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10-01-2014, 02:44 PM
How learning is transmitted in the wild and how new uses of tools spread from individual to individual has importance for the study of animal learning and implications for the rise and success of early human populations. A team of researchers has been able to film two examples of new learning in a chimp population. Evolutionary Psychology is a relatively new way of looking at ourselves; a field that draws upon observations from many venues and test hypotheses that come from these observations. For example it appears that the use of the hand axe started in a few different places in a relatively short amount of time. So, the question is, do people think things up in different places spontaneously for some unknown reason or does learning spread rapidly? The answers may be coming as researchers use digital technology to advance the ways we study the questions:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29429405

Chimps with tools: Wild ape culture caught on camera

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/72419000/jpg/_72419839_1a000victoria_gill_pdc_4121.jpg By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News
Researchers have captured the spread of a new type of tool use in a wild population of chimps.

They say this is the first clear evidence of wild chimpanzees developing a new culture.

As the team filmed the animals at at a field station in Uganda, they noticed that some of them started to make a new type of leaf sponge - something the animals use to drink.
This new behaviour soon spread throughout the group.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77916000/jpg/_77916363_nb_leafsponge.jpg Leaf sponges allow wild chimps to drink from watering holes
The findings are published in the journal Plos Biology (http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001960).

Lead researcher Dr Catherine Hobaiter, from the University of St Andrews, explained that chimps make and use folded up "little sponges that they dip into ponds and then suck the water out".

"We were insanely lucky," she told BBC News. "We saw two new versions of this tool use emerge in the chimps [we were watching]."
Dr Hobaiter noticed a dominant male chimp using moss rather than leaves to make his sponge.
Another picked up an old sponge that another chimp had been using and started using that.
"It might sound trivial, but the chimps [we study] just don't do that," she told BBC News.
"And both of these new versions of the tool use started at this water hole that we had amazing filming access at."
As she sat filming and watching the chimps, Dr Hobaiter saw this behaviour spread from individual to individual.
"Basically, if you saw it done, you learned how to do it, and if you didn't you didn't," she said.
"It was just this wonderfully clear example of social learning that no one had in the wild before.
"We've had that in captivity, we've had indications in the wild, but this was the final little piece of the puzzle."