Bees and chimpanzees can learn socially, just like humans

Primates have culture, it is something accepted for years. An example They are the groups of orangutans that live on both banks of the Kapuas River, on the island of Borneo (Indonesia). At 150 meters wide, it is impassable for these animals, which have developed a very different diet on the two shores. Although within each society they eat practically the same thing, when comparing riversides, the foods vary by 60%. These cultural habits can be transmitted from generation to generation with astonishing fidelity. In Panin, in the Ivory Coast, archaeological evidence has been found that chimpanzees from that region used the same type of stones as nutcrackers 4,000 years ago that their descendants now use for the same task. In Brazil, similar remains have been found that a population of capuchin monkeys have been opening cashew nuts with the same tools for more than seven centuries.

As part of a scientific path that is leading to the recognition of increasingly sophisticated capabilities in animals, today it is published in the magazine Nature Human Behavior an article that tests their capacity for cultural accumulation, characteristic of humans, once it is assumed that chimpanzees (and many other primates) have culture. “A metal clip to hold some papers, something so simple, is only possible because we are capable of cultural accumulation. There is probably no one on the planet today with all the knowledge necessary to produce a clip, from extracting the minerals to everything else. This knowledge is distributed among many people and has accumulated over many generations,” explains Josep Call, a primatologist at the University of Saint Andrews, in the United Kingdom, and co-author of the study.

Until now, it is proposed that, although chimpanzees learn from their environment what to eat or how to crack an almond, with a little time, they could have developed these abilities without help. However, they would not be able to learn new techniques beyond their abilities, something necessary to accumulate complex knowledge that, in the long term, would allow them to create objects as far beyond the capabilities of a single individual as a metal paper clip.

To find out if chimpanzees can learn complex processes beyond their individual ability, the researchers tested 66 individuals. To get some peanuts, the animals had to interact with a type of vending machine that required several steps to offer the reward. They needed to take a wooden ball, pull a box and keep it open, put the ball in and then close the box so that the peanuts fell out. The chimpanzees tried to solve the puzzle for three months, without success. However, after humans taught two chimpanzees to overcome the problem and they showed off their skills in front of their peers, 14 more were able to get the peanuts. They had learned it from their peers.

Although it is not the definitive proof, the result shows that they can learn specific behaviors that are out of their reach and that would give them the capacity to continue accumulating innovations and transmit them between generations, although at the moment this cultural accumulation has not been identified in nature. .

Chimpanzees are the closest living animals to us and their behaviors can be interpreted as a living fossil with which to reconstruct the history of the human mind, but social learning does not seem to be a fruit of late stages of evolution. In a work published today in the magazine Nature, a group of researchers shows that bumblebees can also acquire skills, which they do not develop on their own, even if they are allowed to try for a while by watching how others do it. In an experiment similar to that of chimpanzees, a group of bumblebees faced a test that, once passed, would lead to a sweet reward. Although they were not able to solve the puzzle on their own, when some bumblebees were trained to pass the test and showed their skills to their peers, other insects began to perform all the necessary tasks in the correct sequence to obtain their prize.

In nature, no bee behaviors that are considered cultural have been identified and this makes researchers wonder why a capacity with so much potential has appeared if it is not used. Alice Bridges, a researcher at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom) and first signatory of the article, believes that the absence of evidence that bumblebees have a cumulative culture does not mean that it does not exist. “It is possible that an important part of their behavior, which we generally consider innate, could have some cultural component that we have not identified because we have not looked for it and have assumed it to be innate and simple because we assume that insects are simple,” she points out. Another possibility would be that, although bees have the ability to solve problems, learn socially, or show flexible behavior, because it is useful for their daily lives, they do not use those skills to build a culture because they have no need. “For example, you wouldn't expect bees, whether they have cumulative culture or not, to start building cars or bicycles like humans, because they can already fly,” says Bridges.

Although experiments suggest that the ability to learn difficult tasks, which is the basis of incremental culture, seems to be something shared by all types of animals, it is evident that humans have developed it in an exceptional way. Perhaps, at some point in human evolutionary history, our ancestors faced circumstances in which cultural accumulation favored their survival. Now, in addition to accumulating small innovations, sapiens make revolutionary changes, such as the transition from internal combustion cars to electric cars. “It is the same solution for transportation, but the system is completely different,” exemplifies Call. “We have not yet found that type of radical, revolutionary change in chimpanzees,” he adds.

In the incorporation of innovations, the role of exceptional individuals is also interesting, who are capable of doing things for the first time that will later be incorporated into common culture. On the one hand, these types of minds, responsible for a large number of novelties and which have been seen in several species of primates, are rare. And their new ways may not always be enthusiastically embraced. “Culture is a curious thing, because it arises from the tension between two forces, between things continuing to be done as they have always been done, because if not, they are not transmitted, and there is no culture, and the force that allows changes to be introduced. that are adopted and change the culture, is a clash between individuals who advocate changes and non-change [que favorece la inercia] of the group,” says Call. Without delving into this new animal capacity, it seems that it is no longer an exclusive trait of humans, as was previously the case with the use of tools, intentional communication or the ability to have specific memories of the past.

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