SSS 2012-05-11

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One family generally dines on Chinese takeout while their neighbors eat home-cooked meatloaf. You say potato, I say potahto. And humans aren’t the only primate¹ species with cultural differences: even in the same environment, different groups of chimpanzees use different tools. The work is inCurrent Biology. 

 

Chimps³ living in a national park in Cote d’Ivoire like eating Coula nuts. They hammer them open with stone or wood. At the beginning of the season, the nutshells are harder. So you might expect all the chimps in the forest to initially⁴ use stone hammers and then switch to easy-to-find wooden tools when the nut-cracking requires less force.

 

But researchers examined the tool use of three different chimpanzee communities—and found that despite sharing genes⁵ and a habitat, each group chose their hammers differently.

 

For example, one group preferred stone hammers throughout the Coula nut season. Another gradually transitioned from primarily stone to primarily wooden tools. And the third community switched from stone to wood more quickly. Hammer size also varied⁶ from group to group.

 

As a chimp² might explain, you say tomato, I say [chimpanzee calls].

 

Thanks for the minute for Scientific American, I am Sophie Bushwick

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