Evidence for orangutan culture( on similarity of these behaviors sai...)

on similarity of these behaviors," said van Schaik. "And our confidence that we were seeing cultural transmission was increased by analyses showing that proximate sites showed more behavioral similarity than distant sites. This finding strongly suggested that we were observing a process of innovation and cultural diffusion. "Also, we found the biggest behavioral repertoires within sites that showed the most social contact, thus giving the animals the greatest opportunity to learn from one another," he said. According to van Schaik, the discovery of cultural transmission in orangutans has implications for understanding the process in humans.

"First of all, this finding emphasizes that human culture didn't just arise de novo, but reaches far back in evolutionary time," he said. "The findings in chimpanzees meant that culture originated at least seven million years ago, and the discovery in orangutans pushes its origins back to about 14 million years.

"All these findings suggest that the first ancestral man-apes must have had a pretty solid evolutionary cultural foundation on which to build," said van Schaik.

Van Schaik and his colleagues distinguish four kinds of culture -- labels, signals, skills and symbols -- of which the Great Apes have shown the first three. Human culture is distinguished by far more sophisticated development of all four, he said. However, observations of chimpanzees and orangutans have revealed hints of symbol use, and further study might reveal clearer evidence of symbols, said van Schaik.

Van Schaik warned that political unrest and destruction of orangutan habitat could prevent such studies. "Some people have asked us 'Haven't you learned enough by studying these animals for some 30 years?'" said van Schaik. "And it is obvious from these findings that we haven't. Some of the areas included in this study have already been lost to illegal logging. And even if somehow you could restore the forest and the animals, jus
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Contact: Dennis Meredith
dennis.meredith@duke.edu
919-681-8054
Duke University
2-Jan-2003

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