside from chimpanzees.

The lineage of modern humans and chimpanzees/bonobos split around eight million years ago. The two great ape species’ lineage further split around two million years ago. However, scientists said it was the bonobos who remained more human-like as compared with chimpanzees.

According to Bernard Wood, professor of human origins at the George Washington University Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, “Bonobo muscles have changed least, which means they are the closest we can get to having a ‘living ancestor’.”

Read up on more stories such as this one at Discoveries.news.

Sources include:

Sci-News.com

ScienceDaily.com

DailyMail.co.uk

How to stay SANE in an INSANE world (and why YOU are important for the rebuilding of human society)

For those of us who are awake, aware and conscious, the world looks increasingly insane… perhaps even hopeless. The emotional whiplash of political elections, outbreaks of war, government lies and cultural insanity can take a real toll on a person’s sense of hope for our world, and far too many goodhearted, sensitive people are right now being driven to a sense of despair.

I’ve recorded a deeply philosophical podcast that confirms the world is going insane around us all, and there’s nothing wrong with you if you see the insanity, the breakdown of civil society and the coming collapse.

In fact, the truly insane people are those who remain oblivious to what’s happening in our world. Much of the world population today has retreated to living inside delusional mental constructs rooted in popular social conformity rather than physical or economic reality. Those people, by the way, won’t stand much of a chance of surviving once things really start to unravel. Natural selection sooner or later prunes delusional organisms from the Tree of Life.

YOU are important to the rebuilding of the next society

Because you are awake and aware, it is vital that you retain your presence of mind and remain able to contribute to the rebuilding of the next society after the inevitable collapse of this one. Every rational person already knows that whatever is unsustainable must come to an end, and human civilization is presently structured on so many unsustainable phenomena that it’s almost hard to keep track of them all: The global debt bubble, the collapse of irrigation water for crops, the collapse of farming soils for food, the collapse of ocean ecosystems, the mass poisoning of the food supply with deadly herbicides, the collapse of rational education across western civilization, the collapse of law and order, the collapse of trust in government, the collapse of human fertility, the collapse of media credibility and even the collapse of the credibility of institutional science.

Notably, it only takes one large-scale trigger event to bring society to its knees for the simple reason that it is built upon a house of cards. That trigger event, by the way, could be something as simple as a single solar flare or North Korea EMP weapon that brings down the power grid. Current estimates reveal that such an event could result in a 90% reduction in the population of the United States, with most deaths occurring from starvation and disease. (Related: Read Survival.news for daily articles on how to survive the coming collapse.)

Yet even as the current structure of society will soon fail, humanity itself will not become extinct. Even if global death rates reach 90% as is predicted by some analysts, that still leaves roughly 700 million human beings on this planet to build a better society rooted in human liberty rather than global enslavement at the hands of tyrannical government. Notably, the largest percentage of deaths will likely occur in the most densely populated cities, invoking Darwin’s natural selection that eliminates those from the human gene pool who are least qualified to survive (and who tend to be the most delusional about reality).

It is my deepest hope that you and I survive this next great collapse and are able to constructively contribute to the rebuilding of a more just, more compassionate and more sane society that values life, liberty and happiness… all of which are currently under total assault from governments, tech giants (like Google and Facebook) and the entire “status quo” regime that currently runs this planet through deception, propaganda and pure EVIL.

To stay informed from SANE news sources (rather than the totally fabricated mainstream media), visit Censored.news every morning and evening, and bookmark the website. It’s updated hourly.

Listen to my podcast on all this at the Health Ranger Report website, or listen below: