Pan troglodytes keep showing how wise they are compared to homo , but now there ’s a big bang against their tidings – they ’re seemingly unable to go against the dominant grouping appendage , even if it mean using a totally ineffective strategy .
This lack of chimp initiative was detect by Georgia State researcher Lydia Hopper . She trained a distaff chimp who was prevalent in her group to interchange a type of token for a lowly piece of cultivated carrot . She was then place with five low-level chimp , and these other chimps quickly learned to replicate her behavior .
But here ’s where thing get tricky . Hopper introduce another token , which the subordinate chimps could convert for the much better reward of grapevine . The much preferable strategy then was for the chimps to switch in the second item instead of the first , which four of the five low-level chimps successfully realized . And yet when the rife chimp was add back into the mix , all of the dependent chimps go back to copying her , only replace the first token for the carrot .
On the surface , this seems like very poor evidence for chimp intelligence – after all , why would supposedly fresh fauna throw aside strategies that they ’ve learned workplace better just to follow the loss leader ? For her part , Hopper actually thinks there ’s a very smart reason why chimps would do exactly that , and it ’s for much the same ground that humanity follow fashion trends :
“ Copying what a dominant group member does could help the chimp to maintain alliance . ”
It just break down to show you – there ’s no greater augury of human - similar news than a willingness to snog your honcho ’s ass .
Animal BehaviourviaNew Scientist .
BehaviorBiologyChimpanzeeMonkey newsPsychologyScience
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