Social and Cognitive Capabilities of Nonhuman Primates: Lessons from the Wild to Captivity

All anthropoid primates in nature lead highly social lives. In infancy and childhood, this is characterized by stability and familiarity for both sexes; in adulthood, either one or the other sex changes groups. The natal group provides a social network of matrilineal kinship. After sexual maturity, incest avoidance and exogamy are the rules. Significant differences exist across species and between the sexes in mating strategies. In most species, males emigrate, but in others, females do so. Male sexual behavior is based on competition between peers; females exercise choice in selecting sexual partners. Normal development of sexual behavior and maternal caretaking requires contact with adults. According to one school of thought, the selection pressures of dynamic life in groups led to the evolution of social intelligence. Such cognitive abilities are manifested in coalitions and reciprocity based on assessing the predictability of others\u27 behavior over time, i.e., on long-term relationships and short-term interactions. Another school of thought sees the evolutionary origins of cognitive capacities in the demands of subsistence. Extractive foraging requires varied techniques for the acquisition and skillful processing of foods. Long-term memory and cognitive mapping facilitate optimal budgeting of daily activities such as ranging. The absence of such social and environmental challenges may lead to pathological behavior

Humans have always been unique!

Arguments about human uniqueness apply not only to extant species but also to extinct ones, that is, the hominin predecessors of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Thus, unique and superior are doubly relative terms, in past and present. The scope for empirical comparison faces a spectrum of difficulty, from material (e.g., artefacts) to non-material (e.g., concepts) phenomena

Practicalities of re-wilding

Re-wilding large-brained, intelligent mammals dependent on social learning to acquire survival skills is challenging. Each reintroduced species has different needs, but basic questions relating to essential aspects of successful release such as subsistence remain the same. Here I pose 12 ecologically and ethologically based questions that should be addressed (if not already done)

Appropriate knowledge of wild chimpanzee behavior (‘know-what’) and field experimental protocols (‘know-how’) are essential prerequisites for testing the origins and spread of technological behavior. Response to “Unmotivated subjects cannot provide interpretable data and tasks with sensitive learning periods require appropriately aged subjects” by C. Tennie and J. Call

We respond to the commentary by Tennie and Call (2023) on the article by Koops et al. (2022) in Nature Human Behaviour titled ‘Field experiments find no evidence that chimpanzee nut cracking can be independently innovated.’ Koops et al. (2022) showed that chimpanzee nut cracking is not a so-called ‘latent solution.’ Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in the Nimba Mountains (Guinea) did not crack nuts when presented with nuts and stones in ecologically valid field experiments. In their Commentary, Tennie and Call (2023) argued that the experiments were inconclusive for two reasons: 1) the chimpanzees were not motivated to treat the nuts as food, and 2) the chimpanzees were not within the appropriate ‘sensitive learning period.’ In our response, we argue that Tennie and Call (2023) incorrectly use the term ‘motivation’ to mean ‘willingness to eat the nut’, which requires existing knowledge of the edibility of the nuts. We also point out that it is unnatural and uninformative to inject nuts with honey to motivate the chimpanzees to eat them, as suggested by Tennie and Call (2023). Finally, we highlight that Koops et al. (2022) tested appropriately aged subjects (N=32 immatures). Moreover, we argue that there is no evidence to suggest that there is a strictly sensitive learning period restricted to juvenility. Finally, we emphasize the need for researchers doing experiments in captivity to visit their study species in the wild, and for field researchers to be involved in efforts to design ecologically valid experiments in captivity