this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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Signal traditions and cultural loss in chimpanzees (www.cell.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Summary

The horizontal transmission of cultural knowledge is a powerful mechanism of evolutionary change1. Across taxa, group-specific cultural traditions are expressed in diverse contexts, such as foraging, tool use, self-care and socialization2. These traditions arise when group members converge on specific behavioral phenotypes. When these behavioral phenotypes involve communicative signals, such as gestures, they are termed dialects3. However, gestural dialects are rare in non-humans3. Behavioral phenotypes and traditions can also be lost, a well-documented phenomenon in humans4, but rarely documented in non-human animals5. Here, we find that chimpanzee gestures produced in copulation solicitations show culturally established phenotypes and undergo cultural loss due to human-induced population decline.

Article about the study: Human influence has led to loss of dialects in chimpanzees, long-term study suggests

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Some people don't yet understand that non-human animals can have their own cultures too.