by In a sanctuary in Africa, a “fashion trend” for dangling grass leaves or sticks developed from their ear holes and their butt, a new study shows.
In 2010, researchers who work in the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sambia were observed, as a female chimpanzee started to dangle from her ear, and the behavior soon was copied by other members of her group, study director Ed van Leeuwen, an assistant professor of behavioral biology at Utrecht University in the Neethlands -Cnnn on Wednesday.
There was no evidence that the chimpanzees used the grass or the sticks to deal with pain or itching, and they were “very relaxed” when they did it, said van Leeuwen.
The behavior is more of a “fashion trend or social tradition,” he added.
Aimi, a female chimpanzees that wears a stick in the ear – Jake Brooker/Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust
Interestingly, chimpanzees showed the same behavior in another group in the sanctuary more than a decade later, with some also inserting objects into their rectums.
When this group lived about nine miles from the first group, they could not have copied them from them, which caused Van Leeuwen to ask if the care staff of the chimpanzees could have influenced them.
As it turned out, the employees had developed the habit in an area of the reserve to clean their ears with matches or branches, while on the other hand they did not.
Van Leeuwen believes that the behavior of chimpanzees was recorded by supervisors in the first area before it was passed on to other members of their group.
The supervisors then also influenced the behavior in the second group, which they concerned years later, before this group also developed practice, to introduce sticks and grass into their rectums.
“This is a trend that becomes viral through social learning,” he added.
An adult male chimpanzees shows the same behavior in a forested sanctuary for saved large monkeys. – Jake Brooker/Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust
Van Leeuwen also quoted the example of a group of chimpanzees in a zoo in the Netherlands in which a woman went as if she was wearing a baby even though she wasn’t.
Soon all females would have taken over this hiking style, he said. When two new women were brought into the group, the one who quickly took the style was quickly integrated, while the person who refused to go in group style took longer to be accepted.
For Van Leeuwen, these behaviors are about fitting social relationships and smoothing social relationships.
The grass behavior was mainly observed for leisure observation when the chimpanzees gathered for maintaining and playing.
The chimpanzees live in the sanctuary and do not have to worry about predators or competition with other groups, which means that they have more free time than their wild colleagues.
“You have a lot of time to just hang out,” said Van Leeuwens.
Nevertheless, wild chimpanzees are probably able to develop such behavior and added that it might not have been documented.
Next, van Leeuwens plans to examine whether chimpanzees can repeatedly innovate new feed techniques in order to investigate whether they can develop cumulative culture in the same way as humans.
Elodie Freymann, a postdoctoral partner in the primate models of the University of Oxford for the behavioral evolution laboratory, which was not involved in the study, told CNN that these types of observations are the key to further development of our understanding of the origins and transmission patterns of cultural behavior in chimpanzees and other non-human animals.
“The determination of this study that it may have copied interspecies between chimpanzees and their human owners is quite stunning,” she said.
“If chimpanzees can copy people, they could also learn and copy other non -human species? It is an exciting moment in primatology,” added Freymann.
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