Curiously metaphorical article about chimps in Texas…and a bunch of monkeys

[Lobster Martini]

LiveScience: Chimps Pass On Culture Like Humans Do

Chimpanzees readily learn and share techniques on how to fiddle with gadgets (e.g. missile defense systems), new research shows, the best evidence yet that our closest living relatives pass on customs and culture just as humans do. (American values and Jeffersonian democracy!)

<snip>

In the wild, chimpanzee troops are often distinct from one another, possessing collections of up to 20 traditions or customary behaviors that altogether seem to form unique cultures. (“Don’t mess with Texas.”) Such practices include various forms of tool use, including hammers and pestles; courtship rituals such as leaf-clipping, where leaves are clipped noisily with the teeth (eating a salad); behaviors such as overhead hand-clasping during mutual grooming; and methods for eradicating parasites by either (back)stabbing or squashing them. (Too many backstabbed or squashed to list.)

<snip>

Spiteri and his colleagues investigated six groups of chimpanzees, each with eight to 11 apes, living in captivity in Bastrop, Texas. (A two-hour drive from Crawford.) The researchers taught a lone chimpanzee from one group one technique for obtaining food from a complex gadget, such as stabbing food with a tool. (Thus enabling a chimp to dine at the G8 summit without impaling the Chancellor of Germany with a fork.)

The extremely hot Texas weather made it hard for researchers to work, "and because participation by the chimpanzees in each of these studies has been completely voluntary (the chimps invoked executive privilege), it sometimes means that we as experimenters have had to be extremely patient," Spiteri recalled. (It sure does suck when chimps don’t respond to subpoenas.) "Considering the insights we have gathered, it has been worth the sacrifice." (Hardly.)

<snip>

(Apologies to the writer, Charles Q. Choi. Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070609/sc_livescience/chimpspassonculturelikehumansdo)