ENHS Nature Trails September 99 Article 2

Natural History and You - The President's Forum
by Nathan Tublitz

Do animals exhibit culture?

What distinguishes humans from other species on our fair planet? The power of language? Our immense brain power? Our unquenchable curiosity? Some have argued that it is the development of human culture that sets us apart from (above?) other organisms. Inherent to this anthropocentric point of view is that other organisms lack the traits attained from cultural interactions. But is that true?

Any discussion of this fascinating issue must begin with a definition of culture, but even that is steeped in controversy. At one end of the spectrum stand the cultural anthropologists and linguists who cling mightily to the position that culture is inextricably tied to language and thus must by definition be a uniquely human phenomenon. At the other end of the spectrum lie biologists who define culture as the transmission of behavioral traits through social learning. Being inclusive, this definition has allowed biologists to identify cultural differences in a variety of organisms in the animal kingdom. For example, individual honeybee hives have slightly different responses to intruders and these traits appear to be culturally learned rather than genetically inherited. The same is true for certain species of song birds, whose species- specific song varies slightly among individuals. Although the general format of the song is genetically determined, these song differences or dialects are learned from the parents while the young are still in the nest and thus appear to be culturally transmitted.

Using the biological definition, cultural traits are also exhibited in mammals. Wolves hunt in packs and each pack has it own way of stalking, attacking, and subduing its prey. Variations in pack-specific hunting behavior is also observed in lions and African hunting dogs. The most cited example of a culturally transmitted behavior is the washing of sweet potatoes in streams by Japanese macaques on the island of Koshima. About 50 years ago a juvenile macaque discovered that washing pieces of sweet potato in water cleansed them of dirt and other particulate matter. This behavior spread rapidly throughout the Koshima macaque population and is still practiced to this day by the descendants of the original troop. Interestingly, this behavior has not been observed in any other population of Japanese macaques.

The difficulty with the above cases is that each describes a single behavioral trait fitting the biological definition of culture. My uneducated guess is that most humans would claim that the non-genetic transmission of a single behavior does not make a culture. What has been missing is evidence that some non-human species pass on multiple unique behaviors to their descendants through a social learning process.

Recently a paper appeared in the journal Nature (17 June 99) that forces a reassessment of non-human culture. These researchers assembled behavioral data from six different, long-term chimpanzee study sites in Africa. Thirty-nine distinct behaviors were identified ranging from those involving tools (sticks, stones, branches, etc) to social grooming (removing ectoparasites or dirt from the body of another chimpanzee) to mate-attracting behaviors (beating chest, making loud vocalizations, pounding trees with stones). The researchers separated the 39 behaviors into 5 categories from behaviors produced by most adults in the community to behaviors never seen by community members. This analysis showed that some behaviors are habitually performed in some communities but are absent in others. More importantly, each chimpanzee community exhibited a unique combination of the 39 behaviors, an observation previously documented only in human cultures.

This study clearly demonstrates that the social complexities of chimpanzee societies have parallels with their human counterparts and that cultural learning occurs in both species. Cultural evolution has been invoked as an explanation for many human advances. Now that it is clear that chimpanzees also form cultures, did this important ability arise independently to suit the needs of chimpanzees and humans, or did the human and chimpanzee need to form social cultures evolve from a common ancestor? Unlike the Kansas School Board, I find myself intellectually stimulated by posing these questions and even more excited to have possible answers raised by the results of this new study. Viva l'evolution!

Nathan Tublitz
Professor of Biology
Institute of Neuroscience
University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403
Phone: 1-541-346-4510 FAX: 1-541-346-4548

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