In a recent research published, scientists with the Taï Chimpanzee Project in West Africa reported four dialects that male wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) use in the Taï National Park to find mates to copulate with.
Key Highlights of the Study
- Published In: The research is published in the journal Cell.
- Findings:
- Presence of Animal Culture: Cultural practices in many animal populations have been found even though community-specific dialects in non-human primates such as chimpanzees, orangutans, and bonobos have been rare.
- Mating Dialects: The scientists with the Taï Chimpanzee Project reported four distinct types of dialects that male West Africa chimpanzees used to find mates
- Heel Kick: The chimpanzees lifted their feet and kicked against a hard surface to make noise.
- It is reported among the North, South, Northeast, and East chimpanzee communities
- Knuckle Knock: It involves repeatedly, but somewhat quietly, knocking their knuckles against hard surfaces.
- It is reported among the Northeast community
- Leaf Clip: Chimpanzees bite a leaf and strip it into pieces without eating it, creating a ripping sound.
- It is reported among the North, South, and Northeast communities.
- Branch Shake: The branch-shake dialect involves shaking of branches.
- It is reported among the North, South, and Northeast communities.
- Role of Demography: Researchers understand that demography plays a crucial role in shaping culture and keeping it alive across generations.
- Example: A systematic data collection effort has found that no members of the North group had used knuckle-knocking in 20 years.
- Social Learning: Chimpanzees have genetically inherited certain gestures across subspecies but individuals use the same set of gestures over time and can even differ from the gestures used in a neighbouring group.
- Comparison: Scientists have compared mating solicitation gestures involving the use of tools between Taï chimpanzees and Sonso chimpanzees at the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda to understand the origins of the chimpanzees’ culture,
- The Taї chimpanzees preferred the knuckle-knock dialect whereas the Sonso chimpanzees used the object-slap (moving the arm from the shoulder to slap an object with an open palm)
- The Sonso chimpanzees frequently used leaf-clipping to express their interest in mating but the Taї chimpanzees didn’t.
- Causes for Losing Culture:
- Population Change: Significant changes in a population i.e. the near-complete loss of an entire demographic can thus have a long-lasting impact on the preservation or loss of cultural traditions.
- Example: No members of the North group had used knuckle-knocking in 20 years when they suffered significant population loss.
- Human Threat: The male wild chimpanzees are forgetting parts of the dialect thanks to human influences.
- Illegal hunting or logging are not only killing individual chimpanzees but also destroying their cultures threatening the survival of the remaining chimpanzees.
- Chimpanzees are also poached for use as pets or for bushmeat.
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About Animal Culture Traditions
- Cultural Traditions have been found among animals in the way they forage, socialise, use tools, care for themselves, and mate.
- Among these traditions, the characteristic patterns of behaviour that involve communication are called dialects.
- Studied Animals: There is evidence that whales, dolphins, elephants and primates acquire some of their knowledge and skills through social learning from adults or peers about various behaviours, including optimal migration routes.
- Example: Cultural traditions in animals include variable socially transmitted behaviors such as the songs of humpback whales, prey preferences of orcas, and migratory routes of bighorn sheep
- Preservation of Animal Culture:
- IUCN: It is a relatively new concept with The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently including it among the metrics it uses to prepare its ‘Red List of Endangered Species’.
- The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS): Animal culture (the learning of non-human species through socially transmitted behaviours) is being linked to conservation action for the first time at CMS COP13.
- Importance:
- Adaptation: Animals with rich cultural repertoires are better equipped to innovate and adapt, using learned behaviors to exploit new resources or navigate new challenges
- Repository of Practical Knowledge: The elders in a species possess important cultural knowledge which they pass on to their offsprings like, finding the best watering holes in particular weather, the ways to respond to different predators, caring for the young etc essential for survival.
- A 2024 paper published in journal Science, has reported that the deaths of a species’ elders are disproportionately more harmful than the deaths of other members.
- Survival: Protecting cultural knowledge among peers and across generations may be vital for the survival and successful reproduction of certain species.
- To Conserve Critical Habitat: Supporting individuals that act as ‘repositories’ of social knowledge such as elephant matriarchs, or groups of knowledgeable elders, may be just as important as conserving critical habitat.
- Example: To understand how some Chimpanzees have a culture of cracking nutritious nuts with stone tools while others do not, can be key to evaluating conservation challenges for such species
- Ecological Insurance: Cultural diversity acts as a form of ecological insurance, enabling populations to respond to unpredictable changes in their surroundings.
- Species Understanding: To examine how cultural practices vary across species providing a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences in social behaviors and cognitive abilities between species, including humans.
- Threats:
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- Habitat Loss and Fragmentation: As animal habitats shrink and become fragmented, it becomes harder for animals to maintain their cultural traditions, which often depend on specific territories, resources, and social structures.
- Human Influence: Anthropogenic activities like noise pollution, light pollution etc can disrupt animal communication, social interactions, and foraging behaviors and social fabric of these species posing severe impacts.
- Example: The Southern Right Whales’ knowledge of migration routes around New Zealand’s coastline was lost to the species as a result of commercial whaling in the 1800s.
- Climate Change: It is altering ecosystems, leading to changes in resource availability, migration patterns, and predator-prey relationships, all of which can disrupt animal cultural traditions
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